Bloggerhythms

The International Submarine Band (ISB) were named after a 1934 Our Gang comedy. Even though their name sounds like they should have been one of the many psychedelic bands of the era, in reality, they were one of the pioneers of country-rock. The quartet was led by the notorious Gram Parsons before his two brief stints with The Byrds and The Flying Burrito Brothers. Four country-rock devotees - Christian Parker, Patrick Cleary, Earl Poole Ball and Jay Dee Maness - joined forces to entirely rerecord ISB's only full-length album, Back at Home , from 1968 and released it in the original track order. It's best to begin with some background on the participants. Parker and Cleary are musicians deeply influenced by Parsons' music. They both played six and twelve string acoustic guitars on these sessions and do all of the singing. Parker has already recorded tributes to The Byrds' Sweetheart of the Rodeo  - an album on which Parsons was a major ...

The music is called country-rock, but I fail to hear the rock on most of Gram Parson's classic LP,  Grievous Angel . To me, he was a country star with a rock attitude - Keith Richards and The Rolling Stones were his good friends - and that is why he appealed to the Woodstock generation. Grievous Angel was only Parsons' second solo album after having a very brief but artistically productive stint as a member of The Byrds and later with his own Flying Burrito Brothers. The album was recorded just a few months before Parsons overdosed in a Joshua Tree, CA motel at only age twenty-six - just a little too young to qualify for the infamous  27 Club .  Despite outwardly suffering from heroin and alcohol addiction all through the sessions in the summer of 1973 critics considered the record an artistic triumph even though it never climbed higher than 195 on Billboard's album chart. The sessions prominently ...