Younger Than Yesterday

Customer Reviews:

• The Byrds masterpiece of psychedelic folk rock and roll: For the longest time, I never bothered with the Byrds. I'm not a hippie, but grew up during the punk/new wave era, and brought a lot of my esthetics from that sound, along with the Doors, Velvet Underground, and Rolling Stones. I liked Bob Dylan as well, but as for the Byrds, I thought only of their earliest work, when they did Dylan covers with thick harmonies. Much later, maybe after hearing how REM, or PETTY, were so influence by the Byrds, that I got a BEST OF cassette, but it still didnt show thet whole story. Well, I got this album, and NOTORIOUS BYRD BROTHERS, and found out the truth. This was the trippiest band around, for awhile. They did psychedelia very early on, (5th Dimention) in fact, they turned on John Lennon to his second acid trip. For early 1967, its amazing to hear how freaky so many of these songs are. ROCK AND ROLL STAR is all anphememine rush. Done live in concert (Monterey Pop Festival Box set ONLY, sadly) these songs were performed at super high velocities. Crosby's songs stand up the best, like EVERYBODY"S BEEN BURNT. A beautiful surreal ballad about the universiality of heartbreak, in a 5/4 beat. WHAT? That was considered "new" when Jethro Tull used it two years later for LIVING IN THE PAST. Renascance Fair was just as beautiful, and both of those songs seem to me like High Points in David Crosby's writing. (Along with TRIAD). Then, you have the SCI FI epics like C.T.A.-105, which is about....Alien consciousness I guess. If the album has a "theme", its summed up in the last song," WHY?" The album starts with the sell out mentality of ROCK AND ROLL STAR (a huge favorite of Patti Smith, and anyone who has been thru the rock meat grinder), love songs, fantasies, scifi UFOs, LSD visions, (Mind Gardens, an experiment that didnt work as well as others), a mandatory Dylan cover on these early Byrd's albums (MY BACK PAGES, which again was about the look back at adolescent arrogance), and ending with WHY? Because to me, the band was asking that question thruout this album. Doesnt the best art always ask WHY? I'm not calling this the best song on the album, but rather, it does call into focus, the questioning of the Hippie generation, about War, and the whole American dream of oppulence, excess leading to death, that was given out wholesale, without anyone asking WHY? WHY DOES THIS APPLY TO ME? WHY SHOULD I GO TO VIETNAM? WHY SHOULD I STAY STRAIGHT? WHY GET MARRIED? or whatever other WHY you could add in there. So, this is TRULY the CD you want to start out with, if you want to hear what the Psychedelic, highest flying BYRDS were about, before they left psychedelia and nascent folk rock behind them forever, for the reinvention of country and western rock, which was also hugely influencial for decades to come. To this day, I could kick myself in the [...], for not listening to this album in college. Of all the psychedelic type albums I have, this one still holds up, since it depended on the least amount of effects and gimmics popular at the time.
• The Very Best: This is quite possibly one of the ten finest Albums/CDs every recorded. The Byrds at this time were the best the 60s had to offer and the 60s was the time period that mattered. The songwriting by Crosby in particular was genius. I love the Byrds, I miss Gene Clark, and I only wish this early version of the Byrds could have given us even more output before the break-ups and decline into the "Rodeo" format. Yes, the muscianship of "Mcguin's" country Byrds was truly groundbreaking but the songwriting was not even close. Get this one for a real trip.
• My favorite Byrds album: This is a beautiful album. I think it's the best album the Byrds ever did.
  The songwriting here is amazingly consistent: Crosby adds the best song, his wistful, vague Everybody's Been Burned - it's one of my very favorite Byrds tracks. It's also one of Crosby's best compositions, up there with Triad and some of his Crosby, Stills & Nash tracks. There's also a classic cynical attack on the rock industry with a jazzy trumpet part (So You Want to be a Rock 'n' Roll Star); a few ethereal folk-rockers with lovely harmonies (Have You Seen Her Face?; Renaissance Fair; Time Between; Thoughts and Words), and my personal favorite of the Byrds' Dylan covers, My Back Pages. I personally think the title of this album was inspired by the "Older than/younger now" theme that Dylan's song presents. There's even a space-rocker, sort of like the tracks from their last album (Fifth Dimension), and it's tremendous (CTA - 102). I'm not a fan of Mind Gardens - it hasn't held up very well - but other than that this is a triumph. Not as experimental as Fifth Dimension was, but it's far more consistent - though Fifth Dimension was a strong album as well (if you haven't heard the title track; Eight Miles High; Mr. Spaceman and I Come and Stand at Every Door... well, you're missing out).
  I'll admit I'm a Crosby-era purist when it comes to the Byrds, and I think their later albums are a massive drop-off from this one. However, each of the group's first four albums have something to offer, this in particular. Melodious, well-written and perfectly harmonized. A classic and masterpiece.
• 4 1/2 stars.: one of my three favorite byrds albums (the other two being "mr tambourine man" and "the notorious byrd brothers"), this is like a crossroads for all the byrds leanings in sound. the 12-string guitar is still present, the heavy psychedelia is in full bloom, and there are touches of country shadings. all in all, though, this is their most hippy oriented outting (the notorious byrd brothers album does give it a run for its money), with all the psychedelic trappings present, including reversed tapes and all that jazz. the songs are top notch, and the whole recording has a fresh playful quality that time has not diminished. this album is a must for all fans of 60's music, and highly recommended to all lovers of pop/folk/rock in general. the remasterd version is highly preferrable in sound to the first cd version, so buyer beware. the six bonus cuts could well have been left off. they add nothing to impact of the original 11 cuts.
• Just to make one point...: If you read anything about the song So You Want To Be A Rock and Roll Star - including here - you'll see the claim that the song is about The Monkees, usually in a dismissive tone. It is true that one of the band members has been quoted as saying that he was thinking about The Monkees at the time. However, a simple listen to the lyrics once through would tell you otherwise. The song is about the rapid rise to stardom available to ALL bands at the time. In fact, I don't see how it could be anything other than a reflection of the Byrds own experience, screaming girls and all. There's certainly nothing in the song about television shows, or not writing your own songs, or any other criticism of the Monkees. And anyway, what's wrong with The Monks? They had great songwriters and great production, along with damn good vocalists.
  While I'm at it, this is a great album. I was just a bit too young to anything more than the singles that got played on Top 40 radio, and they were gone before I started buying records. It was obviously my loss - this was a stellar band.