Chris Hillman - Ebbets Field, Denver, CO, 5-8-1975

Here's another concert from the radio broadcasts out of the tiny Ebbets Field venue in Denver, Colorado. This one stars Chris Hillman.

This concert found Hillman at an interesting point in his career, just starting a true solo career. Up until then, he had been in a surprising number of bands. He was a founding member of the Byrds in the 1960s. Then he was one of the leaders of the Flying Burrito Bros. from 1969 to 1972. After that, he joined Manassas, led by Stephen Stills, from 1972 to 1973. In 1973, he took part in a Byrds reunion that resulted in one album. Then in 1974, he became part of the Souther-Hillman-Furay Band, a trio consisting of J.D. Souther, himself, and Richie Furay. They put out two albums, but broke up in 1975. 

I checked, and it looks like the Souther-Hillman-Furay Band didn't break up until 1976. However, it also looks like they barely toured at all in 1975 and 1976. I only saw evidence of two concerts. Their second album, released in 1975, was badly received. So it looks like the members were already going their own way. Hillman would release his first true solo album, "Slippin' Away," in 1976. I checked setlist.com, a concert database. It says he performed 16 concerts in 1975, and this one was the very first. If that's true, this concert may have been the very start of his solo career. 

However, that meant he hadn't much time to write songs for his own album. Only two songs here, "Down in the Churchyard" and "Blue Morning," would appear on the "Slippin' Away" album. The rest are from his time with the Byrds (tracks 7 and 24), the Flying Burrito Bros. (tracks 4, 5, 7, and 21), Manassas (track 13), and the Souther-Hillman-Furay Band (tracks 1, 8, and 11). It seems there actually were one or more songs at the end that didn't make the recording. There was a little bit of banter and tuning up right before the recording cut off. I got rid of that little bit. Having audience cheering fade out is a more satisfying way to end an album, in my opinion.

As I've mentioned elsewhere, I love these Ebbets Field bootleg radio broadcasts due to the sound quality. A local company called Tuning Up recorded all of them, and did a better job than typical radio broadcasts from that era. But unfortunately, this concert doesn't sound good as most of them. Probably it's a copy of a copy, and so on, or something like that. However, I ran all the songs through a UVR5 program denoise filter, so at least the sound is better than it was before. I'm not saying this sounds bad; it's just it doesn't sound as good as most of the others I'm posting from this venue.  

This album is 45 minutes long. 

01 talk by emcee (Chris Hillman)
02 talk (Chris Hillman)
03 Safe at Home (Chris Hillman)
04 talk (Chris Hillman)
05 Down in the Churchyard (Chris Hillman)
06 talk (Chris Hillman)
07 Time Between (Chris Hillman)
08 talk (Chris Hillman)
09 High Fashion Queen (Chris Hillman)
10 talk (Chris Hillman)
11 Colorado (Chris Hillman)
12 talk (Chris Hillman)
13 Fallen Eagle (Chris Hillman)
14 talk (Chris Hillman)
15 Christine's Tune (Chris Hillman)
16 talk (Chris Hillman)
17 Follow Me Through (Chris Hillman)
18 talk (Chris Hillman)
19 Blue Morning (Chris Hillman)
20 talk (Chris Hillman)
21 Six Days on the Road (Chris Hillman)
22 Move Me Real Slow (Chris Hillman)
23 talk (Chris Hillman)
24 So You Want to Be a Rock 'N' Roll Star (Chris Hillman)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/Ef1f6W4Y

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/4l4Vwr75AByzZWV/file

The cover photo was apparently taken in 1976. It actually showed Hillman in a room that clearly wasn't a concert stage. So I turned the background to black to disguise that fact.

The Flying Burrito Bros & the Byrds - The Flying Byrds Brothers, Whisky-A-Go-Go, Los Angeles, CA, 9-19-1970

If you're a fan of country rock, this is a very special concert. The Byrds helped invent country rock in 1968. But a couple of key members left and started a new band, the Flying Burrito Bros, that kept developing the country rock sound. The various band members remained friends, however. So when they happened to be on the same bill together, they decided to merge their bands together for most of one concert. So that makes this concert very unique and special. But, even better, it was recorded with soundboard quality, despite still being unreleased.

By 1969, the main leader of the Byrds was Roger McGuinn. The Flying Burrito Bros were jointly led by ex-Byrds members Gram Parsons and Chris Hillman, but by the end of 1969, Parsons had left, making Hillman the temporary leader. (He in turn would leave in early 1972, passing the leadership to others.) McGuinn and Hillman went way back, both being founding members of the Byrds in 1964, and they remained on good terms. So when their bands were on the same bill one night at the Boston Tea Party club in Boston in February 1969, they merged bands together for about an hour and a half. Unfortunately, there are no known recordings of that show. 

But then, in September 1970, they shared the same bill at the Whisky-a-Go-Go club for three nights in a row, playing two shows a night. For the first two nights, and the first show of the third night, they just did their sets separately. I have included the Byrds set from the first show. (If there's a Flying Burrito Bros set, I don't have have it.) Then, for this performance, the late show on the third and final night, they had something special planned. The Flying Burrito Bros did their second set as usual. Then, when the headlining act, the Byrds, came on, the two bands merged. And they didn't just perform together for a couple of songs. No, they were together for a full hour! They mostly played Byrds songs, since Hillman was in the Byrds from 1964 until late 1968, so he no doubt remembered many of them well.

At one point between songs, McGuinn jokingly suggested the name "Flying Byrds Brothers" for the merging of the two bands. That sounded pretty good to me, so I added it to the title and the cover art. 

It could be there were more Flying Burrito Bros songs at the start that didn't make the recording. The version I found started with the last minute of "The Train Song." I cut that because there wasn't much left of that song at that point, just one line repeated over and over. So it's possible there were other songs prior to that one before someone started recording. I'm not aware of any complete set list so we could check.

Also, it's possible that the Byrds set from the early show is incomplete. There isn't a clear start to the first song, with an introduction of the band, so there could have been more there. And the last song, "This Wheel's on Fire," was cut off about 30 seconds before the song ended. I patched that up by adding in the end from a concert in Ames, Iowa, a month later. That's why that song has "[Edit]" in its title. But it also suggests there could have been more songs after that cut off.

This album is two hours and six minutes long.

UPDATE: On February 26, 2026, a few days after I first posted this, I was told about all the Byrds songs from the first set, so I added those in. This addition works out very nicely, because the Byrds clearly tried to play all different songs in the first set than in the second set. There's only one song played in both, "You Ain't Goin' There." It's telling that the leader of the Byrds, Roger McGuinn expressed surprise at the start of the song that the other band members wanted to play it again.

01 Lover of the Bayou (Byrds)
02 You Ain't Goin' Nowhere (Byrds)
03 talk (Byrds)
04 I Trust (Byrds)
05 My Back Pages (Byrds)
06 B.J. Blues - Baby What You Want Me to Do (Byrds)
07 Well Come Back Home (Byrds)
08 Truck Stop Girl (Byrds)
09 Take a Whiff [On Me] (Byrds)
10 It's All Right Ma [I'm Only Bleeding] (Byrds)
11 The Ballad of Easy Rider (Byrds)
12 Jesus Is Just Alright (Byrds)
13 This Wheel's on Fire [Edit] (Byrds)
14 Payday (Flying Burrito Bros)
15 talk (Flying Burrito Bros)
16 Wake Up Little Suzie (Flying Burrito Bros)
17 talk (Flying Burrito Bros)
18 Colorado (Flying Burrito Bros)
19 talk (Flying Burrito Bros)
20 Break My Mind (Flying Burrito Bros)
21 talk (Flying Burrito Bros)
22 Trying to Reach My Goal (Flying Burrito Bros)
23 talk (Flying Burrito Bros & the Byrds)
24 Roll Over Beethoven (Flying Burrito Bros & the Byrds)
25 You Don't Miss Your Water (Flying Burrito Bros & the Byrds)
26 I'll Feel a Whole Lot Better (Flying Burrito Bros & the Byrds)
27 Hickory Wind (Flying Burrito Bros & the Byrds)
28 So You Want to Be a Rock 'n' Roll Star (Flying Burrito Bros & the Byrds)
29 The Bells of Rhymney (Flying Burrito Bros & the Byrds)
30 Close Up the Honky Tonks (Flying Burrito Bros & the Byrds)
31 Time Between (Flying Burrito Bros & the Byrds)
32 Mr. Spaceman (Flying Burrito Bros & the Byrds)
33 Turn, Turn, Turn [To Everything There Is a Season] (Flying Burrito Bros & the Byrds)
34 Mr. Tambourine Man (Flying Burrito Bros & the Byrds)
35 Eight Miles High (Flying Burrito Bros & the Byrds)
36 Wasn't Born to Follow (Flying Burrito Bros & the Byrds)
37 Chimes of Freedom (Flying Burrito Bros & the Byrds)
38 talk (Flying Burrito Bros & the Byrds)
39 You Ain't Goin' Nowhere (Flying Burrito Bros & the Byrds)
40 Hold It (Flying Burrito Bros & the Byrds)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/eoQ4idQm

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/AIqu9SRH7L4DmF5/file

There is a photo of the Flying Burrito Bros and the Byrds playing in concert together in 1969. But to call it "low quality" is putting it mildly. It's about as bad a photo as you can imagine, with the people looking little more than black blobs. So I didn't want to use that. Instead, I kind of created a fake picture. This is a real picture of McGuinn (left) and Hillman (right) on stage together when they were both members of the Byrds. It was taken at the Grand Old Opry in 1968. But at that time, McGuinn kept his hair very short, and he grew it out by 1970. So I found a photo of him in concert in early 1970 and pasted that over his head in the original photo. I hope this comes close to what they might have actually looked like at this concert.

Also, the original photo was quite low-res and in black and white. I colorized it with the use of the Kolorize program. And I used Krea AI to help with the detail.

The Byrds - Love that Never Dies - Non-Album Tracks (1989-1998)

The Byrds disbanded in 1973. There were some reunions and collaborations between various key members in the late 1970s and early 1980s, but those faded out. Then, in 1989, the Byrds had a brief renaissance, culminating in all five original members appearing on stage to accept being inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1991, and even playing a few songs together. 

But things faded out again soon after that. One factor was that, only a few months after the Hall of Fame induction, key member Gene Clark died of cancer, exacerbated by various addictions, But also, Roger McGuinn was always central to the Byrds sound, with both his distinctive voice and guitar playing. He put out his first solo album in many years in 1991 with "Back to Rio," and even had a minor hit, "King of the Hill." However, shortly thereafter it seems he decided he wasn't interested in a conventional rock music career, and switched to mostly performing solo acoustic versions of traditional folk songs. Since 1991, he's only put out one conventional rock album of new songs, "Limited Edition," in 2004, with none of the other former Byrds on it. He rebuffed many requests by David Crosby for a Byrds reunion, saying he didn't need the money and preferred to keep the Byrds as a fond memory from long ago. Now, as I write this in 2023, Crosby has died as well, so no further Byrds reunions are possible.

This collects the best of what I could find from that early 1990s reunion time period. I've included songs actually done by the Byrds, which is defined here as original members McGuinn, Crosby, and Chris Hillman. Those three were on the outs with the other original members, Clark and Michael Clarke, due to legal battles over the use of the band name (other than their reunion for the Hall of Fame). Additionally, I've included a couple of songs with at least two members, McGuinn and Hillman or Hillman and Crosby. Finally, I've included songs just by McGuinn that had that Byrdsy sound to it. Putting all that together is just enough material for what I think is a very solid album.

McGuinn, Crosby, and Hillman played a few concerts as a threesome in 1989, as part of their legal battle to argue that they were the real Byrds, and different bands led by either Clark or Clarke were not. I'm not including any songs from those concerts since the sound quality is rougher than everything else here. But if people are interested, I could post the best sounding bootleg from those shows. However, those concerts led to McGuinn, Crosby, and Hillman recording four songs together in the studio, which came out on the 1990 box set simply titled "The Byrds." Three of those were covers, but the fourth, "Love that Never Dies," is a very nice McGuinn original. 

Tracks six through ten are what I consider the best songs from McGuinn's 1991 album "Back from Rio." However, one of those, "Without Your Love," is labelled as a Byrds song, because Crosby and Hillman also played and song on it. In 1996, McGuinn released a live acoustic album called "Live from Mars." But it had two new, original extra studio songs on it, "Fireworks" and "May the Road Rise," that were done with a full band. So I've included those here. The final song come from a Hillman solo album.

I didn't include any songs from the 1991 Hall of Fame induction. The performance was pretty rough, obviously with no practice, and Clarke totally drunk. (He would die of liver failure due to years of heavy alcohol consumption in 1993.) You can find videos of a couple of songs from that on YouTube. Far better were two songs done for a Roy Orbison tribute concert in 1990. I've posted that full concert here recently. But I'm including the two Byrds songs from that as bonus tracks, for those who don't want the whole show.

This album is 48 minutes long, not including the bonus tracks.

01 You Ain't Goin' Nowhere (Nitty Gritty Dirt Band with Roger McGuinn & Chris Hillman)
02 He Was a Friend of Mine (Byrds)
03 Paths of Victory (Byrds)
04 From a Distance (Byrds)
05 Love that Never Dies (Byrds)
06 Someone to Love (Roger McGuinn)
07 Suddenly Blue (Roger McGuinn)
08 King of the Hill (Roger McGuinn with Tom Petty)
09 Without Your Love (Byrds)
10 If We Never Meet Again (Roger McGuinn)
11 Fireworks (Roger McGuinn)
12 May the Road Rise (Roger McGuinn)
13 I'm Still Alive (Chris Hillman with David Crosby)

Mr. Tambourine Man (Byrds with Bob Dylan)
Turn, Turn, Turn [To Everything There Is a Season] (Byrds)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16700743/TBYRDZ1989-1998_LvethatNverDies_atse.zip.html

The cover photo was taken backstage at the Roy Orbison tribute concert in 1990. From right to left, that's Hillman, Crosby, and McGuinn. I used Photoshop to darken the background, because there were some distracting balloons and other things there.

Various Artists - Roy Orbison Tribute Concert to Benefit the Homeless, Universal Amphitheater, Los Angeles, CA, 2-24-1990

I recently stumbled across this Roy Orbison concert. As far as I can tell, it's never really appeared as a bootleg, other than as a single file with no song titles or artists given. So I had to some research just to figure out what this was exactly. But I think it was worth it because it's a very interesting show, with lots of big names. Despite it being ostensibly about Roy Orbison, probably the biggest musical event of the concert was the reunion of three key members of the Byrds - Roger McGuinn, David Crosby, and Chris Hillman - who were then joined by Bob Dylan for the song "Mr. Tambourine Man." Dylan wrote it in 1964, and the Byrds had a Number One hit with it in 1965, but they'd never done the song on stage together.

Roy Orbison died of a heart attack at the end of 1988, when he was only 52 years old. The timing of his death was especially unfortunate because he hadn't had much commercial success in the 1970s and 1980s, but that drastically changed right as he died, with him being a member of the Traveling Wilburys supergroup. He even had his first Top Ten hit in over 25 years with "You Got It." 

Regardless, Orbison was a much admired musical legend. So when he died, his wife Barbara Orbison put together a tribute concert that also doubled as a benefit concert to help the homeless. It's an odd concert as these things go, because most of the acts paid tribute to Orbison by covering his songs, but some other acts went in a different direction and played songs that seemed to have no link to Orbison whatsoever. For instance Iggy Pop played "Home," a song from his then-current album. Speaking of Iggy Pop, another odd aspect to the concert was the musical acts involved. Some made lots of sense, because they'd been heavily influenced by Orbison, such as John Fogerty or Chris Isaak. 

Others were more mystifying musically. For instance, you may well wonder what Patrick Swayze is doing here, dueting on the Everly Brothers song "Love Hurts" with Larry Gatlin. Yes, that Patrick Swayze, the famous actor. He released a few songs here and there, but never put out an album. Apparently, some acts mainly got involved because they liked the charitable cause.

Aside from Iggy Pop, the Patrick Swayze and Larry Gatlin duet, and the Byrds songs, plus a duet version of "I'm in the Mood" by John Lee Hooker & Bonnie Raitt, and "The Thrill Is Gone" by B. B. King, I believe all the rest of the songs have some Orbison connection. For instance, "In the Real World," "Rock House," "Chicken Hearted," and "That Lovin' You Feelin' Again" are fairly obscure songs, but they were all written and/or sung by Orbison. (He also did "Love Hurts," although the Everly Brothers did it first.)

Anyway, this contains all of the music performed at the concert that I could find. However, I cut out some of the talking between songs. There were some pitches for people to donate to the charitable cause, which is no longer relevant since the phone number mentioned has long gone dead, I'd assume. But I suspect there was more banter between songs, and maybe even more songs, that didn't get bootlegged. The show was broadcast on TV, but I think it's a safe bet a lot of edits were made to get it to fit within the allowed screen time. There were some acts involved that didn't get any songs featured at all, such as Michelle Shocked and the duet of Wendy and Lisa. They did help out along with some others on the all-female version of "Oh, Pretty Woman," but I wouldn't be surprised if they did songs that got cut from the TV show, and thus this bootleg, because they weren't so famous.

Also, near the end of this concert, the Byrds did four songs: "Turn, Turn, Turn," "Mr. Tambourine Man," "Eight Miles High," and "He Was a Friend of Mine." Dylan took part with "Mr. Tambourine Man," as I previously mentioned. " He also took part in "He Was a Friend of Mine," but just barely, because he merely strummed along on guitar and didn't sing at all, so I didn't add his name to the credits for that song. I know this because I found a video of it on YouTube.

The Byrds performances of "Turn, Turn, Turn" and "Mr. Tambourine Man" have been officially released on a Byrds box set. But the other two remain unreleased, as far as I know.

This album is an hour and 39 minutes long. If anyone knows the correct order of the songs, please let me know.

UPDATE: On February 12, 2023, I updated the mp3 download file. Musical associate Lilpanda had a different source for this concert, with the same high quality sound. Most of it was the same, but there were five songs I didn't have. So I added those. I don't know the correct song order, so I put three of the newly discovered ones at the start (the ones by NRBO, Joe Ely, and Syd Straw). That also included two songs by the Byrds, "Eight Miles High" and "He Was a Friend of Mine," so I put those with the rest of the Byrds' set. That added about 20 minutes of music to the album.

01 Chicken Hearted (NRBQ)
02 Working for the Man (Joe Ely)
03 She's a Mystery to Me (Syd Straw)
04 talk (John Fogerty)
05 Ooby Dooby (John Fogerty)
06 Mean Woman Blues (Levon Helm)
07 I'm in the Mood (John Lee Hooker & Bonnie Raitt)
08 talk (Chris Isaak)
09 Leah (Chris Isaak)
10 Dream Baby [How Long Must I Dream] (Shrunken Heads [Tom Tom Club & Jerry Harrison])
11 Crying (k. d. lang)
12 The Thrill Is Gone (B. B. King with Al Kooper & Don Was)
13 You Got It (John Hiatt with Don Was)
14 It's Over (Was [Not Was])
15 In the Real World (Booker T. Jones)
16 Home (Iggy Pop)
17 Oh, Pretty Woman (k.d. lang, Bonnie Raitt & Emmylou Harris)
18 That Lovin' You Feelin' Again (Emmylou Harris & Michael McDonald)
19 Claudette (Dwight Yoakam)
20 talk (Bernie Taupin)
21 Running Scared (Benny Mardones)
22 Love Hurts (Larry Gatlin & Patrick Swayze)
23 talk (Stray Cats)
24 Rock House (Stray Cats)
25 talk (Barbara Orbison)
26 talk (Bonnie Raitt)
27 Candy Man (Bonnie Raitt with Chris Isaak)
28 Turn, Turn, Turn [To Everything There Is a Season] (Byrds)
29 Eight Miles High (Byrds)
30 talk (Roger McGuinn)
31 Mr. Tambourine Man (Byrds & Bob Dylan)
32 He Was a Friend of Mine (Byrds)
33 Only the Lonely (Everyone)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/3by8k2RW

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/FNC3nsZwXP8dae0/file

alternate:

https://www.imagenetz.de/m7zft

For the cover, I used a photo of Dylan with the three former Byrds from this exact concert. The section at the top with the title comes from some promotional artwork for this concert, but I cropped and stretched it to fit.

The Byrds - The Boarding House, San Francisco, CA, 2-9-1978

David Crosby reunited with other key members of the Byrds for three acoustic concerts in the late 1970s. I've posted one of those concerts already, which took place at the Boarding House in San Francisco in December 1977. There's another one that took place at the Roxy in Los Angeles in early 1978. I don't know much about that, since it hasn't been bootlegged, but all four of the band's original singer-songwriters united there: Crosby, Roger McGuinn, Chris Hillman, and Gene Clark.

Finally, there's this concert, which also took place at the Boarding House in San Francisco, but in February 1978. Again, Crosby, McGuinn, Hillman, and Clark reunited on stage. We're lucky, because this concert was broadcast live on the local radio station KSAN, so this bootleg recording exists with professional sounding quality.

There are pluses and minuses of this concert compared to the December 1977 one at the Boatding House. In that one, Hillman wasn't there. So this is a fuller reunion. In fact, I could be wrong, but I think the only time after this that these four appeared on stage together was for their Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony in 1991. The earlier show was longer by about twenty minutes, and they did some great, lesser known songs that they didn't do here, such as "She Don't Care about Time," "Wild Mountain Thyme," and "Chimes of Freedom." So that one is definitely worth hearing. But the sound quality is better for this one, and the performance was more assured.

Just like the December 1977 show, the concert began with solo spots for most of the members. Crosby didn't do a solo spot, but Clark, McGuinn, and Hillman did two songs each. Hillman was assisted on vocals by a female singer, Kim O'Kelley, who had been singing with him in his solo concerts at the time.

There was a major sound quality issue with one of Clark's songs, however: "Release Me Girl." The acoustic guitar sounded great, but the vocals were all messed up. For nearly all of the song, the vocals were quiet and distant. I tried using the audio editing program X-Minus to boost them, but when I did they still sounded muffled and bad. Only near the very end of the song was an apparent problem with the microphone fixed, and Clark came through loud and clear. So instead, I used X-Minus to strip the vocals entirely from the song. Then I took the vocals from another concert around this time and patched that it, carefully matching the pitch and tempo and so forth. That one happened to have McGuinn joining in on backing vocals, so there's that bonus now, even though he didn't actually do that for this show. 

The vast majority of this concert had all four of the Byrds on stage singing and playing together. Clark and McGuinn had been doing an acoustic tour together in late 1977, so they knew these songs and arrangements well. Hillman had joined that tour by this time, so he had gotten up to speed with them. However, like the previous Boarding House show, Crosby was flying by the seat of his pants, often singing harmonies on songs that the Byrds did only after he'd left the band in 1967, such as "Chestnut Mare," "You Ain't Goin' Nowhere," and "Knockin' on Heaven's Door," not to mention relatively new songs like "Crazy Ladies" and "Bye Bye Baby." Still, a fun time was had by all.

These reunion concerts led to three of the ex-Byrds forming the band "McGuinn, Clark and Hillman." They wrote some good new songs. Unfortunately, when they put out two albums, one called "McGuinn, Clark and Hillman" in 1979 and the other called "City" in 1980, they opted for a slick, contemporary sound that didn't suit them, even touching on disco at times. They deliberately stayed away from their 1960s Byrds sound, such as the distinctive use of the Richenbacher guitar by McGuinn. This was a big mistake. They sounded much better in concert.

As part of wanting a contemporary sound and moving away from the Byrds sound, they didn't want to get too involved with Crosby. When they recorded their first album "McGuinn, Clark and Hillman" in Miami, Crosby actually flew there from the West Coast with the idea of adding harmonies to one or more of the songs, only to have that rejected by the others. That led to more bad feelings, so there were no more reunions for a long time. The next time Crosby appeared on stage with McGuinn and Hillman would be in 1989, when the three of them did a few concerts as the Byrds as part of a legal battle to win the rights to the band's name from the band's original drummer, Michael Clarke. They did some other things together around that time, including some studio recordings, before petering out again around 1991.

It so happens that there aren't any really good bootleg recordings of those 1989 reunion shows. As a result, this show and the 1977 Boarding House show stand out as the best documents of Byrds reunion shows. They're all the more important because not many recordings has survived of the original Byrds on stage back in the 1960s when Crosby was still in the band.

This concert has been bootlegged many times, often with the name "Doin' Alright for Old People," based on a comment Clark made between songs. In recent years, due to European copyright law, different "grey market" versions of this have gone on sale. However, don't be fooled. Those are basically bootlegs, with none of the profits going to the actual artists. I imagine there are legal complications to getting the rights of all four band members, so this probably will never be officially released. Ditto with the 1977 reunion show. But at least we have the bootlegs.

This album is an hour and seven minutes long. By the way, for the 1977 show, I merged an early and late show together. This time, I don't know if there was just one show, or if only one was recorded. Either way, this is just one complete show this time.

01 Silver Raven (Gene Clark)
02 Release Me Girl [Edit] (Gene Clark & Roger McGuinn)
03 talk (Gene Clark & Roger McGuinn)
04 Bound to Fall (Chris Hillman & Kim O'Kelly)
05 It Doesn't Matter (Chris Hillman & Kim O'Kelly)
06 The Ballad of Easy Rider (Roger McGuinn)
07 Jolly Roger (Roger McGuinn)
08 talk (Byrds)
09 Chestnut Mare (Byrds)
10 Crazy Ladies (Byrds)
11 talk (Byrds)
12 Train Leaves Here This Morning (Byrds)
13 talk (Byrds)
14 Mr. Tambourine Man (Byrds)
15 talk (Byrds)
16 You Ain't Goin' Nowhere (Byrds)
17 talk (Byrds)
18 Turn, Turn, Turn [To Everything There Is a Season] (Byrds)
19 Knockin' on Heaven's Door (Byrds)
20 talk (Byrds)
21 Bye Bye Baby (Byrds)
22 So You Want to Be a Rock 'n' Roll Star (Byrds)
23 talk (Byrds)
24 Eight Miles High (Byrds)
25 talk (Byrds)
26 I'll Feel a Whole Lot Better (Byrds)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/qdyP1RJV

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/DruVk426eazcwY5/file

alternate:

https://www.upload.ee/files/15278258/TByrd_1978_TheBoardngHouseSanFrnciscoCA__2-9-1978_atse.zip.html

What I did to try to get an accurate, color photo is a bit complicated. I found one photo that showed all four Byrds here on stage at the Boarding House in the late 1970s. It had to be this exact show, because it had Hillman in it, and he wasn't there for the 1977 show. However, that photo was only in black and white, and the band members were spread out on stage, making it not a good one to use for the cover. I found another one in color with them wearing exact same clothes, so that one must also have been from this exact concert. However, by chance, that one didn't have Hillman in it. So I took another photo of Hillman from a different late 1970s concert and used Photoshop to add him in.

For the band name at the top, like I did with the 1977 show, I used the lettering from the band's 1973 reunion album "Byrds."

The Flying Burrito Bros - Altamont Free Concert, Altamont Speedway, Tracy, CA, 12-6-1969

Here's a concert that appeared in high quality out of nowhere on YouTube about a week ago (as I write this in January 2023). It's remarkable to me that after 50 plus years, concerts like this still emerge. I'll be there are still lots of great records sitting in vaults or hard drives and not being shared.

It's great that this concert has appeared because the Flying Burrito Bros only had a couple of peak years while Gram Parsons and Chris Hillman were members, and their recorded legacy from that time is small. There aren't many bootlegs by the band from that time, and their sound quality is generally poor. Whereas this is an excellent soundboard.

Also, it's interesting that it's from the infamous Altamont concert. If any concert deserves to be called "infamous," it's this one. To give an example of what a disaster it was, not only was somebody murdered in the audience during the concert, but Stephen Stills of Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young (CSNY) was stabbed in the leg while performing on stage, and Marty Balin of Jefferson Airplane was punched unconscious while also performing on stage! If you want to know more, the documentary "Gimme Shelter" is a good way to go.

The Flying Burrito Bros came on stage after Jefferson Airplane, so things were already bad. The security was a total fiasco, with 300,000 people attending, no police anywhere, and the Hells Angels biker gang supposedly providing security, but being more of the problem than the solution. Given all that, if you listen to this recording, you'd never realize things went so horribly wrong. This appears to be the full set, except for the song "Bony Maronie." The band were introduced by Mick Jagger of the Rolling Stones. They played a surprisingly rocking set, and sounded good to my ears.

Let's hope that whoever released this to YouTube will also release similarly excellent sounding recordings of the other bands in the concert, like Santana, CSNY, and Jefferson Airplane. About half an hour of video footage from the concert was released by the Library of Congress in 2022, though with no sound. It would be great if all the video and audio comes out and then gets synced together.

This album is a fairly short one, at just 30 minutes long.

01 talk (Flying Burrito Bros)
02 Six Days on the Road (Flying Burrito Bros)
03 High Fashion Queen (Flying Burrito Bros)
04 Cody, Cody (Flying Burrito Bros)
05 Lazy Days (Flying Burrito Bros)
06 Close Up the Honky Tonks (Flying Burrito Bros)
07 talk (Flying Burrito Bros)
08 Mental Revenge (Flying Burrito Bros)
09 To Love Somebody (Flying Burrito Bros)
10 Lucille (Flying Burrito Bros)
11 talk (Flying Burrito Bros)
12 Together Again (Flying Burrito Bros)
13 If You Gotta Go, Go Now (Flying Burrito Bros)
14 talk (Flying Burrito Bros)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/oJ6n7HZR

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/5vM4RWiuMNo3Afq/file

The cover photo of Gram Parsons is from the Altamont concert featured here. For the text, I found the exact font from the band's first album and put that at the top, but in a different color. Then I typed in the bottom text with that same font.

The Byrds - European Pop Festival, Piper Club, Rome, Italy, 5-7-1968

I posted the Pink Floyd album "Live in Europe 1968" which included some songs that band did for the European Pop Festival in Rome, Italy. That reminded me that the Byrds played that festival too, and that I hadn't posted that yet. So here it is.

Unfortunately, the earliest and best years of the Byrds are very poorly represented when it comes to live recordings. I've posted an album of the band's live songs from 1965 to 1967, but it's a matter of a song here and a song there. The first good sounding concert we can hear comes from the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival. I'm not posting that here because it's widely available as part of an official release for the whole festival. But the disappointing thing about that concert is that the Byrds' set is only 22 minutes long.

This is the next good recording. It only exists on bootleg. The sound quality is good for its era. But unfortunately it's rather short too, at only 27 minutes long. It's also incomplete. According to setlist.fm, the first two songs they played were "You Ain't Going Nowhere" and "Old John Robertson," which aren't here.

But hey, half a loaf is still better than no loaf at all. It's true that David Crosby was no longer part of the Byrds by the time of this concert. But the legendary Gram Parsons was. (He sang lead on "You Don't Miss Your Water" and "Hickory Wind.") Furthermore, the band was augmented by Doug Dillard of the Dillards on banjo just for this show. You can hear a fair amount of banjo on the recording if you pay attention. The full band line-up was Roger McGuinn, Chris Hillman, Gram Parsons, Kevin Kelley, and special guest Doug Dillard.

The Byrds released their seminal country rock album "Sweetheart of the Rodeo" in August 1968. This concert was in May. But they'd already mostly finished recording that album, and they were moving into country rock mode, playing four songs from that album (three of which are on this recording).

The bonus track is rather out of place with the rest. This song, "Milestones," was a jazzy instrumental Miles Davis cover. It was recorded at the Winterland in San Francisco on December 9, 1967. It's only a bonus track because the sound quality is poor. But I figure it's the one thing worth saving from that bad bootleg, because it's a song the band never released.

01 You Don't Miss Your Water (Byrds)
02 Hickory Wind (Byrds)
03 I'll Feel a Whole Lot Better (Byrds)
04 Chimes of Freedom (Byrds)
05 The Christian Life (Byrds)
06 Turn, Turn, Turn [To Everything There Is a Season] (Byrds)
07 My Back Pages - B. J. Blues - Baby What You Want Me To Do (Byrds)
08 Mr. Spaceman (Byrds)

Milestones [Instrumental] (Byrds)

https://www.upload.ee/files/17187621/TBYRD1968EropeanPopFestivlPiprClubRomItaly__5-7-1968_atse.zip.html

alternate: 

https://pixeldrain.com/u/fbPPH8Tu

I'm psyched about the album cover I made here. I never thought I would find a photo of band from this exact concert, because any photos of the band in concert around that era are pretty much nonexistent. And I didn't... but I came close! Apparently to help promote this festival, the Byrds lip-synced their way through the song "Mr. Spaceman" while posing in different spots in the Coliseum in Rome. I found a video of this and took a screenshot. 

The picture quality isn't exactly the best, but hey, it's them in Rome from their trip there to play this concert. The picture even has guest Doug Dillard in it. From left to right: Dillard, Hillman, McGuinn, Kelley, and Parsons. The image was really bleached out, but I used some Photoshop tricks to give it more color and contrast.

UPDATE: On March 12, 2023, I replaced the cover photo. A kind commenter sent me a better photo that was obviously taken on the same day in the same location. Again, I used Photoshop to make it look better. I still like the first one I made though, so I'm including it as an alternate.

UPDATE: On October 1, 2024, I further upgraded the photo with the use of the Krea AI program.

Chris Hillman with Kim O'Kelly - Kip’s House, Brooklyn, NY, 3-3-1978

Here's a concert I'm very delighted to present. If you like the Byrds at all, I highly recommend you give this a listen. Chris Hillman was a secondary singer and songwriter in a lot of bands. He had that role in the Byrds from their start until 1968, then he was in the Flying Burrito Brothers, then in Stephen Still's band Manassas. Whatever band he was in, or when going solo, he consistently wrote really good songs, yet he's generally been overlooked by more charismatic front men. This, more than any other recording I know, allows Hillman's talents to shine as a front man.

This an interesting and unusual bootleg, as far as bootlegs go. At the time, Hillman was on tour with a band, but he had a night off. He had a friend named Vinny Fisachela, and that friend had a small party of ten or fewer people at a house owned by someone named Kip. Hillman put on a concert just for that small group of people, backed only by his own acoustic guitar, plus backing vocals by Kim O'Kelly, who was the backing vocalist at the time in his touring band. Due to the informal nature of the show, it seems Hillman played every song he could remember, resulting in a concert that was nearly two hours long. So I like this concert because it's like having him in your living room playing for a group of friends. In fact, that's exactly what it was!

Furthermore, the sound quality is excellent. There's another bootleg concert of him and O'Kelly from just two days earlier, playing at the club My Father's Place in Roslyn, New York. That's a good show too, and that bootleg seems to have gotten around some more, but the sound quality of this one is clearly superior. There was one big flaw with it, in that there was some kind of loud thumping sound through many of the songs. But I gave the recording to my musical friend MZ and asked him to fix it. He basically cut back the bass range, which drastically reduced the thumping. It didn't eliminate it, you can still hear it on the more lively songs, but it's much better now. And I don't think there's much sonic loss at all, since there wasn't really anything else in the bass spectrum anyway, given that this is just acoustic guitar and vocals.

On top of that, I also appreciate Kim O'Kelly's involvement. She seems to have had a short musical career. I can't find anything about her other than she was a backing vocalist for this one Chris Hillman tour. But she added a lot with harmonies on nearly every song, as well as taking the occasional lead vocal. She also talked a lot between songs. It's clear that was annoying Hillman. One of his first comments is asking her to shut up, and later on he rejoiced when she temporarily taped her mouth shut. But between her and him talking back and forth, there's a lot of entertaining banter.

By the way, there was one slight problem with the recording, in that there seems to have been a missing section with the talking before the song "Hot Burrito No. 2," continuing into the start of that song. But the first verse was repeated later in the song, so I was able to edit it enough so the missing beginning isn't a problem.

Around the time of this recording, Hillman had put out a couple of solo albums which didn't attract much sales or attention. But they had lots of good songs on them. (At some point soon, I want to post a kind of Hillman mid-1970s best of collection.) He naturally played a bunch of those, but also did some classic Byrds songs like "Eight Miles High" and "So You Want to Be a Rock n' Roll Star," as well as Flying Burrito Brothers songs, and Manassas songs. He even did a couple of Stephen Stills songs he had no hand in writing, like "Do for the Others" and "Ring of Love" (though unfortunately he couldn't remember "Rock and Roll Woman" and only played a snippet of it).  

I'm guessing that maybe this bootleg hasn't gotten the attention it deserves due to the thumping problem mentioned above. But now that has mostly been fixed, I think this is one of the best Byrds-related concert recordings there is. Hopefully, this will give you a great appreciation of Hillman's talents.

01 talk (Chris Hillman with Kim O'Kelly)
02 Nothing Gets Through (Chris Hillman with Kim O'Kelly)
03 Do Right Woman, Do Right Man (Chris Hillman with Kim O'Kelly)
04 talk (Chris Hillman with Kim O'Kelly)
05 Wheels (Chris Hillman with Kim O'Kelly)
06 talk (Chris Hillman with Kim O'Kelly)
07 Love Is the Sweetest Amnesty (Chris Hillman with Kim O'Kelly)
08 talk (Chris Hillman with Kim O'Kelly)
09 Eight Miles High (Chris Hillman with Kim O'Kelly)
10 talk (Chris Hillman with Kim O'Kelly)
11 Do for the Others (Chris Hillman with Kim O'Kelly)
12 talk (Chris Hillman with Kim O'Kelly)
13 Slippin' Away (Chris Hillman with Kim O'Kelly)
14 talk (Chris Hillman with Kim O'Kelly)
15 Take It on the Run (Chris Hillman with Kim O'Kelly)
16 talk (Chris Hillman with Kim O'Kelly)
17 Quits (Chris Hillman with Kim O'Kelly)
18 talk (Chris Hillman with Kim O'Kelly)
19 Ring of Love (Chris Hillman with Kim O'Kelly)
20 Fallen Favorite (Chris Hillman with Kim O'Kelly)
21 talk (Chris Hillman with Kim O'Kelly)
22 [Take Me in Your] Life Boat (Chris Hillman with Kim O'Kelly)
23 talk (Chris Hillman with Kim O'Kelly)
24 Rise and Fall (Chris Hillman with Kim O'Kelly)
25 Hot Burrito No. 2 [Edit] (Chris Hillman with Kim O'Kelly)
26 talk (Chris Hillman with Kim O'Kelly)
27 Safe at Home (Chris Hillman with Kim O'Kelly)
28 talk (Chris Hillman with Kim O'Kelly)
29 Hot Burrito No. 1 (Chris Hillman with Kim O'Kelly)
30 talk (Chris Hillman with Kim O'Kelly)
31 Heartbreaker (Chris Hillman with Kim O'Kelly)
32 talk (Chris Hillman with Kim O'Kelly)
33 Playin' the Fool (Chris Hillman with Kim O'Kelly)
34 talk (Chris Hillman with Kim O'Kelly)
35 Falling Again (Chris Hillman with Kim O'Kelly)
36 talk (Chris Hillman with Kim O'Kelly)
37 Witching Hour (Chris Hillman with Kim O'Kelly)
38 talk (Chris Hillman with Kim O'Kelly)
39 Clear Sailin' (Chris Hillman with Kim O'Kelly)
40 talk (Chris Hillman with Kim O'Kelly)
41 Bound to Fall (Chris Hillman with Kim O'Kelly)
42 talk (Chris Hillman with Kim O'Kelly)
43 It Doesn't Matter - Bound to Lose (Chris Hillman with Kim O'Kelly)
44 talk (Chris Hillman with Kim O'Kelly)
45 The Dark End of the Street (Chris Hillman with Kim O'Kelly)
46 talk (Chris Hillman with Kim O'Kelly)
47 Rock and Roll Woman (Chris Hillman with Kim O'Kelly)
48 talk (Chris Hillman with Kim O'Kelly)
49 Time Between (Chris Hillman with Kim O'Kelly)
50 talk (Chris Hillman with Kim O'Kelly)
51 Christine's Tune [Devil in Disguise] (Chris Hillman with Kim O'Kelly)
52 talk (Chris Hillman with Kim O'Kelly)
53 Ring of Love (Chris Hillman with Kim O'Kelly)
54 talk (Chris Hillman with Kim O'Kelly)
55 Sin City (Chris Hillman with Kim O'Kelly)
56 talk (Chris Hillman with Kim O'Kelly)
57 Step On Out (Chris Hillman with Kim O'Kelly)
58 talk (Chris Hillman with Kim O'Kelly)
59 White Line Fever (Chris Hillman with Kim O'Kelly)
60 talk (Chris Hillman with Kim O'Kelly)
61 Like Strangers (Chris Hillman with Kim O'Kelly)
62 talk (Chris Hillman with Kim O'Kelly)
63 Hot Burrito No. 1 (Chris Hillman with Kim O'Kelly)
64 talk (Chris Hillman with Kim O'Kelly)
65 So You Want to Be a Rock 'n' Roll Star (Chris Hillman with Kim O'Kelly)

https://www.imagenetz.de/bcHcs

alternate:

https://pixeldrain.com/u/b15DxCAi

second alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/OwSk7LyGUVvtM0h/file

I looked all over for any photos of Kim O'Kelly, and could only find one, where she was with Hillman. So naturally I used that for the cover. Unfortunately, it was low-res and in black and white. I colorized it, but there's only so much I could do about the low-res problem. If you know of a better version, or any other photos of them together, please let me know.

UPDATE: On September 30, 2024, I upgraded the photo with the use of the Krea AI program. This largely fixed the low-res problem mentioned above. I then updated it a few days later, using a different photo of Hillman to get an even better likeness of him.

Stephen Stills and Manassas - Concertgebouw, Amsterdam, Netherlands, 3-22-1972

I spent many a month posting an alternate history of Crosby, Stills, Nash and/or Young, with 20 or so stray tracks albums in that series. Now that I've finished that, I feel free to post various additional music by them, in all their various solo and group configurations.

Here's one such post. In my opinion, Stephen Stills' two years with his band Manassas in 1972 and 1973 was the peak of his long solo career. It was a great group of musicians, but the main feature, in my opinion, was the collaboration between Stills and Chris Hillman, formerly of the Byrds and the Flying Burrito Brothers. It was Stills' band, but Hillman occasionally wrote and/or sang some of the songs.

If you listen to just one concert from Manassas, it should be this one. It's a bootleg of a long concert, over two hours, and it's in great soundboard sound quality. Manassas had just released their 1972 double album, simply called "Manassas." It's a great album that for some reason has usually gone underappreciated. Even Stills hardly played most of these songs after Manassas broke up in 1973. Naturally, lots of the songs here are from that, but there also are some from Stills' two earlier solo albums, plus his work with Crosby, Stills, Nash and/or Young and Buffalo Springfield, as well as a couple of Hillman's songs from the Byrds and the Flying Burrito Brothers.

There were only a couple of sound issues here. The bootlegger managed to capture the vast majority of the concert, including the talking between songs, but missed a few bits. The encore "Find the Cost of Freedom" was one such miss. It's included, but it comes from a different source, an audience bootleg. The lesser sound quality is obvious, but luckily it's just one short song.

The bootlegger also missed the tail end of "He Was a Friend of Mine," all of "49 Bye-Byes," and the first half of "Song of Love." Since the vast majority of "He Was a Friend of Mine" was included, I just found a good ending point and then added in some applause from the end of a different song to make it sound complete. For "49 Bye-Byes," I found a version from a different show at a similarly high sound quality (recorded at Dania, Florida), matched the song pitch to the next song (since it's kind of a medley), and added it in. For "Song of Love," I found a high sound quality version recorded for the TV show "Beat Club" in Germany. Again, I matched the pitch, then I spliced the two versions together in the middle of the second verse. The additions fit so well that I really don't think you'll notice.

I'm kind of weird in that I've labeled these as "Stephen Stills & Manassas" songs instead of "Manassas" songs. That's because Manassas didn't last long, and I file these in with the rest of the Stills section of my music collection. But whenever Hillman takes a lead vocal, or co-lead vocal, I've added his name to the song info as well. It's also strange that I'm titling this album as being by "Stephen Stills and Manassas," since he was a part of Manassas, but I couldn't think of a better way to do it.

By the way, a big middle chunk of the concert, from about tracks 9 to 25, is in an acoustic format. It's mostly just Stills, but Hillman and/or a couple other band members back him up on some of those songs.

Anyway, this is a great performance with flawless sound, so if you're a fan of Stills' music at all, you should give it a listen.

01 Rock and Roll Woman (Stephen Stills & Manassas)
02 Bound to Fall (Stephen Stills & Manassas)
03 talk (Stephen Stills & Manassas)
04 Hot Burrito No. 2 (Stephen Stills & Manassas)
05 talk (Stephen Stills & Manassas)
06 It Doesn't Matter (Stephen Stills & Manassas)
07 Go Back Home (Stephen Stills & Manassas)
08 talk (Stephen Stills & Manassas)
09 Change Partners (Stephen Stills & Manassas)
10 talk (Stephen Stills & Manassas)
11 Know You Got to Run (Stephen Stills & Manassas)
12 talk (Stephen Stills & Manassas)
13 4 + 20 (Stephen Stills & Manassas)
14 talk (Stephen Stills & Manassas)
15 Blues Man (Stephen Stills & Manassas)
16 talk (Stephen Stills & Manassas)
17 Word Game (Stephen Stills & Manassas)
18 talk (Stephen Stills & Manassas)
19 Do for the Others (Stephen Stills & Manassas)
20 talk (Stephen Stills & Manassas)
21 Move Around (Stephen Stills & Manassas)
22 talk (Stephen Stills & Manassas)
23 Both of Us [Bound to Lose] (Stephen Stills & Manassas)
24 Love the One You're With (Stephen Stills & Manassas)
25 He Was a Friend of Mine (Stephen Stills & Manassas)
26 Fallen Eagle (Stephen Stills & Manassas)
27 Hide It So Deep (Stephen Stills & Manassas)
28 talk (Stephen Stills & Manassas)
29 Johnny's Garden (Stephen Stills & Manassas)
30 Don't Look at My Shadow (Stephen Stills & Manassas)
31 Sugar Babe (Stephen Stills & Manassas)
32 Four Days Gone (Stephen Stills & Manassas)
33 49 Bye-Byes (Stephen Stills & Manassas)
34 For What It's Worth (Stephen Stills & Manassas)
35 Song of Love [Edit] (Stephen Stills & Manassas)
36 Rock and Roll Crazies (Stephen Stills & Manassas)
37 Cuban Bluegrass (Stephen Stills & Manassas)
38 Jet Set [Sigh] (Stephen Stills & Manassas)
39 Anyway (Stephen Stills & Manassas)
40 The Treasure (Stephen Stills & Manassas)
41 talk (Stephen Stills & Manassas)
42 Find the Cost of Freedom (Stephen Stills & Manassas)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/o2dUrSg2

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/yzeg5M1JfKBcq9X/file

alternate:

https://www.imagenetz.de/jGV9u

For the cover art, I'm glad to say I was able to find a photo of the concert in question. I had several color photos to choose from. I picked one that shows Stills and Hillman (Stills is at the bottom), since the band was a collaboration between the two of them.

The Byrds - Live, 1965-1967

In my opinion, it's a tragedy that there is so little recorded of the Byrds playing in concert in the 1965 to 1967 commercial heyday, when they had all five original members. But "little" is not the same as "none," and this album gathers up the few live recordings from them that I've found.

The Byrds were extremely popular and influential during those years, with two number one hits and some other hits. As a result, they were shown on TV a lot. Unfortunately, most of the time, they simply lip-synced to their records. I think I've found all the cases where they actually played live on TV in those years, though in one case ("The Times They Are A-Changin'"), only the vocals were live, and the instrumental portion came from a backing track.

The good news is that there are so many songs performed live on TV. But in most cases, the recordings aren't that great. For instance, because the band was so popular, there's lots of screaming and cheering at the starts and ends of songs, and sometimes even in the middle. So please, if you listen to this album, be a little tolerant of the sound quality. Once again, we should be grateful there are these recordings at all.

Happily, there is one recording that is much better and cleaner. That's six songs that were recorded for a radio show in Sweden in 1967. These songs sound quite different because instead of the screaming and cheering with the other songs, there's no audience at all for those six. Also in contrast to the others, there's some talking from the band members before each song.

The album ends with three more songs from TV. Like the earlier ones, those have rougher sound quality.

By the way, I haven't included all the live performances from the original band, because I've skipped one key concert: the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967. The Byrds played a 22 minute-long set there that was recorded with great sound quality and has been officially released as part of a Monterey Pop box set. I haven't included that performance in part because it has been officially released, and I figured most fans who are into the Byrds will have that already. But also, by pure luck, there's almost no duplication of songs here, with only "Mr. Tambourine Man" being repeated. But if I included the seven Monterey Pop songs, literally every single one of those would be duplicates of songs here. Perhaps I could post that performance separately, if there is a demand for it.

Only one song featured here has been officially released. That's the performance of "Roll Over Beethoven" in the Swedish radio show. It appeared on the box set simply known as "The Byrds." However, I didn't use that version, since I wanted all the songs from the radio show to be from the same source. I would have used it if I thought it sounds better, but it sounds exactly the same as the bootleg version to my ears.

Oh, by the way, when putting this album together, I was pleasantly surprised to find that the Byrds did a version of Buddy Holly's "Not Fade Away." That's a song they didn't put on any album.

01 Not Fade Away (Byrds)
02 I'll Feel a Whole Lot Better (Byrds)
03 The Times They Are A-Changin' [Live Vocals Only] (Byrds)
04 Chimes of Freedom (Byrds)
05 Turn, Turn, Turn [To Everything There Is a Season] (Byrds)
06 The Bells of Rhymney (Byrds)
07 Mr. Tambourine Man (Byrds)
08 talk (Byrds)
09 Hey Joe (Byrds)
10 talk (Byrds)
11 My Back Pages (Byrds)
12 talk (Byrds)
13 Mr. Tambourine Man (Byrds)
14 talk (Byrds)
15 He Was a Friend of Mine (Byrds)
16 talk (Byrds)
17 So You Want to Be a Rock 'n' Roll Star (Byrds)
18 talk (Byrds)
19 Roll Over Beethoven (Byrds)
20 Renaissance Fair (Byrds)
21 Lady Friend (Byrds)
22 Have You Seen Her Face (Byrds)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16700744/TBYRDZ1965-1967_Lve_atse.zip.html

The cover art photo comes from an appearance on the "Ready Steady Go" TV show in 1965.

The Byrds - She Don't Care about Time - Non-Album Tracks (1965-1967)

Since I've started posting some albums by the Byrds, here's another one. To me, the Byrds from 1965 to 1967 were at their peak, and they recorded some of my favorite music ever. This album gathers up all the stray tracks from that time, so of course the music here is great. ;)

There are a couple of incidental tracks here, especially instrumentals, but there are some classic songs too. So overall, this album is just as solid as the other albums the Byrds released in those years. There are a few A- or B-sides, but for the most part, these songs weren't released until archival releases many years later.

Note that I'm keeping to my usual policy of avoiding alternate versions of songs officially released elsewhere. So, for instance, I'm not including either of the alternate versions of "Why," even though those versions are interesting and popular. Probably some point down the line I'll post an album just of interesting alternates like that one.

Back in 2018, I made a couple of mash-ups of Byrd songs. With "Bound to Fall," I paired an instrumental version lacking vocals with the vocals from Byrds bassist Chris Hillman some years later. With "Stranger in a Strange Land," a song by David Crosby, I had an instrumental version by the Byrds, but no known version of the Byrds or Crosby ever singing it. However, I did find a version of the song by folk duo Blackburn and Snow, and I merged that with the Byrds instrumental.

For this album, I'm including the mash-up of "Bound to Fall" at the end, since it's all the Byrds, even though it is a mash-up. But "Stranger in a Strange Land" mixes the Byrds with another artist, so that arguably isn't the Byrds anymore. Thus, I'm including that, but only as an optional bonus track.

01 She Has a Way (Byrds)
02 You and Me [Instrumental] (Byrds)
03 The Day Walk [Never Before] (Byrds)
04 She Don't Care about Time [Single Version] (Byrds)
05 It's All Over Now, Baby Blue (Byrds)
06 I Know My Rider [I Know You Rider] (Byrds)
07 Psychodrama City (Byrds)
08 If I Hang Around [Acoustic Demo] (Byrds)
09 Roll Over Beethoven (Byrds)
10 Lady Friend (Byrds)
11 Don't Make Waves (Byrds)
12 Flight 713 [Instrumental] (Byrds)
13 It Happens Each Day (Byrds)
14 Triad (Byrds)
15 Moog Raga [Instrumental] (Byrds)
16 Bound to Fall [Mash-Up Mix] (Byrds)

Stranger in a Strange Land [Mash-Up Mix] (Blackburn & Snow with the Byrds)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16700739/TBYRDZ1965-1967_SheDntCreabutTime_atse.zip.html

I made the cover using a photo of the five original Byrds. I'm not sure what year it comes from, but I'd guess around 1966.

The Byrds - Acoustic Sessions - Non-Album Acoustic Tracks (1964)

The Byrds recorded a lot of songs in 1964, before they hit it big, and before they even were calling themselves "the Byrds." These recordings have been packaged in many ways, usually with "Preflyte" in the title. I decided to split them into two, with the full-band versions on one album and the acoustic versions on the other. As you can tell from the album title, this is the acoustic album.

With this album, I'm not worrying if I repeat some songs from the other 1964 album, or from later Byrds albums, because the fact that they're acoustic versions makes them sufficiently different and interesting. There are a few songs that would appear on the 1965 "Mr. Tambourine Man" album - "Here Without You," "I Knew I'd Want You," "You Won't Have to Cry," and "Mr. Tambourine Man."

But what really fascinates me is that the song "Everybody's Been Burned" is also included here. That song wouldn't be released by the Byrds until the 1967 "Younger than Yesterday" album. Yet this version is basically exactly the same, minus the instrumentation to flesh it out. The song is written by Byrd member David Crosby, so clearly he had songwriting skills years before it has generally been realized.

Also, the first song here is actually still unreleased, and is a Crosby solo performance dating back to 1962 or even 1961! His vocals sound great even back then. I wonder if that's an original song too.

Speaking of Crosby, some of the other songs are actually Crosby solo performances too. Plus, there are a bunch of solo performances by Gene Clark, who was the main singer and songwriter in the Byrds at the time. Rather than having a big bunch of Crosby songs in a row, and then another bunch of Clark's, I've tried to scatter both throughout the album, to give it more variety.

Oh, one of those Clark solo songs is rather odd if you listen to the lyrics: "All for Him." In it, Clark sings about another man he's fallen in love with. No, Clark wasn't secretly bisexual or the like. It turns out this was a demo for a song he wrote that was intended for a female singer.

One more note. There's one more song, another solo Clark song, that I failed to include: "I'd Feel Better." That's because I consider it such a poor song that I can't even bear to add it as a bonus track. The lyrics are simple and trite and the melody nothing special. I'm mentioning it in case you're a die-hard completist, in which case please track it down elsewhere.

01 It's Been Raining (David Crosby)
02 Why Can't I Have Her Back Again (Gene Clark)
03 All for Him (Gene Clark)
04 You Showed Me [Acoustic Demo] (Byrds)
05 I Knew I'd Want You [Acoustic Demo] (Byrds)
06 If There's No Love (Gene Clark)
07 You Won't Have to Cry [Acoustic Demo] (Byrds)
08 Tomorrow Is a Long Ways Away [Acoustic Demo] (Byrds)
09 The Way I Am (Gene Clark)
10 Everybody's Been Burned (David Crosby)
11 That Girl (Gene Clark)
12 Mr. Tambourine Man [Acoustic Demo] (Byrds)
13 I'm Just a Young Man (David Crosby)
14 The Only Girl I Adore [Demo] (Byrds)
15 A Worried Heart (Gene Clark)
16 Brotherhood of the Blues (David Crosby)
17 She's the Kind of Girl (Gene Clark)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16700648/TBYRDZ1964_AcustcSessons_atse.zip.html

Originally, I made the album cover using a 1965 black and white photo of the band that shows them holding acoustic instruments. I figured it fits well with the acoustic theme. But over a year later, I looked at it again and was displeased at the lack of color. So I picked a different photo of them from 1965, but this one in color. Then, in 2023, using superior new computer technology (the program Palette), I colorized that pic too.

Here is the original photo, colorized, in case you prefer it. For both versions, I added the appropriate record company logo and stereo logo.

The Byrds - You Showed Me - Non-Album Tracks (1964)

I think the Byrds are one of the great 1960s musical acts. And yet I've only posted two songs of theirs here, both of which are mash-ups I've made. It's high time I post more from them, so I'm starting here.

This is my version of the "Preflyte" sessions from 1964. In short, the Byrds didn't release an album until 1965, "Mr. Tambourine Man." But it turned out they did a lot of recording in 1964, before they got any widespread attention at all. (They didn't call themselves "The Byrds" yet, going by "The Jet Set" or "The Beefeaters. But for simplicity's sake, I'm calling them the Byrds, since it's the exact same five people.)

In 1969, an album from these sessions called "Preflyte" was released, and it did well both commercially and critically. In fact, it was just about the first archival rock release. But that was just the start, because these sessions got repackaged several times, with different songs each time: "In the Beginning," "The Preflyte Sessions," and "Preflyte Plus."

I decided to make two albums out of all this material. One would be the best album the Byrds could have released, without using any of the songs they put on their later albums. (There are about four of those.) This is that album. The other collects the best of all of the acoustic versions of the songs. I'll post that shortly.

It turns out that, in addition to the Byrds doing some recording in 1964, Byrds member David Crosby did some recording with a full band too. There are four good songs, but they only feature Crosby singing. Rather than putting them all together at the end, I've scattered them throughout the album.

I also found two instrumentals from 1964 by Byrds bassist Chris Hillman, done with a bluegrass group he was briefly in, called the Hillmen. These songs have Hillman showing his instrumental prowess playing mandolin, not bass. I've added them in too.

The result is a mere 33 minute long album, but that's fine because that was a typical album length in those days. I think this album would have caused many to sit up and take notice in 1964, because the classic Byrds sound and songwriting was already in full bloom.

I really don't like the name "Preflyte," because this imagines an album that could have been released in 1964, and obviously the name "Preflyte" only makes sense in retrospect. The obvious hit single is the song "You Showed Me." In 1968, the Turtles covered it and had a big hit with it, even though it had a 1964 sound that was totally out of step with musical trends in 1968. Surely then it would have been a hit in 1964, if it had been properly promoted. The usual thing to do was name the album after the hit, so that's what I'm doing here (even though it's an imagined hit).

01 You Showed Me (Byrds)
02 The Airport Song (Byrds)
03 Come Back, Baby (David Crosby)
04 Tomorrow Is a Long Ways Away (Byrds)
05 Boston (Byrds)
06 The Reason Why (Byrds)
07 Willie Jean (David Crosby)
08 For Me Again (Byrds)
09 Wheel Hoss [Instrumental] (Hillmen)
10 Let's Get Together (David Crosby)
11 You Movin' (Byrds)
12 Don't Be Long [It Won't Be Wrong] (Byrds)
13 Please, Let Me Love You (Byrds)
14 Jack of Diamonds (David Crosby)
15 Blue Grass Chopper [Instrumental] (Hillmen)

https://www.upload.ee/files/17362744/TBYRDZ1964YuShowdMe_atse.zip.html

alternate:

https://pixeldrain.com/u/DE3QqJi4

For the album cover, I took a photo from the artwork of one of the Preflyte releases. Then I added the text and the same record company and stereo logos found on the next Byrds album. I upgraded it with the Krea AI program.

The Byrds - Bound to Fall (1968) (MASH-UP)

Having tackled the "Stranger in a Stranger Land" Byrds mash-up in my last post, I figured why not try another one. There's one other Byrds song I know of that is just an instrumental badly in need of vocals, and that's "Bound to Fall," a bonus track off the 1968 "Notorious Byrd Brothers" album.

The song was written by Mike Brewer of Mastin and Brewer, a little known duo that sometimes opened up shows for the Byrds in 1966 but only released one single that didn't contain this song. (Brewer would later go on to bigger success in the duo Brewer and Shipley, and that group would finally record the song on a 1974 album.) However, the song is associated with Byrds bassist Chris Hillman, who has played it off and on during his long career, Aside from the instrumental Byrds version, which came out in 1997 and obviously wasn't originally meant to be released in that form, a Hillman version of the song wouldn't get released until 1972, when it was done for the "Manassas" album led by Stephen Stills. Hillman was a member of the Manassas band, and he sang the song on the album with his voice intertwined with Stills' voice.

It would be very difficult for me to combine the Byrds version with the Manassas version, because Manassas does it in a different arrangement. I couldn't find any versions of the song sung only by Hillman. However, I found a bootleg of Hillman singing the song in a duet with Kim O'Kelley at My Father's Place in Roslyn, New York, on March 1, 1978. It was possible to isolate the vocals because the song was performed acoustically and in front of a very small crowd, so the vocals were clear.

I think the mash-up worked out well, although I should warn that I'm new to this sort of thing and I'm sure there are others who can do it better. One problem is that Hillman and O'Kelley were performing the song without any sort of rhythm section, so sometimes they got a little bit ahead of the beat or behind it, when compared to the Byrds' version. I tried my best to fix that, but I can only do so much with my limited audio editing skills. It was also tough to sync up the pitch and tempo.

Maybe someone with more skills will see this effort and make a better version. As with my last mash-up, I've included the two versions I combined, so one has the raw materials to make one's own combination.

As it is, I'd much rather hear this version with Hillman's vocals than the instrumental version. I hope you feel the same.

https://www.upload.ee/files/15239501/TByrd_BndtoFallSongEdit.zip.html

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.