The Fantastic Expedition of Dillard & Clark

Having been listening to Gene Clark's No Other and With the Gosdin Brothers a lot over the last few months, I got hold of a rather lovely sounding 80s German reissue of the 1968 album he did with Doug Dillard.

Wow, this is one gorgeous album. Top notch country rock with a heavy dose of bluegrass. Great tunes, lovely harmonies and wonderful musicianship.

Highly recommended. I was always a bit of a Byrds fan, but having come across Clark's solo work, I personally think that he was the biggest talent of that band and its a bit of a shame that this stuff never reached the prominence of the work of his old band.

 

No Other - Superb, one of my all time favourite albums. I have a few of his other solo albums and they are somewhat patchy in comparison. But hey, he left us with No Other so I wont criticise too much.

A great loss.

A bit like Terry Reid (though he is still with us) in terms of a great talent who never got the recognition or breaks. Though terry did turn down a few himself.

 

You aren't wrong - No Other is an all time classic. That said of the other two albums of his I have are the Fantastic expedition with Doug Dillard and With the Gosdin Brothers (which frankly sounds like a lost Byrds album - which it should seeing as half of them are playing on it). Both of these I'd rate highly and pretty consistently good - though I can see why many would rate No Other more highly. At the moment I'd say the Fantastic Expedition is my fave, but its the twangiest and I like a bit of twang

I know he did some other stuff - which albums have you got? I'm keeping my eyes out for a copy of White Light at the moment.

 

I have 'Echoes' from the Columbia Legacy series. Its 20 trackas or so that were recorded for an album around 66/67 and were never released.

The other is 'Under the Silvery Moon' which is another collection of stuff (outakes and some rough stuff) from the 1980's.

I have to say I havent listened to either of them more than once so they didnt have the impact of No Other. I will however, pop them in the CD player this week as I'm on holiday.

 

If they are out takes, that might explain a certain amount of inconsistency I guess. That said - Echoes was the European title of "With The Gosdin Brothers", but a google search tells me that what you have is some remixes from this album plus a load of out takes, which would certainly explain the inconsistency - the original was only a ten track album.

 

I can highly recommend his collaboration with Carla Olson called 'So rebellious a lover' which I think has been re-issued recently.