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"  It&amp;#039;s not uncommon for pop historians to harbor strong feelings about the life of Gram Parsons. There are those who see him chiefly as a genius who introduced Keith Richards to country music, eventually prompting the creation of Exile on Main St.; others perceive him as a born-rich dilettante who fetishized blue-collar America and simply wanted to get high with the Rolling Stones. Still others see him as little more than a great, confused singer-songwriter who couldn&amp;#039;t stop drinking. As a rule, Parsons is more famous for dying than for living. But if you want to understand Gram Parsons the way he probably wanted people to remember him, get your paws on the two-disc Gram Parsons Archives Vol. 1. This twenty-seven-track live collection of the Flying Burrito Brothers music (recorded before a 1969 Grateful Dead show in San Francisco) is perhaps the purest illustration of how forgotten country standards informed (and essentially gave rise to) the California rock movement of the 1970s. If these records don&amp;#039;t make you want to grow sideburns and buy a cowboy shirt, nothing will. Parsons may not have been entirely authentic, but his voice sure fucking was. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/entertainment/a4063/gramparsons0108/>