byrdsongs, lix

When I was a college undergraduate, I walked on the outskirts of a social circle that included a coterie of attractive, smart women who were heavily into Gram Parsons.  The only way, it seemed, to get them pay any attention to me was to make it known that I owned the GP / Grievous Angel two-for-one cassette (Nice Price). But I’ve never really much liked Gram Parsons. I’ve talked about this before, but he’s way too much of a country music purist for my taste.  It’s often said that his so-called Cosmic American Music is a perfect blending of c&w and rock, but to me it just sounds like c&w. If a hippy makes c&w music, the fact that he’s a hippy, in and of itself, doesn’t magically transform the music into rock ‘n roll.  And so it was, or wasn’t, with Gram Parsons. His music’s not bad, it’s just not my taste.  But he was a decent songwriter, I’ll give him that. …I know it’s not good form to speak ill of the dead, but the other thing about Parsons’ vibe that's always put me off is the way it feeds so readily into the college girl mentality. It’s probably envy on my part as much as anything else. I remember how those girls would swoon at the sound of his voice, the dreamily handsome bad boy sensitivo who no doubt pollinated every flower he flew past. He was the opposite of me, both in his day-to-day experience of the world and in the music he cherished most.  There’s nothing there for me to grab hold of. Plus he fucked up the Byrds. After Parsons came into the Byrds and left just as fast, the last threads of the original band – Hillman and McGuinn – were torn apart, and the music was never as good... So let’s review: Parsons was a c&w singer who ruined my favorite band and got laid a lot in the process. Tell me what exactly there is for me to identify with in this package?