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Roger McGuinn. McGuinn co-founded the group with Gene Clark and was its nominal leader. If you disassemble the complex tapestry of the Byrds' sound into its molecular underpinnings, McGuinn's distinctive voice and unique twelve-string Rickenbacker guitar are the nucleus. Lead guitarist McGuinn's unique style simultaneously employs a flat pick and fingerpicking patterns, drawing

more from five-string banjo rolls than typical guitar scales. When this unusual picking pattern is done on an electric twelve-string Rickenbacker guitar, the resulting sound is a brilliant cascade of harmonic intervals and gleaming overtones. McGuinn also sang lead on many of the group's songs, including all of their Dylan interpretations.

This interview was conducted by New York Musician Magazine's Bill Taylor, and originally run there. We reprint it thanks to
the kindness or Mr. Taylor and his publication. Thanks also to Don Grossinger for gettting it for Musicangle.com.

BT: What was your participation on the project?

DG: I did all of the vinyl mastering and some of the QC work to make sure the test pressings were up to par.

BT: How did you get the project? I was recommended by Bob Ludwig who had mastered the CD for the project and Joe Gastwirt who had worked on many Beach Boys projects with Mark Linett. Bob didn't do it himself because he no longer has a lathe. This is the second project he's sent to me. He sent the Rolling Stones' remastering for vinyl work, the new SACD masters, to me as well.

BT: Did you do the whole Brian Wilson album or just a few selected cuts?

DG: It was more than the whole album, actually. The whole CD consists of three suites which are 47 minutes long in total. Each of the sections took one side of the album. The fourth side, which I EQ'd and mastered from scratch, consisted of bonus tracks. These were 4 instrumentals of some of the songs that were on the album as vocals. These tracks will only be on the vinyl release, not the CD.

The Tracking Angle Interview: David Crosby

TA: Let's begin with If I Could Only Remember My Name , your first solo album. It won some awards for sound quality. You once were quoted as saying the engineer Steve Barncord did a really good job. Do you think that a record like that could be made and released today?

DC: Probably not. Things have changed in the field. It's not as loose as it was then. Nowadays, if it isn't a clone of whatever's at the top of the charts, it's very hard to get anybody to pay any attention to it at all. We (CSN&Y) had just gotten through doing Déjà vu, you know? And I had more stuff and I was just having fun in the studio. It was the only place that I was really happy right then. That was not long after that girl had gotten killed that was my old lady, and so the studio was my refuge. I would hang out there and all my friends that were loose on any given night would wind up there. It was very self-indulgent, but we had no push, there was no pressure so we could do anything that I could think of. That's not true these days. Nowadays, the prices are so huge and the game is so distorted that winning is what matters and MTV has changed it to where theatrical acts win more than musical acts. Smoke bombs and costumes, you know, how much rage you can seem to express and anything to cut through the fog. It has very little to do with music. But that was a very musical album. I think if it came out now, it would fail.

THE KINKS
Muswell Hillbillies

Produced by Raymond Douglas Davies

Engineered by Mike Bobak

Compilation engineered by Mike Konopka at Toy Specialists

Mastered by Bob Ludwig at Gateway Mastering

Konk/Velvel 63467-79719-2 (HDCD)

Music: 10

Sound: 9

Having gotten the madness and betrayal of the music business at least partly out of his system on Lola Versus Powerman and the Moneygoround, The Kinks' final Pye/Reprise release, Ray Davies returned to what he'd begun back in 1968 on The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society, the group's most beloved, though far from best-selling, album. Steeped in nostalgia for a Britain that was rapidly disappearing, ...Village Green looked back at an idealized past that may never have existed, but which Davies wanted to preserve - at least in song.

By Armegeddon (however the Evangelical wet-dream is spelled) this article will be TOTALLY updated!

157 In-Print LPs You Should Own! Soon to be Updated.....Yea, sure. That's what you've been saying for more than a year....(sorry but soon, really!)

Okay, that's a ridiculous headline. It's the kind of cynical ploy you see on magazine covers to attract attention. These are really 157 LPs I do own, some of which you probably will enjoy and should own, and some of which you will probably hate. No doubt you already own some.

Back in 1977 while shopping for Sun Ra records in my favorite Philly store, I discovered this bizarre-looking album.  The cover featured the artist, Gary Wilson, posing in an early-'60s mod suit and funny sunglasses, in what turned out to be his parents' basement.  The back jacket was another basement shot of Wilson, this time in his underwear, lying amidst a tangle of recording tape, wires and covered with baking flour.  There were also song titles and the artist's address in upstate New York, but nothing else.

I had to buy it.