About Five Yards of the Eight Miles: The Byrds Live, 1970

Once in a dark long ago, it might've been The Merv Griffin Show I was watching but I distinctly remember a comedian doing a bit on the premise that all one needed to sell a magic act was a really good drummer. He then demonstrated by performing a completely inept magic routine accompanied by a drummer with monster chops (lots of cymbals). The bit was modestly amusing but for some reason I never forgot it.

In the video below The Byrds present "a little taste of Eight Miles" which here means 10 minutes of dicking around on the opening vamp, verses be damned. At this stage the band was sliding into a softer country sound so the arrangement seems a bit odd. (Country was a leave behind from the recently exited Gram Parsons.) The guitarists seem mostly indifferent and their parts sound phoned in. The trademark Rickenbaker 12-string lines are just about DOA. It's the drums and bass (mostly drums) that are left to tear the roof off the sucka. The cameramen and editors figured this out quickly as the rest of the band gets little notice including leader and last original Byrd standing Roger McGuinn. What we're left with is drummer Gene Parsons and bassist Skip Battin (formerly with Kim Fowley [!] among others) playing for their lunch money like it was The Last Supper.



The other guitarist in the video is Clarence White, a session guitarist and sideman with a deep résumé. The line-up in the video provided the band with its longest and most stable roster even as its fortunes were foundering. Distancing themselves from the psychedelia of their earlier albums and along with it the counterculture that was their audience––a point made worse by their choice to perform in apartheid South Africa at the time. Instead, they embraced country music which was about as far from counterculture as they could get. The result was their records weren't getting played and sales dropped precipitously. Their association with wildly successful Easy Rider may've helped save them from total oblivion.

"Time has nobody and nobody has Time," to paraphrase Captain Beefheart. Though time has been good to The Byrds' legacy and as it turned out the move into country proved visionary: The Byrds (with Graham Parsons) are credited with recording the first ever country-rock album, Sweethearts of the Rodeo. (The country move would also prove controversial: Reaction to their appearance at the Grand Ole Opery was received somewhere between the booing of Dylan going electric and the chair throwing of Stravinsky's debut of Rites of Spring.)

Anyway, back to my premise: Maybe it's true that the right stick man on drums can overcome even the most inept magic. The Byrds offer proof.

They're The Stooges and Not for Nothing

The term stooge implies comedy at one's own expense. The stooge is the butt of the joke. In comedic hierarchy he is the underling, the lackey. In this video capsule from 1970, the Stooge otherwise known as Iggy Pop shows himself to be the most brilliant of clowns. (Feral clown, might be the better description.) On this night he entered the stage a Stooge, but left as something else entirely.





Hallelujah! for whatever dysfunctional circumstances that came together to bring us a creature such as Iggy. Whatever else he's done in his career, for this performance alone we should all construct altars of thanksgiving in our homes. The sound, like the man himself, is raw and crude. (Primal is a descriptive often used here, primate may be a better one.) But you don't need to care one whit for the band's sound to appreciate the un-boundaried performance here. Nearly common enough to be considered banal now, it's easy to forget that once Stage diving was tactic used only by fourth wall breaking avant-gardists. Iggy may be the first to bring it out of the extreme margins and into the (small) arena. When Iggy dives here, it's more the act of a gladiator entering the death cage for his bout with the audience. The audience's response is nothing less than amazing as well (and unrepeatable, I'm sure). Watch as they lift him to stand on their hands like the laurel-crowned victor, given the rabble's blessing to go forth and slay the king. (Note that someone in the crowd offers Iggy a large jar of peanut butter (!) like a bouquet of victory flowers, to this he responds appropriately by spreading it on himself. In a stroke he becomes both hero and feast.) Like no one else Iggy breaks the boundary of the stage. This is what is meant by a Dionysian Frenzy. The actor thrown into the maw of the crowd to do with what they will: Their peanut butter-flavored fetish object. All of these antics could've easily gone completely out of control and it's Iggy's risk averse-ness that makes it so sexy; a fact of civilization that probably hasn't changed since Dionysian times. This is the stuff that Jim Morrison only dreamed about: While Morrison (whom Iggy admits as an influence) may've unzipped his pants (and was nevertheless arrested), Iggy would actually pull his out. Though many of his reported stage antics have the yellowy glow of legend (vomiting on stage, exposing himself, rolling on broken glass, striking himself with a hammer), there is enough extant photographic evidence to substantiate enough of the claims to confirm that he is indeed the genuine article.

As a recording unit, The Stooges found little success either commercially or critically. As is often the case with history-in-the-making moments, the critics were as mystified as the multitudes; it certainly wasn't for the want of a good producer (John Cale, David Bowie, and Funhouse's Don Galucci, the producer of The Louie Louie fer cryin' out loud!). As for their reputation, as this early television performance shows, the legend required no assistance from multitude or critic. As for this particular night in Cincinnati, you could say Iggy is either the model of extremely aggressive self-infatuation or the most lowly self-sabotage case study imaginable.

Whichever, I think it's an act of genius.