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://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."