Blackburn and Snow with the Byrds - Stranger in a Strange Land (1965) (MASH-UP)

Here's something a little different. I've been experimenting with what I can accomplish by editing various songs, and I think I've created an interesting mash-up. 

I've long been frustrated that the Byrds never properly recorded the David Crosby song "Stranger in a Strange Land." It's a bonus track on the 1965 "Turn! Turn! Turn!" album, but it's only a rough instrumental version. The folk duo Blackburn and Snow recorded the song in 1966, but it was put out by a small and mismanaged record label and was barely noticed. If Crosby has ever recorded vocals to the song in his long career, his version has never made it to the public.

So I decided to try to add the Blackburn and Snow vocals to the Byrds' instrumental version. I was able to isolate the vocals fairly well. I lowered the pitch of that by half a step to match the sound of the Byrds' version. I matched the vocals to the Byrds' instruments by following the chord changes. To my surprise, both versions were done at the exact same tempo, so that made the matching relatively easy to do.

The Byrds version is about 40 seconds longer than the Blackburn and Snow one, and it turns out most of that is at the start, with the Byrds repeating the same riff over and over again before going into any chord changes. After I combined the two versions, the vocals didn't come in until a full 30 seconds into the song, which sounded strange given that there wasn't much happening musically during that time. So I edited that intro down. I also faded the song out some at the end, since the Byrds version kept on going after the vocals had climaxed and were clearly done.

The result is a mash-up that I think works pretty well. It's not the Byrds singing the song, but it might be the closest to that we're ever going to get, since the Byrds archives seem to have been thoroughly explored by lots of archival releases by this point.

I've included just two songs in the zip file: the Byrds instrumental version of this song and the combined mash-up.

https://www.upload.ee/files/15239464/TByrd_StrangrinStrngeLnd_atse.zip.html

Here's some more info about the song, from Wikipedia:

"Stranger in a Strange Land" has been said to have been written by David Crosby of The Byrds, although it was credited to the fictitious "Samuel F. Omar." The title and lyrics are based on the Robert A. Heinlein science fiction novel that was widely popular among the San Francisco youth culture in the mid-1960s. It was released as a single in late December 1966.

Here's some more, from the Wikipedia article about the Byrds' 1965 "Turn! Turn! Turn!" album:

The recording of the album was not without its tensions, with several members of the band expressing feelings of resentment towards the close working relationship that was beginning to form between [Roger] McGuinn and producer Terry Melcher. Rhythm guitarist David Crosby was particularly vocal in his disapproval, since he felt that McGuinn and Melcher (along with the band's manager Jim Dickson) were conspiring to keep his songs off of the album. Crosby had brought the self-penned "Stranger In a Strange Land" (later released by Blackburn and Snow) and "The Flower Bomb Song", along with Dino Valenti's "I Don't Ever Want to Spoil Your Party" (later released by Quicksilver Messenger Service as "Dino's Song") to the recording sessions but all three songs were rejected and remained unreleased at the time.

In my opinion Crosby had a very good point, because this is an excellent song that would have sounded wonderful if done by the Byrds. "The Flower Bomb Song" has never been publicly released, but "Dino's Song" would have made a fine Byrds song as well, judging by the Quicksilver Messenger Service version of it.

Here's another tidbit about the Blackburn part of the duo:

Jeff Blackburn joined Moby Grape in the mid-seventies; with Bob Mosley he formed the Jeff Blackburn Band which with the addition of Neil Young and Johnny Craviotto became The Ducks, playing a series of impromptu bar gigs in Santa Cruz, California in 1977. During this time, Blackburn co-wrote "My My, Hey Hey (Out of the Blue)" with Young.

Also, there's an NPR article from 2011 that refers to the Blackburn and Snow version as a "lost masterpiece." It goes on to say about the recording:

If this record had come out in early 1966, when it was recorded, and when interest in Robert Heinlein's book was peaking among proto-hippies, it might well have been a hit. But, as sort of a symptom of the problem which would soon destroy Trident, [Frank] Werber sat on the record for a full year, killing its chances and Blackburn and Snow's career.