Gram Parsons & The Flying Burrito Brothers – Archives Volume One: Live At The Avalon Ballroom 1969

Columbia Records boss Walter Yetnikoff once struggled to explain to Leonard Cohen the label’s problem with the singer: “We know you’re great…but we don’t know if you’re any good.” We may ask ourselves the same about Gram Parsons: At this point, it’s well established that Gram was great, but was he any good?

It’s now axiomatic to say that Parsons’ greatness was misunderstood and undervalued in his lifetime, that anyone who couldn’t gauge his value back then was an idiot. There’s consensus for his greatness, even if the evidence of his “goodness” is more tentative. By good, I mean did he possess those requisite practical characteristics that many artists need to achieve? Was he the kind of guy who could reliably deliver onstage and win over an otherwise disinterested audience?

Apart from the fading memories of his contemporaries and fans and a brace of muzzy-sounding bootlegs, concrete evidence is scant. Into this vacuum comes this release, a soundboard tape of two sets which has languished in the Grateful Dead’s archive. It’s a mixed affair that will not resolve the questions about Parsons’ reputation.

The opening set suffers from a few wayward harmonies and the soundman’s inability to fade down Chris Ethridge’s bass and fade up Pete Kleinow’s steel. Parsons isn’t much of a compere — his stoned-sounding stage asides don’t grab the crowd, and it’s humbling to hear early performances of sublime Burrito numbers such as “Sin City” and “Hot Burrito #1” greeted with polite applause rather than rapture.

By set two, the audio balance is better, the band is on more assured footing for nuggets such as Mel Tillis’ “Mental Revenge”, and a chugging cover of Roy Orbison’s “Dream Baby (How Long Must I Dream)” earns an encore. It swiftly goes from triumph to pathos with a flaccid reading of Dan Penn/Chips Moman’s “Do Right Woman”; they should have stopped while they were ahead.

Also include are two home demo tracks, and even this is a split decision — an aching 1969 piano rendering of “$1000 Wedding” with a vocal that is not so much sung as sobbed, and a 1967 crack at the Everly Brothers’ “When Will I Be Loved” that recalls the scene from Spinal Tap in which the band attempts an a cappella “Heartbreak Hotel”.