Oil Well Bootlegs - RSC CD: The Byrds – Willin Oil Well

The Byrds – Willin
Oil Well – RSC 046 CD

1 Hey Joe 3:21
2 My Back Pages 3:14
3 Mr. Tambourine Man 2:43
4 He Was A Friend Of Mine 3:04
5 So You Want To Be A Rock 'N Roll Star 3:00
6 Roll Over Beethoven 2:27
7 Lover On The Bayou 4:25
8 Willin' 3:24
9 Black Mountain Rag 1:02
10 Positively 4th Street 3:06

Note
All songs by Roger McGuinn unless noted
~~Live in Goteborg, April 24, 1967~~

Tracks 1 to 6: Studio 4, Radiohuset, Stockholm, Sweden. 29th March 1967
Tracks 7 to 9: Colden Center Auditorium, Queens College, Queens (NY), United States. 28th February 1970
Track 10 Felt Forum, New York (NY), United States. 1st March 1970

1967 Lineup
Roger McGuinn – lead guitar, banjo, Moog synthesizer, vocals
Gene Clark – tambourine, rhythm guitar, harmonica, vocals
David Crosby – rhythm guitar, vocals
Michael Clarke – drums
Chris Hillman – bass guitar, rhythm guitar, mandolin, vocals

1970 Lineup
Roger McGuinn – lead guitar, banjo, Moog synthesizer, vocals
Gene Parsons – drums, banjo, harmonica, pedal steel guitar, rhythm guitar, vocals
Clarence White – lead guitar, mandolin, vocals
Skip Battin – bass guitar, piano, vocals

This CD uses as source Live In Stockholm 1967 (The Swingin' Pig) and it's a digital clone of its.
The bootleg is an interestinc compilation of the Byrds music from 1967-1970.
Please note that track 7 is mistitled "Lover On The Bayou". Soundboard (Radio Broadcast) recording
Tracks 1-6 are studio recordings; tracks 7-10 are live recordings from a concert in New York at Felt Forum in 1970.
As for some others bootlegs from this label here you can find some tracks published officially at the time. Tracks 8-10 have been released on Untitled, their famous album. Track 6 then has been released in the box set "The Byrds".
Read below for more informations!

Audio quality:

Quality content:

© Official released material:

Track 6 has been released officially on: The Byrds (box set)
Tracks 8-10 have been released officially on: Untitled

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The Byrds
The Byrds aren't guaranteed to get under anybody's skin upon first listen. Okay, nobody's guaranteed, but with the Byrds, it just might take a little extra time to bridge the gap between their immense critical reputation and one's personal impression of them. When I first subjected myself to a general overview of the band via a best-of collection, I know I wasn't much impressed. The sound was pleasant enough, but it all seemed to stick together and it was a real chore to remember the melodies. But the Byrds are subtle. If anything, they were the first pop band to demonstrate that pop music can survive without hooks - at least, without obvious ones - by thriving directly on values like emotion..

The Byrds were the most stylistically unified of American rock bands but paradoxically, this is an album without a style. It has little to do with the original band except that it is performed by its nominal members. I say nominal because everyone knows that only Roger McGuinn performed instrumentally on most of Mr. Tambourine Man, the most auspicious debut American album in pop Sixties rock, outdone internationally only by the Stones’ England’s Newest Hitmakers. The rest of the music was supplied by Joe Osborne, Hal Blaine, and, if memory serves, Leon Russell. It was music that combined contemporary material with high-pitched, almost whiney harmony, and the full-bodied ring of McGuinn’s Rickenbacker 12-string guitar.

David Crosby has said there was only one band called the Byrds, the original five people listed on the top of the new album cover. I disagree. The Byrds remained the Byrds until Crosby left, three albums after Gene Clark split. By then it was clearly a new group, one which continued to make fine music on Sweetheart of the Rodeo and the much underrated Ballad of Easy Rider. In reality, McGuinn usually kept his Byrds above the quality of the groups that his original colleagues found themselves in, even if the redeeming moments came only in bits and pieces such as “Chestnut Mare,” a performance superior to anything any of the others has created since they left. Despite the fact that he was one of the lesser songwriters in the band, McGuinn always made the greatest contribution to its stylistic supremacy. And he is the only one who could have made the name stick on his own.

There are some artists for whom a relaxed pace and presentation is most natural: there are others whose art depends on active tension and conflict. The Byrds combined both elements. Their music was as homogenous as any in rock & roll but they could hurt when they wanted to. At their best, they sounded like some exotic mixture of velvet and nails. They protected us when things got too harsh and woke us up when they got too mellow. Take away the nails and the smoothness becomes slickness, entertaining as background stuff but rarely compelling as rock art. And if the original Byrds didn’t create a form of rock art — then there is no such thing.

Untitled
Untitled is the ninth album by the American rock band the Byrds and was released in September 1970 on Columbia Records (see 1970 in music). It is a double album, with the first LP featuring live concert recordings from early 1970, and a second disc consisting of new studio recordings. The album represented the first official release of any live recordings by the band, as well as the first appearance on a Byrds' record of new recruit Skip Battin, who had replaced the band's previous bass player, John York, in late 1969

The latter-day line-up of the Byrds, featuring McGuinn, White, Parsons, and Battin, was regarded by critics and audiences as being much more accomplished in concert than previous configurations of the band had been.This being the case, it made perfect sense to capture their sound in a live environment, and so two consecutive New York concert appearances were recorded. The first of these was the band's performance at Queens College's Colden Center Auditorium on February 28, 1970, and the second was their performance at the Felt Forum on March 1, 1970.

(Untitled) featured recordings from both of these concerts, spliced together to give the impression of a single continuous performance.[26] Of the seven live tracks featured on the album, "So You Want to Be a Rock 'n' Roll Star", "Mr. Tambourine Man", "Mr. Spaceman", and "Eight Miles High" were drawn from the Queens College performance, while "Lover of the Bayou", "Positively 4th Street", and "Nashville West" originated from the Felt Forum show. Byrds biographer Johnny Rogan has suggested that the appearance of the band's earlier hit singles "Mr. Tambourine Man", "So You Want to Be a Rock 'n' Roll Star", and "Eight Miles High" on the live record had the effect of forging a spiritual and musical link between the band's current line-up and the original mid-1960s incarnation of the band.

The opening track of the live LP is "Lover of the Bayou", a new song written by McGuinn and Levy for their aborted Gene Tryp stage show. The song is set during the American Civil War and was intended for a scene in which the eponymous hero of the musical is working as a smuggler, bootlegger, and gun runner for both the Confederacy and the Unionists. Despite the central character's appearance in the scene, McGuinn explained in a 1970 interview with journalist Vincent Flanders that the song wasn't actually intended to be sung by Gene Tryp, but by another character, a voodoo witch-doctor (or houngan) named Big Cat.

"Lover of the Bayou" is followed on the album by a cover of Bob Dylan's "Positively 4th Street", which would be the last Dylan song that the Byrds covered on an album until "Paths of Victory", which was recorded during the 1990 reunion sessions featured on The Byrds box set. The remainder of side one of (Untitled) is made up of live versions of album tracks and earlier hits. In a 1999 interview with journalist David Fricke, McGuinn explained the rationale behind the inclusion of earlier Byrds' material on the album: "The live album was Melcher's way of repackaging some of the hits in a viable way. Actually, I wanted the studio stuff to come first. Terry wouldn't hear of it."

Side two of the live album is taken up in its entirety by a sixteen-minute, extended version of "Eight Miles High",[16] which proved to be popular on progressive rock radio during the early 1970s. The track is highlighted by the dramatic guitar interplay between McGuinn and White, as well as the intricate bass and drum playing of Battin and Parsons. The song begins with improvisational jamming, which lasts for over twelve minutes and culminates in an iteration of the song's first verse.[16][31] Rogan has stated the opinion that the revamping of "Eight Miles High" featured on (Untitled) represented the ultimate fusion of the original Byrds and the newer line-up.[16] At the end of this live performance of "Eight Miles High", the band can be heard playing a rendition of their signature stage tune, "Hold It", which had first been heard on record at the close of the "My Back Pages/B.J. Blues/Baby What You Want Me to Do" medley included on Dr. Byrds & Mr. Hyde.

The Byrds box set 1990
Additional live material from the Byrds' early 1970 appearances at Queens College and the Felt Forum has been officially released over the years. "Lover of the Bayou", "Black Mountain Rag (Soldier's Joy)", and a cover of Lowell George's "Willin'", taken from the Queens College concert, were included on The Byrds box set in 1990. Additionally, performances of "You Ain't Goin' Nowhere", "Old Blue", "It's Alright, Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)", "Ballad of Easy Rider", "My Back Pages", and "This Wheel's on Fire" from the Felt Forum show were included on the expanded (Untitled)/(Unissued) release in 2000. A further two songs, "You All Look Alike" and "Nashville West", taken from the Queen's College concert were included on the 2006 box set, There Is a Season.

The Byrds is a four-CD box set by the American rock band the Byrds. It features music that had previously been released between the mid-1960s and early 1970s, along with a number of previously unreleased tracks and some new recordings from 1990. The box set was issued on October 19, 1990 by Columbia/Legacy and reached number 151 on the Billboard albums chart

While The Byrds does provide a detailed overview of the band's music, there has been some criticism from fans and critics concerning the absence of songs written by Clark, who was the band's principal songwriter in its early years. In particular, the exclusion of popular and highly regarded Clark-penned songs such as "Set You Free This Time" and "Here Without You" was interpreted by many fans as an attempt on McGuinn's part to downplay Clark's importance in the group. The additional failure of McGuinn to mention Clark in the box set's booklet, while at the same time praising Crosby and Hillman, served to reinforce the notion that Clark was being intentionally slighted.

Upon release, the box set reached number 151 on the Billboard Top Pop Albums chart in the U.S., during a chart stay of four weeks, but failed to reach the UK Albums Chart. A single disc selection from the box set, titled 20 Essential Tracks from the Boxed Set: 1965–1990, was also released in January 1992. The first 16 tracks on this single disc collection date from the Byrds' 1965 to 1971 period, while the final 4 tracks are from the 1990 reunion.

The Byrds is currently out of print, but a later revised box set, titled There Is a Season, was released on September 26, 2006 by Columbia/Legacy. While this second box set is meant to replace The Byrds, each set contains some tracks that the other does not