Sweetheart Of The Rodeo [Original recording remastered]

1. A re-remastered version of the album. Sounds good. Definitely sounds better than the wonderful-sounding 1997 issue, which took some doing. Not essential, but I was surprised. Thumbs up.
2. Remastered versions of the three Gram vocals that first appeared on the Box Set in 1990 but which weren't on the '97 reissue. From a strictly musical perspective, only "The Christian Life" is an improvement over the McGuinn-Hillman masters, and the alternate version on the '97 disc is probably the best performance of all. Thumbs ambivalent.
3. A _brand new vocal song_, credited somewhat mysteriously to Kevin Kelley, who definitely sings it, although sources (not the scanty and factually dubious liner notes) differ as to who wrote it. It's pleasant, more like "Your Gentle Ways of Loving Me" than anything on Sweetheart. It doesn't add much to the canon. Why did this tune sit on the shelf for thirty years? My guess is that Kelley himself had something to do with it being suppressed, and now that he has died Columbia went ahead with it. Too bad history was munged for so long, but it's good to have all the masters in one place, at last! Thumbs up.
4. The three ISB non-LP single tracks. The two rockier ones are good, the "Act Naturally" jive less so, and one of these four tracks is inexplicably missing. Ambivalent thumbs.
5. Three of the four Gram originals from the first ISB album. "Blue Eyes" is great, but I thought this was a Byrds reissue. Production is dreadful and why truncate a semi-classic LP by a different band on a different label? Thumbs down.
6. Lots of demos and outtakes. Nice to hear these songs coming together, but hardly anything you'd want to hear twice. Of note is an early version of "Pretty Polly" with bizarre, "contemporary" lyrics presumably by McGuinn. "Lazy Days" is still too sedate by comparison to the eventual Burritos version. Thumbs down.

Unless I can't count, that's two thumbs up, two thumbs down, and two thumbs ambivalent. That makes zero, which is good because I only have so many thumbs. In any event I'm not so sure this is worthwhile; the '97 reissue is certainly the handier package, the less cumbersome one, and though it has four regrettable blind spots (the Gram masters, "All I Have Are Memories") it more than makes up for them in listening value. But for those of you like me who can't quite own enough Byrds, this is definitely a plump and impressive-looking package. Still, those hoping they've happened upon another Preflyte Sessions - an astonishing collection that practically redeemed my summer when it was gifted to me last year - will probably be disappointed. This is neither so exhaustive nor so consistently moving.