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The Byrds - Eight Miles High (Needledrop) (1989)

Track listing:
  1. I'll Feel A Whole Lot Better 3:55
  2. All I Really Want To Do 2:47
  3. Goin' Back 4:03
  4. Band Intros 2:13
  5. Mr. Tambourine Man 5:45
  6. Band Of Pirates 6:57
  7. Chimes Of Freedom 3:59
  8. You Ain't Going Nowhere 3:37
  9. Mr. Spaceman 3:28
  10. Turn! Turn! Turn! 3:49
  11. So You Want To Be A Rr Star 3:55
  12. Eight Miles High 11:13
  13. Move Too Soon 4:03

Notes

Nuremberg

Mega-rare restored vinyl "Eight Miles High"
SBD from mixing desk (Great show and recording!)
Lineage: LP Dom Records matrix BYRDS 1-2 ->Sound Forge 6.0 ->Click and crackle removal tool ->Vinyl Restoration Suite -> Flac via FLAC frontend

This is a great soundboard recording, right from the mixing desk. It comes from a really, really obscure German LP called "Eight Miles High". I bought it in a little antique shop in Wiesbaden during a trip there a few years back. Don't let the fact that there's only one original band member on this LP fool you. It's a great show, and worthy of any other Byrds performance. On this outing, the Byrds consisted of:

Skip Battin b,v
Terry Rogers g,v
Jerry Sorn g,v
Michael Clarke d

There are no graphics or pictures on this album. The cover information is plain printed text on an insert sheet. At least it contains some liner notes, although they are not in English.

I was stationed in Wiesbaden during the Cold War, so my understanding of the German spoken language is not too bad. I can follow and respond to most everyday conversations, although with some difficulty. Understanding the written German language is another matter entirely. Therefore, I have tried my best to give you the flavor, rather than the exact wordage of the insert sheet liner notes. They are colorful, to say the least. Here are the liner notes, translated as best as possible into English:

"Unfortunately the cap to the evening, the songs "Will The Circle Be Unbroken" and Roy Orbison's "Oh, Pretty Woman" are missing from this album. The person at the mixing desk was so stoned from smoking the hashish going around that he forgot to lay a new tape in when the encore started.

"The song "Eight Miles High", which has been banned for years due to drug references, is performed here in its entirety. It features a three-minute bass solo from Skip Battin. The entire performance the Byrds gave this evening was actually about two hours long. Everything that was non-music related was removed, including long stretches of quiet between songs."

And there you have it.


1) at the time this recording was made, Michael Clarke was the legal owner of the Byrds name

2) this is not, although mentioned on the artwork and on the original LP cover, recorded in Nuremberg, but in Siegen

3) the original Lp came with a nice color sleeve with a picture of the 1970-1972 Byrds; I can upload it if anyone's interested

4) these Byrds only released one song officially, a song called The Flame, written by Terry Rodgers. It appeared on a Various Artists 'cassette only' release, called The Legacy Album (profits went to an AIDS relief funds)