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THE FLYING BURRITO BROS
Hot Burritos - Anthology 1969-1972 (A&M)
Reviewed by Shaun Dale
With roots in the latter-day Byrds and descendents including the Eagles and virtually every cow-punk and Americana band you can think of, The Flying Burrito Bros are one of the most fabled and perhaps least heard bands of all time. It's hard to imagine putting together any kind of alt.country band and not at least learning "Christine's Tune," "Hot Burrito #1" and/or "Hot Burrito #2," but that first album, The Guilded Palace Of Sin, only sold 40,000 copies. Not many for an undisputed classic.
Luckily, the people who got ahold of it must have been the right 40,000, because there was enough buzz created to get the band into the studio for Burrito Deluxe and, after the departure of founding member Gram Parsons, The Flying Burrito Bros. There was more to come, including a fine post-Parsons live album and a couple of later collections that were as much vehicles to capitalize on the noteriety of Parsons after his success with Emmylou Harris and his death at 26 as anything else, but the heart of the Burritos was poured out and captured for eternity on those first three albums. The good news is that they're all available, in their entirety, on this new collection.
The original Flying Burrito Bros, Parsons, Chris Hillman, Chris Ethridge, Michael Clarke and "Sneeky" Pete Kleinow, made just one album. By the time they made Burrito Deluxe, Ethridge was gone, Hillman took up the bass chores, and Bernie Leadon was added. The connection between the Byrds (Parsons, Hillman, Clarke) and the Eagles (Leadon) was complete. Meanwhile, one more big change was coming. Gram Parsons, although always brilliant, was becoming increasingly unreliable and was replaced by Rick Roberts for The Flying Burrito Brothers. Soon thereafter, Leadon and Kleinow were gone, Al Perkins, Byron Berline, Kenny Wertz and Roger Bush were in and Last Of The Red Hot Burritos was recorded, a live album with the last Burritos lineup worthy of the name (though Roberts attempted to breathe life into the corpse for several years with new lineups).
The last lineup can be sampled here, as well, with a pair of tracks from the live finale. There are also several Parsons era cuts from the afore mentioned posthumous Burritos releases, making this a comprehensive, if not fully complete, anthology of the band. This may not be all the Flying Burrito Bros cuts ever recorded, but it's pretty much all the cuts that matter. If you missed any of this the first time around, or if you're still trying to preserve that 30 year old vinyl, this two-disc set is the album you need to buy this month if you're only buying one.
Track Lists:
Disc One: Christine's Tune (Devil In Disguise) * Sin City * Do Right Woman * Dark End Of The Street * My Uncle * Wheels * Juanita * Hot Burrito #1 * Hot Burrito #2 * Do You Know How It Feels * Hippie Boy * The Train Song * Lazy Days * Image Of Me * High Fashion Queen * If You Gotta Go * Man In The Fog * Farther Along * Older Guys * Cody, Cody * God's Own Singer * Down In The Churchyard * Wild Horses
Disc Two: Six Days On The Road * Close Up The Honky-Tonks * Break My Mind * Dim Lights * Sing Me Back Home * Tonight The Bottle Let Me Down * To Love Somebody * White Line Fever * Colorado * Hand To Mouth * Tried So Hard * Just Can't Be * To Ramona * Four Days Of Rain * Can't You Hear Me Calling * All Alone * Why Are You Crying * Here Tonight * Ain't That A Lot Of Love (live) * Losing Game (live)
© 2000 - Shaun Dale