Jimmie Dale Gilmore and the Flatlanders: Unplugged

Recorded in 1972, these tracks were originally released on a tiny label in eight-track tape format only, so they were heard by very few at first, but they're as significant an antecedent to alt-country as anything by Gram Parsons. This is a slightly reconfigured version of the 1990 reissue, More a Legend Than a Band, with a few different bonus tracks. Jimmie Dale Gilmore, Butch Hancock, and Joe Ely would later distinguish themselves individually, but in the early '70s they were part of an all-acoustic Lubbock, Texas, group that combined traditional country roots with the era's expanded-consciousness mindset. Gilmore's haunting quaver already had the goosebump-inducing, otherworldly feel that would eventually make him a successful solo artist. That ethereal quality is ideal for delivering the Zen/hippie lyrics of songs like the overtly Buddhist "Bhagavan Decreed" and the dreamlike "Tonight I Think I'm Gonna Go Downtown," where Gilmore recalls a time "when this world was more real to me."