The strongest effort of the 70's Byrds is, for me, "(untitlted)". The addition of Skip Battin didn't hurt!!
Some beautiful music contained therein. And the Live (record #1) is maybe the Byrds strongest lineup...live...so glad those performances were included.
Background---(most Byrds guys will know this but it is fun to recount.)
So "Chestnut Mare" was meant for a musical that Roger was writing...
The studio album mostly consisted of newly written, self-penned material, including a number of songs that had been composed by band leader Roger McGuinn and Broadway theatre director Jacques Levy for a planned country rock musical that the pair were developing.[4] The production was to have been based on Henrik Ibsen's Peer Gynt and staged under the title of Gene Tryp (an anagram of Ibsen's play), with the narrative taking place in the south-west of America during the mid-19th century.[5] However, plans for the musical fell through and five of the songs that had been intended for Gene Tryp were instead recorded by The Byrds for (Untitled)—although only four appeared in the album's final running order. -wiki
I would have liked to have seen that come to fruition.
Even more I would have love to see a sci-fic flick Roger wanted to make about a Hippie couple's adventures in space...that would have been (excuse me) far out!!
For most of 1969, The Byrds' leader and guitarist, Roger McGuinn, had been developing a country rock stage production of Henrik Ibsen's Peer Gynt with former psychologist and Broadway impresario Jacques Levy.[15] The musical was to be titled Gene Tryp, an anagram of the title of Ibsen's play, and would loosely follow the storyline of Peer Gynt with some modifications to transpose the action from Norway to south-west America during the mid-19th century.[5] The musical was intended as a prelude to even loftier plans of McGuinn's to produce a science-fiction film, tentatively titled Ecology 70 and starring former Byrd Gram Parsons (no relation to Gene) and ex-member of The Mamas & the Papas, Michelle Phillips, as a pair of intergalactic flower children.[11] Ultimately, Gene Tryp was abandoned and a handful of the songs that McGuinn and Levy had written for the project would instead see release on (Untitled) and its follow-up, Byrdmaniax. -wiki
Did Roger ever mention these projects to you Rick?...in the interviews you did?
CHESTNUT MARE....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wXTnYCg8v8o
Just A Season
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uLHsUp06Ei0
A great album...no attempt here to fake it...just good music.
