The Byrds Greatest Hits (1967/Super Audio Compact Disc/SACD/SA-CD Stereo
Version/Columbia Records)
DSD 2.0
Stereo Sound: B Music: B
One of
the first Folk-Rock groups, The Byrds made several Bob Dylan songs famous, had
a great run of hits from 1965 – 1967 and kept Columbia Records in the Rock
Music game. Originally consisting of
Roger McGuinn, David Crosby, Gene Clark, Chris Hillman and Mike Clarke, the
band’s original output is nicely captured in the album The Byrds Greatest Hits, a hit itself, issued on Super Audio
Compact Disc in Sony’s great audiophile format with their advanced DSD (Direct
Stream Digital) sound format that will only play on SA-CD (aka SACD) players
and even Playstation 3 machines.
The songs
here include:
1)
Mr. Tambourine Man
2)
I’ll Feel A Whole Lot Better
3)
The Bells Of Rhymney
4)
Turn! Turn! Turn! (To Everything
There Is A Season)
5)
All I Really Want To Do
6)
Chimes Of Freedom
7)
Eight Miles High
8)
Mr. Spaceman
9)
5D (Fifth Dimension)
10) So You Want To Be A Rock ‘N’
Roll Star
11) My Back Pages
BONUS TRACKS
12) It Won’t Be Wrong
13) Set You Free This Time
14) Have You Seen Her Face
At their
worse, they did some covers that were easily dismissed (tracks 5 and 10) and
they had some great hits (1 and 4 are #1 singles that get licensed to death, as
if that would keep the counterculture dead or something) and at their best,
they made some distinctive singles.
Dylan wrote tracks 1, 5 and 11.
These are
all stereo mixes, though some purists might not be happy with some of the older
songs in that respect. Either ways, the
best song here also happens to be the best sounding ands shows a direction the
band could have gone into sonically if they had not broken up. Often written off as just another psychedelic
drug song, it is a more layered, complex production than it gets credit for and
shows a maturing of the band beyond being a singles act.
Though
they broke up and reformed a few more times, they never matched this work
again.
Today,
they are popular enough that their titles stay in print and if you are
interested in The Byrds beyond a hits set, Mobile Fidelity Sound Labs have
issued several of their albums in the SACD format, so you might want to check
out those releases too.
- Nicholas Sheffo
