The Gilded Palace Of Sin

This record is the result of an ill-advised experiment between four men and their insatiable lust for having sex with burritos. It burnt each of their dicks off, Peter. For Christ's sake, their handsome penises are ruined. In tatters. They can still fly though. But what use is flying if your burnt, limp cock is hanging on by a thread?

We have both types of Music here, Country and Western !

Nah mate, I'm a taco man and generally I prefer my Mexican food not to be airborne.

Band choose After three listens, I still wasn't feeling like any of it had drawn me in, or that I was able to distinguish any key tracks/moments. I expected an album called "The Gilded Palace of Sin" by "The Flying Burrito Brothers" to be daring, bold, eclectic. It may have been all of those things at the time for country fans and rockers, bringing the genres together in a new and radical way at the end of the 60s. But it doesn't feel any more special than the other albums already attempting this: Neil Young's early output, Dylan's Nashville Skyline, the Band, even the Byrds' own "Sweetheart of the Rodeo" before Parsons and Hillman broke away to set up the Burrito Brothers. The album feels very of its time to me, and seems more like they were following a trend than making a bold move against the grain. Some reviews (and Wikipedia) seem to herald the album as an exciting crossover between country and 60's rock/soul/psych, which could have been amazing. But to my ears, country is by far the strongest flavour, from the lap steel guitars to the incessant piano trills, simple two part harmonies, four chord strum-a-longs, and generic lyrics. A couple of soul covers thrown in don't do a great deal to change this. And the songs are... okay. "Christine's Tune" gets things going at a decent pace, the two "Burrito" tracks have decent melodies and chord progressions. None of it is offensive or head-turning... but that's part of the problem, it just doesn't leap out of the speakers. It's also supposedly significant for spurring on 70s country-rock bands like the Eagles... I'm dreading them coming up on here.

I have no words to describe how bad this is. I only have questions about how such an obscure and unsuccessful album can make this list. A generous 1 star.

I expected and hoped for something more ridiculous from “The Flying Burrito Brothers” Instead I got relatively straight forward dusty trail music. Not my cup of tea, but it’s decent. Wheels I think I liked best.

A beautiful slow burn. Everything I love about the Eagles but with way more substance. Gram Parsons was an interesting character by all accounts.

The progenitors of country-rock/cosmic American music create one of the greatest albums of all time and Gram Parsons cements himself as one of my favorite songwriters and arrangers. 9.7/10 Best Tracks: "Christine's Tune" "Sin City" "Dark End of the Street" "Wheels" "Hot Burrito #1" "Hot Burrito #2"

It gradually got worse

This is more country than rock for me: not my cup of joe. And the band name is just embarrassing. Sorry to be in a bad mood with a headache while listening - if I felt better, I might be a bit more generous with my rating.

The sixties were a time of experimentation in music - The Beatles turning from boy band to studio wizards, Jimi Hendrix doing things on the guitar that defied logic etc. And then there is The Flying Burrito Brothers, producing an album of stupidly simple country ditties devoid of any spark of innovation. I hated every twang and slide.

What if the Louvin Brothers dropped acid?

Yes, this is it! Hippies playing Country! What could go right? Who would listen to these freaks and their fucked up lyrics? Nothing like stumbling into a new genre. They may not have been the best, but they were the first. God Bless The Flying Burrito Brothers!

So very good. Great covers along with some stellar originals that live on.

I reaaaaally liked this

This was a fantastic surprise of an album, from a band I had never heard of before! These guys are not well known, but they're quite good at what they do, which I would say at the time would have been alt-country. This album took country music and infused it with rock, folk rock, gospel, soul, psychedelia, and more. At the time, that was virtually unheard of. Furthermore, I would go as far as to say that this album is extremely influential to music moving forward, due to the time that it came out and the genres it intersected. First, the country side of things. Country was incredibly stagnant during the 60s. Going into the 70s and into the 80s, country music would hugely benefit from a revitalization as the mainstream bands in the genre began to incorporate these same genres and sounds found on this album into their country music. These country artists were no doubt inspired by this album. It's wild to think that The Flying Burrito Brothers, an obscure band that never experienced much commercial success, could change the trajectory of an entire genre for decades to come. And similarly, I can see where rock artists were also likely influenced by the sounds here, as the 1970s gave rise to a large amount of folk rock artists and groups. This album possesses the blueprint for that type of music, as well. Honestly, a lot of alt-country, indie folk, and other musical acts of today have styles that sound similar to this album. They were no doubt ALSO inspired by this album. The unlikely fusion of country with so many other genres birthed a musical revolution. And these fairly unknown gents had the foresight to see that those genres could successfully exist and thrive together during a time when these genres were all existing wildly apart from each other. Probably a 3.5 for me, but I feel justified in bumping it up to a 4 for the creativity and influence shown here.

Fer fex sake, this is pure country, I don't care what you claim it is. A Hammond or electric guitar is not going to change any of that. It's also not something I have zero interest in.

I love the name of this band, The Flying Burrito Brothers, and their debut The Gilded Palace of Sin is a pretty incredible album as it was a big influence on rock and country music in the 70’s and beyond. The FBB was formed by Gram Parsons and Chris Hillman. Both were former members of The Byrds, another influential band in the same kind of genre, though the Byrds leaned more toward pop music than the FBB. Parsons was more the mastermind of the debut album. He wanted to bring the Bakersfield sound, made famous by country legend Buck Owens, into the psychedelic 60’s. At the time, I imagine when people heard the record, they either loved it or just didn’t quite get it, as it was not a commercial success. For someone today listening to the album, there really isn’t much groundbreaking stuff because you’ve heard the Eagles and other countryfied rock bands, including the outlaw country music of Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson. I guess the key to the FBB’s sound is the steel guitar playing of Sneaky Pete Kleinow. His playing “provides an almost continuous commentary throughout some of the songs,” according to Wikipedia. Sneaky Pete also supposedly built a fuzz box for his steel guitar and in the song Wheels I couldn’t figure out this sound I was hearing. It sounded like trombones playing one long note and then I thought maybe they found a ship’s horn to put on the song. Turns out it was Sneaky Pete on the steel guitar with the fuzz box. The album is chock full of great country songs that combine folk, rock, psychedelic and gospel music. It’s a great album and I know why it’s included in the 1,001 Records You Must Hear book. It’s both a great musical experience and it’s a historic record that influenced and changed music in the era. This formation of the band broke up after their second album and Gram Parsons got into the rock star life and was dead of a drug overdose right before his 24th birthday. I think just about everyone can enjoy this album, not just musically, but for how you can hear how they influenced others.

bless up

#120/1001 🇺🇸🌯 A strong country sound which seems to be influenced by the Louvin Brothers - who i reviewed here about 100 albums ago - fusing this with a more soulful feel. There are 2 soul classics on side 1. You can really hear the influence of the band in many of the later alt-country bands and i became aware of them through a cover of Hot Burrito #1 by Belly back in the 90s. Best Tracks: Sin City, Hot Burrito #1,

"Hey guys! I've got this great idea! Just imagine - country music, right ... but played by guys that take drugs!" Hank Williams - "Say what?" Good tunes though.

They got the country rock recipe just right on this, an enticing mix of tongue-in-cheek (?) social commentary, contemporary R&B covers and delicious Mexican food in plaintive close harmony. Gram Parsons was a bit of a visionary on this evidence.

Definitely a different time… but I do love a draft dodging song. This album took me through a whole range of emotions in a nice, short package. There were some songs I liked the sound of and some that I liked the lyrics of. My Uncle is also joining regular rotation. Season: Late Summer Favorite Song: My Uncle Runner Up: Dark End Of The Street

This has a California drug-fueled country rock vibe.

This album would go crazy if I was eating at Cracker Barrel

meh. I'm an anxious mess today. inoffensive enough.

Thought The Gilded Palace of Sin might be a little more risque than what it ended up being. What it was, was a perfectly average Country Rock album that helped bridge the gap of the old style Country into what we now know country as. Best: Sin City Worst: Do You Know How It Feels 2.5 Stars

I fancy some country-folk stuff but these burritos are far too fatty for my taste. Just boring and I can't figure out why this album is on list 1001 list.

Moronic and simplistic lyrics and boring tunes.

Terribly boring in that it was the same song over and over.

Gram Parsons’ Nudie suit may be the perfect visual explanation of _The Gilded Palace of Sin_. At first glance it is exactly the right garment: immaculate Western tailoring, recognisably part of the country tradition, correct in cut and construction. Then you notice the marijuana leaves, pills and naked women embroidered into it. Superficially the clothes are right. They are also very wrong. That contradiction runs through the album. What Parsons and the Flying Burrito Brothers seem to be doing is not escaping country music, nor simply adding rock instrumentation to it, but testing how much country can contain. The forms are often remarkably traditional: close harmony, pedal steel, waltzes, heartbreak songs, spoken morality tales, hymnal cadences. What gets placed inside those forms belongs to a much murkier late-60s world of draft resistance, drugs, sexual ambiguity, motorcycles, damaged relationships, psychedelia and Californian counterculture. The sentiments are rock. The treatment is country. I did not understand that immediately. “Christine’s Tune” initially sounded almost like a slightly lower-key Buck Owens record: economical, tidy, recognisably country. Then Sneaky Pete Kleinow’s fuzzed pedal steel appeared and seemed to belong to another song entirely. It was not simply an unusual solo or a rock effect pasted over a country arrangement. For a few seconds it changed the perceptual conditions of the record. The song carried on behaving normally, but the room around it altered. My first thought was that somebody had slipped the session some mescaline. That fuzzed steel keeps returning, particularly effectively on “Wheels”, where it becomes almost spooky. I started thinking of it as a clockmelter. The pedal steel already has the ability to bend pitch and suspend notes in a way few instruments can; put it through fuzz and suddenly it seems capable of softening the edges of time itself. The song does not become psychedelic in any conventional stylistic sense. It simply starts hallucinating. That distinction matters. Psychedelia here is not a checklist of Mellotron, backwards tape and studio trickery. It is a change in perception. Familiar objects begin behaving strangely. The same slightly displaced quality appears elsewhere without fuzz. On “Sin City” the vocals sit strangely forward while everything around them seems drenched in space. The singers are close enough to touch while the room behind them feels enormous. The keys also sound faintly wrong for orthodox Nashville, woozy enough that I found myself unexpectedly thinking of Father John Misty’s _I Love You, Honeybear_: familiar American forms rendered just theatrical and unstable enough to become uncanny. Gradually I realised that this feeling of displacement was not incidental. Traditional country meets taintedness. The forms may be clean, but the world inhabiting them is not. “My Uncle” makes the cultural collision particularly explicit. It is a fantastic, economical little country song about avoiding the draft. Nothing in the musical grammar sounds especially rebellious. The rebellion is in what the grammar has been asked to say. Again, it is the Nudie suit: absolutely correct construction, entirely incorrect message. That appears to be central to Parsons’ idea of Cosmic American Music. Before hearing this album, the phrase could easily sound like the sort of grand theory musicians devise after several joints and an excessively long conversation. Here it becomes audible. Parsons does not seem to believe country, soul, rock, gospel and psychedelia need to be merged into a tasteful new genre. He seems more interested in discovering what happens when they occupy the same room while retaining their identities. The two soul covers are essential to that. “Do Right Woman” may be the most outrageous experiment on the album. The Burritos take a sexually assertive song written from a woman’s point of view and perform it in immaculate male country harmony, with David Crosby floating around the upper reaches. The effect caught me completely off guard. I kept thinking of the scene in _Anchorman_ where the men suddenly, and for no obvious reason, burst into beautifully arranged “Afternoon Delight”. I felt comically mugged. Yet calling it a joke is clearly inadequate. The performance is affectionate, musically serious and genuinely committed. They are not standing outside the song laughing at it. They are taking a proper tilt at it. The humour comes from the sheer audacity of the experiment: can this female-voiced Memphis soul song be transplanted into this very male country setting and survive? It does. That was an important distinction. They are not joking about the song. They are enjoying the outrageousness of the experiment. “The Dark End of the Street” is more elusive. Its world of secrecy, forbidden love and people who cannot acknowledge each other in daylight inevitably carries broader American cultural associations. I found myself thinking of interracial couples and the enormous historical taboo surrounding those relationships. But the Burritos’ treatment feels complicated and knowing enough that forcing the song into a single interpretation would diminish it. One of the pleasures of this album is that it repeatedly invites explanation and then retains some murk. “Juanita” does something similar through form. It is a country waltz, one of the most reassuringly traditional structures imaginable, yet everything inside it seems hazy and unstable. Drugs, emotional confusion, memory and dependence gather around a melody whose three-beat sway ought to make things feel settled. Instead the floor is level while the room tilts. Then the album suddenly becomes painfully direct. “Hot Burrito #1” stopped me because halfway through I realised that I knew it. Elvis Costello recorded it as “I’m Your Toy” on _Almost Blue_, an album I have considerable affection for, so the recognition arrived backwards: not “here is a famous Gram Parsons song”, but “Christ, this is that Costello song”. Hearing Parsons’ original changed it. The lyric is extraordinarily frank about dependence and humiliation. There is very little masculine self-protection: no retreat into anger, stoicism or swagger. You have hurt me, I know I have been replaced, and I still want you. Parsons’ vocal is fragile enough to make that confession sound as though it still costs him something to say it. He does not perform heartbreak from a safe distance. The voice sounds as if it might actually fail under the weight of the admission. It is beautiful precisely because there is so little armour. “Hot Burrito #2” then turns the larger musical argument into something almost impossible to miss. Country instrumentation and harmony, soul-level emotional exposure and disruptive rock texture all inhabit the same song. None is reduced to flavouring. Nothing has been smoothed into generic Americana. The elements remain sufficiently distinct to rub against one another, and that friction becomes the sound. That, for me, was Exhibit A for Cosmic American Music. The record had begun as an intriguing collection of apparent incongruities. By this point those incongruities had started explaining themselves. Even “Wheels”, with its motorbike imagery, fits. It approaches the motorcycle not simply as machinery but as freedom, escape and something close to transcendence. The fuzzed steel suddenly seems less like psychedelic decoration and more like the machine itself invading the hymn. Again, something rooted in the counterculture has entered an orthodox country form without requiring the form to surrender. The closing “Hippie Boy” makes Parsons’ larger ambition almost explicit. Spoken-word country pieces often mimic the sermon. They present an exemplary story, deploy the narrator’s moral authority and move towards some lesson about drink, death, family, faith or proper behaviour. My own association with that tradition is Ferlin Husky’s spectacularly tasteless “The Drunken Driver”, the sort of record in which catastrophe is piled upon catastrophe until the listener is bludgeoned into moral improvement. “Hippie Boy” borrows that machinery and puts something very different inside it. The country sermon becomes a parable about the counterculture and straight America attempting to recognise each other as human beings. Suddenly the two elements of Parsons’ music are not merely being fused; they are talking to one another. That clarified something I had been circling throughout the album. Parsons seems to want to use country as a bridge. He is not treating the tradition as something embarrassing that needs modernising, nor as a costume to be worn ironically. He appears to value country precisely because its familiar forms can carry unfamiliar material. The medium itself becomes a way of speaking across a cultural division. It would be too simple to turn this into the story of Parsons the visionary surrounded by disciples. The Burritos were a band, and the personalities inside it clearly mattered. Sneaky Pete’s extraordinary approach to pedal steel is not some abstract manifestation of Parsons’ philosophy; it is the work of a specific musician doing peculiar and inventive things. Chris Hillman’s musical pragmatism and deep grounding in the material are equally important. Parsons may have supplied the spangly-eyed idealism, but the album succeeds because other people gave that idealism form, discipline and resistance. Still, the idealism matters. At the very end of “Hippie Boy”, the record resolves into “Peace in the Valley”. For a moment, the old country hymn and the countercultural dream become the same thing. That ending retrospectively altered the whole album for me. _The Gilded Palace of Sin_ contains draft dodging, drugs, broken relationships, cultural hostility, emotional humiliation and periodic disturbances in musical reality. It knows the world is fractured. Its answer is not to pretend those fractures disappear. Instead, for a few seconds, Parsons seems to imagine that music might allow the pieces to coexist. For a moment, he sees a better world. I began the album puzzled. The fuzzed steel seemed to interrupt otherwise conventional country songs. The soul covers seemed simultaneously serious and hilarious. The songs kept wearing traditional forms while carrying culturally inappropriate contents. By the end I realised that none of those things needed explaining away. They were the explanation. Cosmic American Music turns out not to be a smooth fusion of styles but an argument that these apparently separate traditions already belong to one another, and that country might be broad enough to carry all of them. The album does not resolve every tension it creates, and I am glad it does not. The tensions are where its life is. More importantly, having reached the end, I wanted to hear it again. The oddness that initially kept me at a slight distance had become the thing drawing me back. _The Gilded Palace of Sin_ did something I particularly value in an album: it puzzled me, then gradually taught me how to hear it.

For someone who discovered Hank Williams’ music as a young man, this is amazing. Gram Parsons mirrored Hank’s life too closely: getting addicted to drugs and alcohol at a young age, producing a great body of work in a short time frame, then tragically losing the battle with the addiction at too young an age. The music he left behind was revolutionary and influential, even if many others on this project failed to understand it. 4.5 stars

Hippies pretending to be cowboys and fucking around and establishing the country rock americana style that's been a recurring staple, re-iterating itself every decade or so, re-articulating with new sounds in rock. This is a great synthesis of classic country styles (the close harmonies, twangy outlaw guitars, gentle schmaltz, heavenly slides) with the jangly dreamy pop and fuzzy psych of the 60s. It's warm, nostalgic, easy going stuff.

My introduction to country rock that eased my tase into a full-blown bluegrass obsession. Its border line of all the genres but I crashed through the rock-only 60s to really push pop rock into the country hues. I just read Pamela De Barres “I’m With The Band.” She was a complete Burrito devotee. Mostly for Chris Hillman, but Gram too. It shed a little more light on the complicated Parsons. We gave these people more leeway to be kids longer and got great art as a result. Sometimes creative trust fund kids can do it. The southern soul roots are there with some great cover picks and instruments take it further than the Byrds were willing to fly. I’m a sucker, but give me some hot burrito any day.

I would fly with these Burrito Bros any time. I love Gram Parsons just like everyone who’s not wrong, but hadn’t had my frequency turned right to catch this one before and am glad I did!

gram parsons' just-barely-posthumous masterpiece Grievous Angel is a top 3, likely top 2 country record for me, so this has been on my slate for a bit. difficult to compare to a record i know much more intimately but i like how band-oriented it feels in comparison...where grievous angel's most important non-parsons talent is emmylou harris, the whole of the flying burrito brothers make pretty significant contributions to how this record feels...surprisingly intricate but always as earthy as they need to be, with a lot of cool arrangement ideas as to be expected from parsons' iconoclastic tastes. honestly this does feel a lot more Rock oriented than anything else (which is why rym is allowed to like it) but that was more of a dealbreaker on release than it is now. wonderful performances of wonderful material...cant wait to get more familiar with this one!!!

THE great Country Rock album, or Cosmic American Music as Gram Parsons called it. Gram and Chris Hillman had recently left the Byrds, where they had recorded Sweethearts of the Rodeo, and they delivered an album to beat that. The music is excellent, the country very traditional but with rock/soul influences. The lyrics deal with (then) contemporary issues - excess (“Sin City”), Vietnam (“My Uncle”). The covers are excellent with “Do Right Woman” rivalling Aretha's version and “Dark End of the Street”, James Carr's (although perhaps not Clarence Carters' weird and wonderful “Making Love”).. And then we have “Hot Burrito #1” + #2 the first being possibly the Best song Gram Parsons ever did. A fantastic album.

Love the harmonies, love the Gram Parsons songs, could (& did!) listen on repeat over & over

Day726 - there are some albums on this list where i don’t necessarily love all the songs but i love the sound and on this one i think gram parsons and chris hillman are amazing.

A great blend of country and light rock music. I can see this album, and the band behind it, influenced later talents such as the Eagles and Poco. I want it in my library.

Groundbreaking and primo country rock.

Jättebra! Christines tune och Dark end of the street gillade jag mest, men gillade egentligen hela albumet. Gram Parsons är ju något av en legend numera?! Coolt oavsett.

I enjoyed this - like a more country-fied CSNY. 4/5

Little slow, but I liked the guitar and piano

Very enjoyable cool country vibes. Doesn't really fit the name.

can imagine enjoying it on a long roadtrip through az

Very relaxing. I love the steel guitar on this record

I own this album and rarely play it in full, but Hot Burritos #1 and #2, and their cover of Dark End of Street have been in regular rotation for the past 25 years. Basically, The Gilded Palace of Sin is patchy, but when it’s good, it’s incredible.

When I saw this was another late 60’s folk rock album I was a little disappointed because I didn’t think I was in the mood. However from the start this felt like quite a fun album and I ended up really enjoying. The mix although strange was great and I love high notes on bass and it was super prominent in the mix. Although there were points it felt a little bland I would focus more on the calm instrumental and it would make up for the poorer songwriting. Only other real negative was the ending, great albums need a well written ending and it is a shame this didn’t have that but still didn’t completely kill it. Going to give it a generous 4/5 because it was a great first listen. Stand Out Songs: Christine’s Tunes My Uncle Hot Burrito #1

Exceptional blend of psychedelic and country, with heaping portions of expertly played and often fuzzed out steel guitar.

I'm not usually a fan of country and western, but the Gram Parsons and the Burrito Brothers had a different approach to the genre. While the music has styling of folk and country, they also fused in elements of gospel, soul and rock. The results are heard on this album and were influential to the country-rock genre and alt-country rock bands from the late 80's and 90's. They owe a lot of their influence from this record. Gram Parson proved in his short tragic career that quality over quantity was more important and Gilded Palace is a good starting point when examining Parson's career.

Great fun album. Reminds me of Cake and PUSA that I listened to growing up. Cool tunes and offbeat lyrics.

Seminal...

I had zero expectations for this record and was really pleasantly surprised. I'll come back to this one.

Cool country rock vibes. Best song is the last one Hippie Boy. High 3.5

The steel guitar is the best part of the album, and though I enjoyed the vocals, I was reminded me how great Gram Parsons and Emmylou Harris sounded together.

The slide-guitar and jangle luxury of the music is drinkable; the callow vocals are at odds with the material, a 16-year old trying to tell you life truths in a Nashville bar as the locals bury their heads in their mugs.

This was good. Not fussy. Standard country folksy rock tunes. I’d buy it and add to the collection but wouldn’t go out of my way.

First time listening - Sort of southwest country rock - hold school. pretty good. However, most of the songs sound similar... with the steel guitar twang and weepy lyrics.

If The Beatles, "Baby's In Black" was a whole album. Everything is played and performed well, just is very slow. Overall, mid album.

Not my thing at all but I can hear it's very well executed and I can see how the different styles meld together very pleasantly. I do like it but from a distance.

Genre: Country Rock 3/5 Gram Parsons, one of the founding members of The Flying Burrito Bros, is the man who is credited with being one of the first artists to truly push the envelope of country music. He, along with band member Chris Hillman, took country music to a much more rockin' place, generally speaking. They never received the commercial success contemoprarily, but posthumously, Parsons is lauded by artists and critics alike. While I thoroughly enjoyed The Byrds album that Parsons was a part of, released just a bit before this album was, Sweetheart of the Rodeo, this album almost plays like you'd expect an old country album to play like. There are some new ideas here, heavier usage of steel guitars being the main and most prominent one, but it sounds too much like its influences rather than sounding like something brand new. Enjoyable, but not groundbreaking or breathtaking.

Pretty gloomy and not a lot of variation. 5/10

Can't say I needed this. 2.3.

Kinda boring for a band called flying burrito brothers, kinda boring so an album called the gilded palace of sin

interesting how a "Country rock" album that starts with 2 songs that can be resumed in "woman, am i right?" has a song of draft dodging it's like the worst parts of country and rock merged: monotone songs from the point of view of a conservative man with a twinge of rock sounds and distortion, and mentions to drugs or a little antiwar. it's this type of albums that makes me question the validity of this book. ¿Why was this album so important to include it in? The monotone sound? the sexist and typical lyrics? the name of the fucking band? Even Hippie Boy, that is somewhat of a narrative and more competitive song, feels bafflingly dull compared to something from Johnny Cash. Now, that's a good country artist that can sing songs from the point of view of a man an touch themes of drugs, rebellion, redemption, etc

I take these guys are rivals to the flying spagetti monster church

S ovakvim imenom su morali zvučati potpuno drugačije. Ima goreg countrya.

Underwhelmed my underground expectations, the textbook definition of "hodge-podge."

I just can't stand country.

A good time was had by all. 9 keepers in 11 (81%). Math says 5 stars. Liminal, to be sure. Will review upon higher n.

A classic, and arguably the first "country rock" album. Awesome!

i've said in a previous review that an album seemed as though it was made in a lab to appeal to me, and it just fell flat and didn't at all.  today i have had the exact opposite experience.  i have up until now avoided some of the byrds' stuff and anything that the flying burrito brothers did because i assumed that when people talked about them making great country music, it was akin to when people call the eagles (*spit*) country rock.  but no.  all this time i could have been listening to gram parsons and chris hillman making updated (at the time) versions of a kind of country music i like a lot (the bakersfield sound) in the most respectful way possible, including some of the best steel guitar work i've heard outside of buck owens' band.  a steel guitar that is tuned lower than most and sometimes put through a fuzzbox from what i can tell.  beautiful harmonies and not a tongue in any cheek to be found, these guys genuinely love this music even though they probably didn't grow up with it.  i can probably live without "hippie boy," the last track.  it's a little hokey in the way stuff from 1969 can be.  nevertheless, this is a 5/5 for me and went into my music library and now i have to go listen to a bunch of other stuff

lurv :3

# The Flying Burrito Brothers - *The Gilded Palace of Sin* (1969): An In-Depth Review ## Introduction and Historical Context Released in February 1969, *The Gilded Palace of Sin* was the debut album by The Flying Burrito Brothers, formed by Gram Parsons and Chris Hillman after both had left The Byrds . The album emerged at a fascinating cultural crossroads—the Summer of Love had faded, psychedelia was waning, and American roots music was experiencing a renaissance . Recorded at A&M Studios in Hollywood over November and December 1968, the album was produced by Henry Lewy and Larry Marks . Parsons had already laid the groundwork for country-rock with the Byrds' *Sweetheart of the Rodeo* (1968), but *The Gilded Palace of Sin* represented the full flowering of his vision for what he called "Cosmic American Music"—a fusion of country, R&B, gospel, soul, and rock . While commercially unsuccessful at the time (peaking at #164 on the Billboard 200), the album has since become recognized as one of the most influential records in American music history, ranked #192 on *Rolling Stone*'s 500 Greatest Albums of All Time . The classic lineup featured: - **Gram Parsons** – vocals, guitar - **Chris Hillman** – vocals, guitar - **"Sneaky" Pete Kleinow** – pedal steel guitar (also an animator for *Gumby*) - **Chris Ethridge** – bass - Various session drummers (the band struggled to maintain a permanent drummer) --- ## Track-by-Track Lyrical and Musical Analysis ### "Christine's Tune" (Devil in Disguise) The album opens with a rollicking, corrosive track that establishes the band's signature sound . Lyrically, the song is a vicious put-down of a groupie who refused to sleep with the narrator—"She's a devil in disguise" . This sets up an immediate tension that runs throughout the album: the beautiful, aching harmonies juxtaposed with lyrics that can be bitter, petty, and morally questionable. The song features Parsons and Hillman's pinched, Everly Brothers-inspired harmonies hard-panned to separate stereo channels—Parsons on the left, Hillman on the right . Kleinow's fuzzed-out pedal steel provides a psychedelic edge that bridges country tradition with rock experimentalism . ### "Sin City" The album's thematic centerpiece, "Sin City" is a "loping lament" and "cautionary dirge" about Los Angeles as a modern Babylon . Co-written by Hillman and Parsons in about thirty minutes after Hillman woke Parsons from a nap with the opening idea, the song contains specific references to the Byrds' manager Larry Spector ("a gold-plated door") and Robert F. Kennedy ("tried to clean up this town") . The lyrics capture a profound disillusionment: > "This old earthquake's gonna leave me in the poor house / It seems like this whole town's insane / On the thirty-first floor, a gold-plated door / Won't keep out the Lord's burning rain." As one review notes, the song can be interpreted as either "a parody or a sincere meditation on a city gone mad, and it hits home in both contexts" . ### "My Uncle" A crisp, poppy number about draft evasion during the Vietnam War, "My Uncle" captures the era's countercultural anxiety without drawing pity or guilt—"they've just made the whole affair into something to shuffle your boots to" . The song reflects Parsons' privileged background: he could afford to dodge the draft in ways that less wealthy young men could not . ### "Wheels" A meditative, honest search for salvation, "Wheels" features Kleinow's distorted pedal steel "revving like an engine" . The acerbic shard of fuzz guitar that appears about 45 seconds into this otherwise simple ditty demonstrates the band's commitment to "fashion expressive sonic architecture that juts out from the folk tunes to which they're attached" . ### "Juanita" A sublime country waltz about a woman who "brought back the life / That I once threw away" . The song offers one of the album's rare glimpses of redemption and light, though it's soon swallowed by darker material. ### "Hot Burrito #1" and "Hot Burrito #2" These two songs, written by Parsons with bassist Chris Ethridge, form the emotional core of the album . "Hot Burrito #1" is a devastating slow ballad showcasing Parsons' most vulnerable vocal performance: > "You may be sweet and nice / But that won't keep you warm at night / Cause I'm the one who showed you how / To do the things you're doing now." As one critic observes, the song blends "the hurt of classic country weepers with a contemporary sense of anger, jealousy, and confusion" . The lyrics are possessive, wounded, and achingly beautiful—a combination that forces listeners to confront uncomfortable questions about separating art from the artist. "Hot Burrito #2" takes a different approach, riding a Motown-influenced groove with Parsons desperate enough to sing "You better love me, Jesus Christ!" in the chorus . The two songs together represent the glinting fool's gold of human desire—the first pleading and vulnerable, the second aggressive and demanding . ### Soul Covers: "Do Right Woman" and "Dark End of the Street" Parsons' R&B influences come to the fore on these two covers. "Do Right Woman" (originally by Aretha Franklin) becomes a "refreshingly wholesome country waltz" with Kleinow's steel guitar providing comforting warmth . The song is notable as a feminist anthem sung by men, with "a protective side to women" that appears elsewhere on the album . "Dark End of the Street" (a classic by James Carr) describes an adulterous relationship that must remain hidden. Parsons' phrasing on this track shows the influence of George Jones, the country singer he idolized . Both covers demonstrate how Parsons sought to "marry country music with the soul sound associated with Otis Redding's Stax-Volt label" . ### "Hippie Boy" The album closer, featuring lead vocals from Chris Hillman, addresses the 1968 Democratic National Convention riots in Chicago. Parsons called it "the toughest challenge on the album" . The song serves as a kind of spoken-word gospel moral, featuring "a hippie rejected by society" and ending with imagery of a "fireworks finale" suggesting divine judgment on a city consumed by human vices . --- ## Analysis by Category ### Lyrics (8/10) **Strengths:** The songwriting is remarkably sophisticated for a country-rock record in 1969. Parsons and Hillman craft lyrics that operate on multiple levels simultaneously—personal and political, sincere and ironic. "Sin City" works as both a specific portrait of late-60s Los Angeles and a timeless meditation on moral corruption. The "Hot Burrito" songs capture the messy contradictions of romantic need with uncomfortable honesty. **Weaknesses:** The misogyny is undeniable and, for some listeners, disqualifying. "Christine's Tune" is essentially a revenge fantasy against a woman who wouldn't have sex with the narrator . "Hot Burrito #1" contains possessive, controlling language that hasn't aged well. As one reviewer bluntly states, "Gram Parsons was a huge piece of shit" —and the lyrics sometimes reflect that. Whether one can separate the art from the artist remains an open question. ### Music (9/10) **Strengths:** The instrumental performances are extraordinary, particularly "Sneaky" Pete Kleinow's revolutionary pedal steel work. Rather than playing in conventional Nashville style, Kleinow used unique tunings (B6 instead of the common C6), ran his instrument through a fuzzbox, and sometimes played through a rotating Leslie amplifier originally designed for Hammond organs . The result is a sound that's simultaneously traditional and psychedelic, country and space-age. The harmonies between Parsons and Hillman are gorgeous throughout, drawing on the Everly Brothers and Louvin Brothers tradition . Chris Ethridge's bass lines provide buoyant, melodic counterpoint, particularly on upbeat numbers like "My Uncle" . The band's ability to shift between tender country waltzes ("Juanita," "Do Right Woman") and raucous rockers ("Christine's Tune," "Hot Burrito #2") demonstrates remarkable range. **Weaknesses:** The production is genuinely odd and, by modern standards, flawed. Larry Marks, the assigned producer, later described himself as more of a "hall monitor" than a creative collaborator . The decision to hard-pan Parsons and Hillman's harmonies to opposite stereo channels creates a disorienting effect on headphones—"a little devil on one shoulder and an angel on the other" —though some listeners find this charming rather than problematic. As one biographer notes, "it's hard to find one more shoddily produced or sloppily performed" among great albums . ### Production (6/10) The production is the album's most controversial element. The sessions were reportedly chaotic, with the band showing up unprepared and wasting studio time . The drum tracks were played by multiple session musicians because original drummer Eddie Hoh was fired for excessive drug use after recording only two songs . Yet there's a strange vitality to the record's rough edges. The ramshackle quality suits the material, and the unconventional mixing choices give the album a distinctive identity. Still, one can only imagine what these songs might sound like with the production quality of, say, *Exile on Main St.* (another famously "sloppy" masterpiece that Parsons influenced). ### Themes (9/10) The album weaves together several rich thematic threads: **Sin and Redemption:** The title itself announces the central theme. The album cover shows the band in elaborate Nudie suits—Parsons' suit featuring marijuana leaves and pills on the front and a Christian cross on the back, hidden from view . This perfectly captures the tension between indulgence and salvation that runs through every track. **Los Angeles as Babylon:** "Sin City" portrays LA as a place that will "swallow you in / if you've got some money to burn" . The song references specific local figures and events while reaching for biblical imagery of judgment. **Heartbreak and Possession:** The "Hot Burrito" songs examine romantic relationships from the perspective of someone who has both been wronged and done wrong—they're not simple victim narratives but complex explorations of guilt, need, and control. **Class and Privilege:** "My Uncle" acknowledges, however obliquely, that Parsons could avoid the Vietnam War draft because of his family wealth. The album's Nudie suits—custom-made, expensive, flamboyant—also speak to class anxieties within country music culture . ### Influence (10/10) This is where the album truly shines. While it sold only about 50,000 copies upon release, "like the first album by the Velvet Underground, it would seem everyone of those 50,000 went out and formed a band inspired by what they'd heard" . **Direct musical descendants include:** - The Eagles (the most commercially successful country-rock band) - Emmylou Harris (Parsons' duet partner after the Burritos) - Wilco, Son Volt, and Uncle Tupelo (alt-country pioneers) - Whiskeytown and The Jayhawks - Dwight Yoakam, Lucinda Williams, and Steve Earle **Non-country artists influenced include:** - Elvis Costello (who has covered multiple tracks from the album) - Dinosaur Jr. (covered "Hot Burrito #2" on *Green Mind*) - The Meat Puppets and Silver Jews Bob Dylan, when asked by *Rolling Stone* to name his favorite country-rock album, answered simply: "The Flying Burrito Brothers. Boy, I love them. Their record instantly knocked me out" . --- ## Pros and Cons ### Pros 1. **Groundbreaking fusion:** Successfully blends country, rock, soul, and psychedelia into a cohesive sound that had never been heard before. 2. "Sneaky" Pete Kleinow's pedal steel: Revolutionary playing that redefined what a country instrument could sound like in a rock context. 3. Exceptional songwriting: "Sin City" and the "Hot Burrito" songs are genuine classics, with lyrics that reward repeated listening. 4. Gorgeous harmonies: Parsons and Hillman's vocal blend is among the best in popular music. 5. Immense historical influence: Laid the groundwork for multiple genres (country-rock, alt-country, Americana). 6. Thematic complexity: Addresses sin, redemption, class, and heartbreak with nuance and ambiguity. 7. Culturally significant imagery: The Nudie suit cover photo has become iconic . ### Cons 1. **Problematic lyrics:** The misogyny in "Christine's Tune" and the possessiveness in "Hot Burrito #1" are difficult for many modern listeners. 2. **Sloppy production:** The album sounds genuinely weird in places, with questionable mixing choices and uneven sound quality. 3. **Inconsistent performances:** The drumming, handled by multiple session musicians, lacks cohesion. 4. **Gram Parsons' privilege shows:** "My Uncle" has aged poorly as a draft-dodging anthem from a wealthy Florida citrus heir . 5. **The covers are good but not essential:** The soul covers, while well-performed, don't add as much as the original material. 6. **Short runtime:** At under 38 minutes, the album leaves you wanting more—though given Parsons' trajectory, perhaps that's appropriate. --- ## Final Verdict **Rating: 9/10** *The Gilded Palace of Sin* is a deeply flawed masterpiece—which might be the only kind of masterpiece that could have emerged from Gram Parsons' tortured genius. The album's imperfections—the awkward production, the misogynist lyrics, the sloppy performances—are inseparable from what makes it great. Parsons was not a good person, and this album does not hide that fact. It lays his ugliness and vulnerability bare, sometimes in the same breath. For listeners who can engage with the music critically—acknowledging its problems while appreciating its innovations—this remains an essential document. It's the sound of someone trying to bridge the gap between hippies and rednecks, between sacred and profane, between tradition and experimentation. That he ultimately failed, dying of a drug overdose in 1973 at age 26, only adds to the album's tragic power. As one reviewer eloquently puts it, the album gives off "a jaunty strut that never gets lost" in either country self-pity or rock excess . Instead, the Flying Burrito Brothers "accepted the absurdity of the world in their outlandish outfits, but broadcast it with brilliantly understated disillusionment" . That tension—between flamboyance and authenticity, between sin and salvation—has never been captured better than on this strange, beautiful, infuriating record. **Essential tracks:** "Sin City," "Hot Burrito #1," "Hot Burrito #2," "Christine's Tune," "Dark End of the Street" **Skip if:** Misogynist lyrics are a dealbreaker, or you prefer highly polished production **Listen if:** You want to understand where Americana, alt-country, and half of 1970s California rock came from

I don’t know something about listening to this album while you’re walking to work in 105° heat definitely speaks to you go to Album and I love the name of the band flying burrito Brothers. You get five stars. I enjoyed a lot of of the songs.

5 Jon corneal, a Lakeland Florida original! I even went to church with. Plays a lean mean drum kit!

One of the greats. That pedal steel playing alone is worth the price of admission. Man, I love Gram's Nudie Suit on the cover.

Never was a big Burrito Bros guy, but this record hit me just right today.

Magic from start to finish!!!

the Joni Mitchell’s Blue of selling your lover’s clothes

I can't explain it but I loved it

"The Gilded Palace of Sin" is the debut studio album by American country rock band the Flying Burrito Brothers. Country rock is the sole Wiki-listed genre. The album continued Gram Parsons' (vocals, rhythm guitar, keyboards) and Chris Hilman's (rhythm guitar, mandolin, vocals) work, which they began on the Byrd's "Sweetheart of the Rodeo," in modern country music fusing country and folk with other forms of popular music including gospel, soul and pyschedelic rock. Other core bandmembers included "Sneaky" Pete Kleinow (pedal steel guitar) and Chris Ethridge (bass, piano, backing vocals). Commercially, the album did not meet expectations reaching #164 on the US Billboard 200 but had critical acclaim regarded as an important album in the development of 1970's rock. The album opens with "Christine's Tune." Acoustic guitar, electric guitar not out of place on a Grateful Dead album and a pedal steel guitar with a very unique tone. Great harmony vocals in a song about 1960's groupie and member of GTO Christine Anna Furka. They bring a waltz beat to "Sin City." Strong lead vocals by Parsons and lively backing vocals by Hillman. A cautionary tale on the toxicity of LA. A trippy and psychedelic guitar intro begins "Hot Burrito #1." Piano and melancholic guitar. Parsons with heartfelt vocals as he expresses the pain of a break-up. The next song "Hot Burrito #2" is a counterpoint to #1. More aggressive vocals as Parsons demands the relationship despite the dysfunction. Harder edge guitar with a piano and soulful organ. A fuzztone guitar solo also sets the edge. The closer "Hippie Boy" fuses the country and gospel. Slow with a piano and organ. Parsons talking trying to settle down down the 1968 DNC Chicago riot mentality with peace and love. The songs goes full tilt gospel with a gospel-choir outro. At its base the music is country but adds soul, rock, gospel and psychedelia. All the guitar playing is excellent especially the pedal steel guitar with an Allman Brothers' tone. They're also not afraid to add a piano, organ, fuzztone guitar and mandolin. Great lead vocals and vocal harmonies. Heartfelt lyrics mostly dealing with country-type themes of break-up and infidelity but also the toxicity of LA, the Vietnam War and the 1868 Chicago DNC. There's no doubt as to the album's influence on the 1970's country rock and bands like the Eagles but in the whole alt country movement and bands like Uncle Tupelo, early Wilco, the Jayhawks and Whiskeytown. This is a solid album which sounded great today and I would recommend it to any fans of country, 1970's country rock or bands like Wilco.

Maybe these cats could've gone to a nicer gilded palace if they spent less on their Nudie suits. But that's none of my business. This is a really solid blending of genres and I always enjoy a good steel guitar. Extra stars for Sneaky Pete writing the Gumby theme song.

Americana alt-country 101 right here. I definitely owned this CD and forced myself to listen to it as homework, which made me think I would cringe at hearing it again, but cringe I did not, it was great and worthy of its acclaim. Dark End of the Street was a mainstay for my early band although I think we were channeling more the Commitments version by way of the Afghan Whigs version. Rounding up.

Æ har jo ikke egentlig hørt på The Flying Burrito Brothers før, men samtidig har æ hørt på dem hele livet, for det e fullstendig åpenbart at dem e forgjengeran til alle countryartistan æ har elska siden min spede barndom, så det e bare fint og flott å høre på.

After LAX coffin heist and partial cremation at Joshua Tree, Cecil Ingram Connor III was buried in NOLA in audacious attempt by his stepfather to inherit his orange fortune under the Napoleonic Code 🍊🍊🍊

cool

Classic in the true sense, pure and emblematic

Just about the same place where I had it when I did my 69 dive at a 9.9.... I really love the overall feel of this album somewhere between Country and psychedelia it's kind of a neat little Oddity that really not many acts mixed it as well as well as they did 9.9 ★★★★½

a great album that becomes fantastic with the almost unassailable run of My Uncle/Wheels/Juanita

Cosmic Americana at its finest.

W/ a name like The Flying Burrito Bros, you'd think you'd get farce or parody. W/ an album called The Gilded Palace Of Sin, you may think you'd get prog or intellectual snobbery. But what you get is country - I mean the straight-up version, the simple, haunting, and necessary foundation. Gram Parsons is a hell of a singer, and tho he's no Aretha or James Carr, his renditions of 'Do Right Woman' and 'Dark End of the Street' are soulful and profound. 'My Uncle' is an essential political track, rivaling CCR for how much punch they pack: ''Cause they don't need the kind of law and order / That tends to keep a good man underground.' They're everything The Eagles are not, and even if they never released a comparable product, this is superb enuf.

Everything about this album is perfect, from the Nudie suits to the cover of 'Do Right Woman.' This is exactly what real country rock—or as Gram Parsons called it, 'Cosmic American Music'—should sound like.

Liked it

Legendary. One of the great albums.

A classic album, one of the first groups in a then-new genre combining classic country with psychedelic rock. Filled with great songs and Sneaky Pete doing his thing on pedal steel.

This was just charming from start to finish. Seeing the release year (69) and that the band members were ex-Byrds, I feared the worst but found it extremely listenable!

Lovely but never served revolutionary to me.

The late '60s were a big time for country music. I don't think any bad albums in this genre were released during that era. This album is as easy listening as pizza is easy eating. You know the flavor, but you never get tired of it. 5 stars.