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Music CD - Gram Parsons, Flying Burrito Brothers: Gram Parsons Archive, Vol. 1: Live at the Avalon Ballroom 1969
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Music CD: Gram Parsons Archive, Vol. 1: Live at the Avalon Ballroom 1969
Artist: Gram Parsons, Flying Burrito Brothers
List Price: $19.98
Our Price: $9.92
Your Save: $ 10.06 ( 50% )
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: Amoeba Records
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Tracks:
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1. Close Up the Honky Tonks
2. Dark End Of the Street
3. Medley: Undo the Right/Somebody's Back In Town
4. She Once Lived Here
5. We've Got To Get Ourselves Together
6. Lucille
7. Hot Burrito #1
8. Hot Burrito #2
9. Long Black Limousine
10. Mental Revenge
11. Sin City
12. Thousand Dollar Wedding
13. When Will I Be Loved
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Binding: Audio CD
EAN: 0890121002027
Format: Live
Label: Amoeba Records
Manufacturer: Amoeba Records
Number Of Discs: 1
Publisher: Amoeba Records
Release Date: 2007-11-06
Studio: Amoeba Records
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating: 
Summary: The music is great, but the packaging's another story
Comment: If you're a fan of Gram Parsons and/or The Flying Burrito Brothers, this 2-CD set is a must. However, as some previous reviewers have already stated, the packaging leaves a lot to be desired. Getting the CD's out of this package is like pulling teeth. Whoever designed this package needed a check-up from the neck up. And the liner notes by Dave Prinz are a little on the excessive and fanatical side. He sounds like he was really overcome with emotion while he was writing the liner notes. Basically, he sounds ridiculous. But the music is absolutely wonderful.
Customer Rating:
Summary: could have been better
Comment: There's good and bad about this cd.First, it was the Flying Burrito Bros, not Gram Parsons and... the GP hype on this is way over the top. In addition, there's no Burrito photo on the front cover, and the one pathetic photo they do have inside has the wrong Burrito lineup pictured( Mike Clarke is missing,an inexcusable mistake!!.In fact reading the booklet, one wouldn't even know it's the Burritos and not just GP! Both sets are inexplicitly cut, when there was room for both complete sets. There some unneeded lame GP demos on disc one. On the positive side, the sound quality is great. Not a bad set, but could have been a whole lot better.
Customer Rating:
Summary: art...or artifact?
Comment: First, this is not a "concert recording," per se. It's the monitor mix -- what the onstage performers heard -- rather than the "house mix" that those lucky enough to be in the audience heard. A monitor mix is mainly for the benefit of the vocalists. So mostly what you hear here are the vocals. Which are AWESOME, no doubt about it. (As is Sneaky Pete, parentheses notwithstanding.) Well worth exploring, especially by musicians. But if you want to hear the Burritos for real (and you do), get the studio stuff.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Essential Live Burritos, Awesome Gram
Comment: I've been a huge Gram Parsons fan for years, and got this for Christmas. I have given it some time to let it sink in.
But this is an awesome addition to my collection of Parsons's material, and I am enjoying it immensely. Any Gram fan will want to have it and, unlike the confusing offerings of different collections of his studio material, you will know that only on this two disc collection will you be able to find the material included.
I've had the live album Gram did with Emmylou and the Fallen Angels tour for what is now a long time now, and that one is well recorded with a reasonable level of performance shown by the band. This is an earlier work by the Burritos, who by comparison were known for being more sloppy, even very sloppy, and several early studio efforts by Parsons were known for mediocre production, even the great Gilded Palace of Sin. As a result I was quite pleasantly surprised here by the production quality, which one perhaps shouldn't be given the Dead's people were involved in the recording. Equally if not more surprising is that the band's performance is reasonably tight, with some obvious mistakes still found here and there. I would have to guess the monitors were not the very best for the vocalists by contemporary standards, as some of the harmony work could have been tighter.
Despite that, Chris Hillman does a very good job here with the harmony work, as does Parsons who, after all, is the artist that really makes this collection so worth getting and listening to. While in Gram's short career he went on to do such great work with Emmylou, with the Burritos he had already found his voice and performed some of his better self written compositions, such as Sin City, the two Hot Burrito numbers, and others along with covers both included in the studio albums and some only found here.
I recently finished reading Twenty Thousand Roads, the biography on Parsons, and one thing that work makes clear is that Gram worked at actually playing gigs more than he did in preparing beforehand for them. He would frequently show up under the influence, maybe always being at least somewhat so. But he was comfortable in his skin up on stage, and he played live frequently in a great variety of venues. His performance is one here, as I think on the good nights it usually was, where you can hear a soulfullness rarely found in singers having much more well known and widespread reputations. I get the impression many who criticize his singing talent are comparing how he comes close or falls short compared to people like George Jones, who certainly set a standard. But Parsons sets his own, and his instantly recognizable voice is here evident in all it's effective and appealing glory.
Having said all that, it has always been true of Parsons that he is more appreciated by musicians and musically knowledgeable people than the more general music listening public, and I don't think there's anything in particular about this album that will change that reception. Even so this collection has some added historical significance in seeing how this LA based country rock band, which was a very new thing indeed at the time, opened a set for the Dead at the Avalon, in the heart of the San Francisco scene at the time. This was before the Dead made their own turn into a more country approach found on American Beauty, but you can hear that at least some of their fans seemed to get it and enjoy it from the crowd reaction. Maybe the casual listener will today, too.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Great live performances by country rock legend
Comment: Gram Parsons was an innovator and had a voice that pierced the heart with its vulnerability. This album captures the innovation and the unique qualities of Mr. Parson's voice. It is hard for listeners to understand, today, just how unusual it was in the 60' to combine country and rock. By the 70's, Parson's innovation became mainstream with the Rolling Stone's Exile on Main Street (Parsons was friends with Keith Richards) and a plethora of California bands.
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