Four decades of bird bands

Sunday is Chinese New Year, and this is the year of the boar, so here are four songs from four decades by four bands, all named after ... birds!

From the 1960s:
The Yardbirds - Happenings Ten Years Time Ago
(from the album Roger The Engineer )
This song is from the few months in 1966 when the Yardbirds had two lead guitarists (Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page), and features a session bassist named John Paul Jones instead of Paul Samwell-Smith. The Yardbirds' first leaden zeppelinic steps . We're skipping the 1970s, so take a moment to yell "Freebird" really loud!


From the 1980s:
The Hummingbirds - Word Gets Around
(from the album Love Buzz)
The Hummingbirds were from Australia, and their album was produced by Mitch Easter, so you know what to expect. Lots of guitars and male-female vocal harmonies. Some band from Aberdeen WA covered the song "Love Buzz" (by the Shocking Blue) at the same time. 1989 was the year of the love buzz.

From the 1990s:
The Mutton Birds - She's Been Talking
(from the album Envy of Angels)
The Mutton Birds were from New Zealand, and were named after an actual bird from the South Pacific. Envy of Angels is probably their best album, and also the one that's the easiest to find in the US. You can buy it for $10 here or here, while all the other Mutton Birds CDs are $25 or more. It could be your new favorite album too. They broke up at the end of the 90s, but Don McGlashan put out a solo album last year (from which I posted a song last week), and Alan Gregg leads the band Marshmallow who put out a great CD a couple years ago.

From the 2000s:
The Bye Bye Blackbirds - In Every Season
(from the CD Honeymoon)
The person who deserves at least co-credit for turning me on to the Mutton Birds is Bradley of the Bye Bye Blackbirds, so it seems apt to follow the MBs with the BBBs. This song is from their EP Honeymoon, which came out late last year, and the mp3 links directly from the band site. If you don't have the CD, you can order it here, or pick one up on March 29th when they open for Mitch Easter at the Rickshaw Stop.

Bonus tracks: 125records reported that the French band Swan Plastic Swan have a few tracks from their Scott Miller produced demo on their myspace page. They call themselves "psychiatric music lovers", which is probably an incorrect translation of "psychotic music lovers" or something else, but I like it, because I'm a psychiatric music lover too. Aren't we all?