Burrito Deluxe - Flying Burrito Brothers (1970)
I’ve never quite pinpointed where country and western music became such an important part of American psych rock. Maybe it’s just a confluence of circumstances. The Bay area was the cradle of psych in the mid 60s, and that coincided almost exactly with the new electrified, rock-centric Bakersfield sound that revolutionized country music. But you can hear it pretty early on in the Grateful Dead’s music, as well as on Moby Grape’s seminal psych record.
While it was pretty commonplace on the west coast to meld these two sounds by 1969, Gram Parsons came out of his brief time in The Byrds with a notion to un-meld them and create the Flying Burrito Brothers, a template for straight country rock that would dominate the next decade of pop music.
The country and gospel influence on the 4/4 rock beats is awkward in places, but also–as on Image Of Me–sometimes transcendent.
Two covers of songs I think hadn’t been released by their writers yet, Dylan’s If You Gotta Go and the Stones’ Wild Horses, are highlights.
God’s Own Singer could pretty easily fit on a Merle Haggard record from the era, showing the connection to that Bakersfield country I mentioned.
Meanwhile, Down In The Churchyard is a great rock tune that leans into the beat and saves room for the horns and harmonies that make it distinct.
In just a couple of years, there’d be plenty of music from Dylan, Neil Young, Linda Ronstadt, and even Parsons’ subsequent solo records that would relegate The Flying Burrito Brothers to a footnote, but they still made a string of pretty good records.
