'Grievous Angel'

The motivated music fan is able to wade through the last century of music and find the good stuff.

My trek to Gram Parsons was a relatively short one. It started with the Beach Boys to the Beatles and spread to other bands from the 1960s like the Rolling Stones, The Turtles, The Animals and the Dave Clark Five.

Eventually to the hippie-era Byrds with Roger McGuinn in those ridiculous granny glasses and that 12-string Rickenbacker tingling out "Hey Mr. Tambourine Man."

Dig a little deeper into the Byrds catalog and you run upon Sweetheart of the Rodeo and, thus, Parsons.

My love for Parsons has grown deep and true. Apart from the songwriting and musicianship, he's just a cool guy. Dressed cool. Drank cool. Did drugs cool. Loved cool. His star shone super bright, but it extinguished really early. There's nothing you can do about that. It's the way it's supposed to be. Guys like Parsons do not live long. They did everything entirely too hard (good and bad) to really survive on this planet.

All we can do is appreciate what he left here on for us and how those songs make us feel good no matter what mood where in because Parsons was great at capturing all that you can feel.