Consumer Guide Album

Roger McGuinn: Cardiff Rose [Columbia, 1976]
I'd written him off before Rolling Thunder, too, but this record, produced by fellow Roller Ronson and featuring various tour buddies, rocks wilder than anything he ever did with the Byrds. Unfortunately, it's more confusing than astonishing. The factitious folk songs about piracy and the Holy Grail make fewer contemporary connections than the real folk song "Pretty Polly." Ditto the previously unrecorded donations from fellow Rollers Mitchell and Dylan. Imagining how Dylan might sing "Up to Me," which sounds like a forerunner of "Simple Twist of Fate," you begin to miss the quavery McGuinn or yore. And the song that's actually about Rolling Thunder is pretty sickening. B-