"The Gilded Palace of Sin" by The Flying Burrito Brothers (February, 1969)

Brad's Take:

The Flying Burrito Brothers... Immediately, the band's name caught my attention as I have an insane love for burritos. I also have a love for terribly ugly clothing so this album's cover is great. We're off to a good start so let's hope the music is up to par.

First, a little back story: Musician Gram Parsons joined the popular pop/rock band The Byrds in February, 1968 (exactly a year before this album was released) and upon joining, he helped the band (or hindered, depending on how you want to look at it) change their sound from pop music to country. Parsons and found Byrds member Chris Hillman both bonded over country music so it's no surprise that the change happened, or that the two left The Byrds to focus even more on writing country rock jams with each other.

Gram Parsons "flew the coup" the night before The Byrds were to go out on a tour. And just a few weeks later, so did his country-lovin' pal Chris Hillman. Together, they got a few more musicians rallied up and then released their debut album The Gilded Palace of Sin.

This album wasn't really a struggle for me to get through, but I didn't feel any emotional connection to anything on it, unfortunately. Maybe it's because this 60s folk/country music isn't generally my cup of tea, as we've all heard from me a million times already throughout this blog. To me, this just doesn't sound too much different than previous late-60s country music we've reviewed other than it sounds a little bit more full, production-wise.

Each song has cool enough arrangements and production to make them fun to listen to, even if you don't like the style of the songs. The band plays their instruments like pros and there's no denying that the band has lots of talent, which makes it no surprise that they inspired other folk/country artists like The Eagles, Dwight Yoakam, Elvis Costello, and Wilco, among many others.

Personally, though, this isn't a burrito that I'll think about ordering again anytime soon.

Dad's Take:

What can I say about The Flying Burrito Brothers besides that they had one of the best name ever?

For one thing, it's really difficult to look at that early country-rock like this from today's standpoint. Truth is, nowadays, it's hard to hear the "rock" in much of this album. It sounds almost like straight country. But that's really a testament to the album's influence. In 1969, country music sounded much different than it does now. It was pretty much all twang and Hee-Haw. It was about breakups, jail sentences, and the world is going to Hell in a handbasket and only country folk can preserve whatever was good.

Then along come all of these hippies and they start taking some of the country sounds and combining them with modern attitudes to create a new sound.

That new sound is what you hear on country stations even today, although some of the subject matter doesn't seem to have changed much. Most of today's country music sounds like it owes more to The Flying Burrito Brothers than to Loretta Lynn and Lynn Anderson and Buck Owens. It's more of a rock-light that borrows, sometimes, the old lyrical themes.

So the influence of this record is obvious and undeniable. It sounds very much like modern country has sounded for decades, so it's easy to forget that this is a new and almost revolutionary sound.

The problem is, like Brad, I was not especially engaged by the songs. The sound and production might have been new and revolutionary, but the songs themselves don't really say much. Maybe they are a deliberate attempt to break away from the artsy or bluesy or heavy or downright crude iconoclasm of late sixties rock, and so as revolutionary a fusion of genres of rockabilly was in the fifties, but they are not particularly relatable. They rarely speak to me.

I can listen to the album and have a pleasant enough experience, but I look back at it without remembering the songs very well. I don't feel like I've been pulled in by the record at all. It might be a good album. It might be a very good album. It might have forever changed popular music through it's influence on many of the key artists of the seventies and the people those artists influenced.

But on a personal level, it doesn't do much for me. It's an album I can pull out now and then for background music, but it's not one that calls to me. I don't crave it like I do many albums, sometimes even some that are not particular favorites. Nice enough to listen to now and then, but not much, if any, personal connection.