The Byrds

If you've got more than a passing interest in guitar-fronted pop music, then you probably know this record inside and out. The crunchy lead on "Have You Seen Her Face" would be enough of a reason to love this album, but it's also got "My Back Pages," "Time Between" and "So You Want To Be A Rock N' Roll Star?"

The Byrds' Greatest Hits, a profit-taking retrospective from later in the year, sounds like a triumph of produced and programmed rock and roll, while The Notorious Byrd Brothers and Sweetheart of the Rodeo, which followed it in '68, are two of the most convincing arguments for artistic freedom ever to come out of American rock. But this April '67 failure suffers from two related '67 maladies: pretentiousness and self-expression. David Crosby's "Mind Garden" is a completely unlistenable acid meander, while four (three too many) innocuous folk-rock cum countryrock tunes by Chris Hillman are a familiar-sounding example of how an uninteresting self does its number. Never before did concept-master Roger (né Jim) McGuinn efface himself so disastrously on a Byrds album--and never after, either. (Grade - B-)