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Thank God they stopped playing Dylan's stuff, right. ("Ze woirld, it have a change, okay." It's like with Borat. He could tell me what day of the week it was and I'd argue with him.) I mean, I know that sometimes, right, but, basically-- thank God. (I mean, the Tambourine Man song is pretty great; it's not like it's not.... *But*, it's still on some other album, right? Good.)
"Fifth Dimension" and especially, for me, "Eight Miles High" are just really great songs. I hate to compare everything with "Pet Sounds" just because "God Only Knows" is Paul McCartney's favorite tune, lol, but it's a bit like with that, I think-- the first track and the one sorta in the middle, like anchors, because they're both so good.
It's a good arrangement, I think.
I think I've heard "Mr. Spaceman" somewhere else before, I think when I was a kid.... The Byrds are a good 60s band. They're actually a good 60s band; they're very 60s. In a way it's very cool how 60s-y they are. (Still glad they got over Dylan eventually though-- lol.) Kinda like the Turtles, only.... larger. I actually heard of the Turtles first, "Happy Together", I think-- I'm not sure where that came from. But, yeah, "You Showed Me". That's kinda funny, if you think about it.
Anyway.
I don't know much about this band-- not as much. (I can do Paul John George "Richard", lol, like the back of my hand.... With alot of other bands, that comes more difficult.) I wonder what was the relationship between Mr McGuinn and David Crosby-- I guess that this must have been the time when it really worked, at any rate.
I think that the folk-rock aspect of the band does pretty well here, which is pretty interesting. (A refreshingly un-Dylan-y aspect of the 60s, and not necessary the best remembered or preserved, it seems.)
The "John Riley" song, in particular, is pretty good-- both of what it is, and, just-- as is. And the "Eight Miles High" reprise-- I can't get enough of that song, it's pretty great.
That's a little "un-even", I guess, but, I sorta wrote this on impulse. Might as well, sometimes, when you come to it.
I've always been a little interested in the Byrds as 60s folk rock; I think it's an interesting connection. You hear some of the stuff they do, sometimes it's very 60s-y, a very deep flavor of it, without being.... stupid, or anything about it, at least. It seems very, representative, almost, which is an interesting sort of character for a group to have, I think.
And I think it's an interesting connection, "folk rock", because I've listening to some Northern-Scandinavian neopagan sorts of mythological rockin', basically, from about last year, basically. The.... historical?.... roots of that sort of thing (because the sort of literal beginnings of it, that sort of Viking metal, doesn't go back farther than the 80s, at the earliest), the historical roots, of this sort of-- I mean, we're not all foreigners, like George Harrison.... or assholes like Bob Dylan!..... or, *Lutherans*..... *ick*..... (Even, "Turn! Turn! Turn!"-- it's a great song, but one of the Lutherans ruined it for me, hahaha.... It's a great song, (and some things in the world aren't great, lol), but I still, almost, hate it....) historical roots in a more modern sense of what came before us more recently, if that makes sense.... in a very broad sense, not that there's any-thing wrong with the main-stay of rock-n-roll, which is.... well, you shouldn't need to me to explain everything. And it's not good, I think, when these sort of asshole punkish sort of bands denigrate it or act like they're too good for it, or, anything.....
But, just this very general idea, of, different kinds of exploration.... investigation.... I know how different it sounds from saying, Odin!, but, the Fifth Dimension really does open up a lot of doors....
And, yet, at the same time, captures that whole flavor of the moment, which was the 60s-- which is why they put the helicopter sounds in that one song, right after "John Riley"-- in a sense, I feel like they'd almost rather not, if they *really* had a choice, but, it's almost like saying, "I can hear it. I'm not especially *listening* for it, but, it doesn't matter, (and nobody thought of *that*)-- I can hear it."
In my opinion, at any rate.
But, yeah, it's funny -- almost bottling that spirit in the air, as well as having this sort of softcore conceptual side.... it's for both aspects of that, a pretty "folk" kind of rock, I think.
And, you know, Michael Clarke, (from 'the Byrds in the beginning', lol, alliterating like all good Norse poets), is definitely an unmistakably good-looking guy, right-- more than Ringo! :) -- it's not like they are ditching the whole rock-and-roll of the rock band. If they're about folk things, it's still the fertility fairies that they're talking to-- they'd be more about the Vanir, the gods of friendship, and not the super *hardcore* guys-- that's definitely a part of who they are, I think. "John Riley" is like the folklore of Netherfield Park or something, you know.
And, "Eight Miles High", you know-- have I mentioned that song before, haha. It's like the Yuri Gagarin song, maybe even more than "Rocketman". If Yuri could only take one song with him..... *eight miles high*, lol.....
Anyway, I wouldn't call it the Best Album Ever-- and I despise these lists of twenty million songs to sing before I shoot you, it's so Nazi and all that putz-- but, hey. ("You have to listen to Sgt. Pepper." No I don't. Stop telling me what to do.)
(What was that crappy Turtles song called? About being a philosopher? Hahaha.)
It's certainly *distinctly* better than average, in my opinion.
............
Postscript: The 1965 albums received noticeably better chart positions than the 1966 album, but on the whole, I myself cannot look on them as being preferable.
(9/10)
