1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die: 140. The Flying Burrito Brothers – The Gilded Palace of Sin (1969)

 

Gram Parsons returns with his continuing quest to update country music, having fallen out with The Byrds because they were touring South Africa. Boo! Apartheid enablers! Parsons may not have played Sun City, but he did play a track called Sin City on this album (see what I did there?).

Some of this album is fairly traditional – steel guitars twang and slide over waltz-time tunes about losing one’s girl and finding one’s religion (e.g. Juanita), there are other elements mixed in. Parsons covers soul classic Do Right Woman in a country style. The track Hot Burrito #1 sounds from the title like it ought to be a funky instrumental, in fact it’s more country rock in a clear evolutionary step towards the sound that The Eagles will give us. Meanwhile Hot Burrito #2 is more R&B influenced and sounds like something Carole King would have written.

Of the more country-sounding songs, I liked Wheels, which is again a little Eagles-esque, and the final track Hippie Boy, which is a little like a gospel sermon about an encounter with the evidently more conservative narrator finding common ground with a hippy over the brevity of life, as exemplified by the death of the hippy’s friend in the Democratic National Convention Riots of 1968. 

In case you’re not aware of this incident, during the DNC President Lyndon B Johnson was not running for re-election and it his successor was being selected (hmm, that sounds familiar...). Tensions were high because of the assassination of Martin Luther King and various race riots, and there were protests to lower the voting age – soldiers could be drafted into the Vietnam War at 18, but couldn’t vote until they were 21. So there was a lot from the populace to be angry about (hmm, that sounds familiar...) and the Chicago Police Department employed very heavy-handed methods to break up the protests and the whole thing descended into chaos, with the unfortunate side-effect of turning public opinion against the anti-war movement and propelling Nixon to the presidency. Hmm. That sounds familiar....