Maxfield Parrish - It's A Cinch To Give Legs To Old Hard-Boiled Eggs flac mp3 download

Maxfield Parrish's sole album, It's a Cinch to Give Legs to Old Hard-Boiled Eggs, is a perfect example of the direction that many West Coast rockers were taking in the late '60s, incorporating country stylings into adventurous rock songs. In this respect, It's a Cinch... falls neatly between the Grateful Dead at their rootsiest and cosmic cowboys like the New Riders of the Purple Sage. The high, lonesome melodies and lead singing and three- to four-part harmonies connect the band's inspirations and mentors, such as Jerry Garcia (who taught some members guitar) and the Beatles, to early-1900s mountain music that was so influential to all of the Californian country-rockers. However, the songs on It's a Cinch... are not nearly as explicitly country as NRPS, often owing as much to the adventurous mid-period music of the Byrds, and even Middle Eastern drones. This latter effect was probably most prominent due to the presence of the several members of Kaleidoscope who played on and produced the record. Songs like "It's Alright (I Love Her)" and "Bottle of Reds Blues" are definitely Bakersfield-heavy country-pop, but the fuzz-toned riffs of rockers like "Ellie McCall" and "'Round the Morning" might have been at home on Revolver or Aoxomoxoa. Though recorded in 1969, which places Maxfield Parrish at the forefront of the country-rock revolution (even if they were not innovators), It's a Cinch... would not be released until 1972, at which point country-rock had seen its glory days, and made the band appear to be imitators more than anything else. But this is clearly not the case -- by turns accessible ("Cross Over the World"), whimsical ("Julie Columbus"), and flat-out odd ( the gothic-psychedelic "The Untransmuted Child" was even more adventurous in its scope than some of David Crosby's most far-out experiments with the Byrds), the album showcased a band willing to take high-flying chances with its music. Barely heard upon its release, this is a fine album worth investigation, more rewarding with every listen. Initially left off the original release, "The Untransmuted Child" and "'Round the Morning" were restored to their intended places when this lost gem was given its CD reissue in 1999; also included are five solid demos from 1972, which show principal songwriters David Biasotti and David Perrin Muir recording Rolling Stones-ish, acoustic roots-rock tunes that would unfortunately not see the light of day in full band arrangements.