Search - The Flying Burrito Brothers :: Bicentennial Burritos

Only for completists

06/17/2004

(1 out of 5 stars)

"Being a Byrds collector, I do want to collect every album that has some (ex-) Byrds involvement, and this does mean I have to buy myself a number of bad albums. Am I crazy? Probably!
I did refrain from buying post-Chris Hillman/Gram Parsons Burrito albums on CD; I remember what I had in the vinyl days and I was far from impressed with the music and always thought the hijacking of the good Burritos name later on was an artistic crime. But, there you go, the collector in me rose its ugly head and (thankfuly, cheaply) I bought some of the refried Burritos on CD.
I played this live album (featuring ex-Byrds Gene Parsons and Skip Battin) once and after that it'll be forever buried in my collection, never to be played again. What you get is a 2nd rate bar band, covering some of the heyday Burrito classics but very badly. Why was this ever released? To complement the bad studio albums of this same band? If so, it's not working. Refrying the Burritos was a big mistake. For me, the natural way of the Burritos was from the Parsons/Hillman led band to the (post-Hillman) Hot Burrito Revue led by Rick Roberts, which was put together to honour some existing concert dates. Then it died a natural death - and then it was resurrected again two years later. There has been a Flying Burrito Brothers band ever since - though it may have stopped now at long last.
For the record, I'd like to see the 1973 Live In Amsterdam double-LP released. No Parsons, no Hillman, but a fine one-off (big) band which had merged with the Country Gazette. It ain't a masterpiece but it's a good fun album."