Track Listing

1. We'll Sweep Out the Ashes in the Morning
2. Country Baptizing
3. Drug Store Truck Drivin' Man
4. Big Mouth Blues
5. New Soft Shoe
6. Cry One More Time
7. Streets of Baltimore
8. That's All It Took
9. Love Hurts
10. California Cotton Fields
11. Six Days on the Road
12. Encore Medley: Bony Moronie/Forty Days/Almost Grown

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #64042 in Music
• Released on: 1997-03-04
• Number of discs: 1
• Format: Live

Amazon.com
Because he was gone by age 27, any opportunity to hear Gram Parsons in action is worthwhile. This record was recorded in front of a studio audience and broadcast live on WLIR in New York in March of 1973, a mere six months before Parsons's untimely death. Most of the material comes from his two solo albums (now collected on one CD) and his groundbreaking work with the Byrds and Burritos. Still, there are a few noteworthy additions to the canon, namely an urgent reading of Merle Haggard's "California Cottonfields," a roughshod '50s-rock medley, and the relatively obscure sacred tune "Country Baptizing," which was written by North Carolina fiddler Jim Shumate, a onetime member of both Bill Monroe's Blue Grass Boys and then Flatt & Scruggs's Foggy Mountain Boys. Parsons's touring band, the Fallen Angels, play with fire and looseness, especially Neil Flanz on pedal steel, and, of course, the wonderful Emmylou Harris harmonizes ever so passionately with the lead Fallen Angel. --Marc Greilsamer

Customer Reviews

A Little Ragged, But Worth Owning
This is a "live in the studio" performance recorded before a small audience for an "underground FM" station in Long Island (remember those?).

"Uneven" is the word that springs to mind. It starts out with a great version of "We'll Sweep Out the Ashes," and radiates a certain loose charm throughout... but Emmy Lou has a terrible time staying on mike (at one point someone jokingly tells her to "sing into the little black thing"). And some songs work a lot better than others. If it were an LP and I had to listen to every track in order, it probably would stay on the shelf, but I've actually listened to it quite a bit, track-skipping past the dubious moments.

If you like Gram Parson, it's worth buying, but it's not "Gram Parsons at his best."

Charming and intimate, but poorly edited.
This CD proclaims itself as an "Original Unedited Broadcast". That is both a blessing and a curse. On one hand, the sound quality is great, sounding as good as anything you might hear on the radio, and you get the amusing interactions of Parsons, The Fallen Angels and the host.

On the other, the production of this CD actually *needed* some editing. Not necessarily to take things out, but to organize the material better. Inexplicably, they left the verbal introductions to each song at the end of the previous track -- which means if you're strictly in the mood for the music, you'll have to wade through a lot of talking after each song is done. The worst case, however, is that the verbal intro ("Sometimes all you can do is sing gospel music...") and opening chords of "Drug Store Truck Drivin' Man" ended up as the ending of the track "Country Baptizing", effectively divorcing the two parts of the song. I don't mind including the radio chatter as part of the atmosphere of this thing, but they should have done what Roger McGuinn's Live from Mars did -- separate the banter into separate tracks whenever the banter lasts too long and doesn' t relate to the song at hand. In the case of "Drug Store Truck", I had to edit the tracks back together myself just to preserve the original song.

This technical criticism aside, I love the music. Parsons' music is heartfelt, easygoing and melodic, and his vocal interplay with Emmylou Harris (while obviously more polished on their studio recordings) makes for my favourite harmony team of all time. And Parsons and the Angels prove they can rock out on the "encore medley", which includes two Chuck Berry compositions, while the musical beauty of "Streets of Baltimore", "Country Baptizing" and "The New Soft Shoe" is pristine.

A flawed release that needed some more judicious technical polish, but whose content warrants praise.

What an Unexpected Treasure . . .
Having an opportunity to hear Gram Parsons and Emmylou Harris perform in front of a live audience is too much to pass up - and despite some decidely '70s-ish prattle between songs, Gram, Emmylou, and the Fallen Angels give a wonderfully loose-but-right performance. As one would expect, the vocals are otherworldly - "Love Hurts" is more heartbreaking than the "Grevious Angel" version, and new life is breathed into "Streets of Baltimore," aided by Neil Flanz's discrimiating pedal steel work.

I struggled between 4 and 5 stars for this, as the band's performance is a bit uneven - but the vocals are fabulous, and the recording is a further reminder of the vision (and untimely death) of a seminal figure in modern country music. Gram Parson's influence continues to this day.