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(Casey Brennan's review)
The three chums that formed this supergroup came together in late 1968. Consisting of David Crosby from the Byrds, Stephen Stills from the critically respected Buffalo Springfield, and Graham Nash from the Hollies, they united together to record an album that portrayed hippie ideals greatly, thus making this perfect music to be played at the up-coming Woodstock festival in the summer. That show single-handily made them huge superstars, and it's very easy to see why. The voices of these guys, which blended together in natural sweet harmony, was a lovely instrument that created good-vibes, and gave the material a special aura all of its' own. Out of all the Californian groups during this time, no one could come close to the pure beauty that came from the falsetto vocals of these three independent guys. Soaring, often melodic, and incredible is what they are.
They definitely highlight the multi-part masterpiece "Suite: Judy Blue Eyes", a folky Stephen Stills number with several distinct melodies (all of which you can sing along to) that is driven mostly by the sound of crisply-played guitars, and which contains wonderful chirpy harmonies, and a sparse production of low-key electric guitar, bass, and drums in the background. Showing every aspect of the guys vocal talents in full force, this song is quite a bit better than anything else on here, and obviously the pinnacle of the band's career. That doesn't at all mean that the following songs are a let-down though. No way! Divided between Graham Nash's poppy tunes (which sound slight in the context of the album, but are pretty enjoyable on their own), and the more folky tunes from the other two men, all of these songs are very well-written and fresh-sounding to the ears.
For instance, David Crosby's introspective "Guinnevere" is an absolutely beautiful folk song with a pristine-clear acoustic guitar sound that moves along nicely to the shifting melody. The lyrics are wonderfully memorable, but the way those vocals move along in unison to the melody can't be beat, and Crosby's softly angelic vocals in particular recall his best singing from when he was in the Byrds (I especially like how he sings the line 'Seagulls circle endlessly, I sing in silent harmony" delicately). Then there are two acoustic Stephen Stills tracks called "You Don't Have To Cry" and, to a slightly lesser extent, "Helplessly Hoping", which are both excellent vehicles for the high-harmonies of these guys. The acoustics and melody of the former is especially hard-hitting (the 'You Don't have to Cryyyyy' harmonies after each verse is simply breathtaking).
On the darker political side we have the albums' minor centerpiece in "Wooden Ships", a moody hard rock tune that is well-known for being the symbol song for the Woodstock soundtrack, and for good reason too. Everything from the lyrics to the organ/guitar-work gives off a vibe that makes it perfect hippie music - as silly as that sounds. In any case, David Crosby's "Long Time Gone" is another strong tune of the same style featured in the films rolling credits. Going into Graham Nash's poppy tunes, "Marrakesh Express" is a cute hippiesh pop tune with a hooky Hollies-styled melody, though the vibe is pure CSN when considering those distinctive harmonies: easily the finest of his three contributions. "Pre-Road Downs" sounds a bit more lame (with that low-key organ and backwards guitar) in retrospect, but it turns out to be quite good anyway since the choruses are well-paced, and the song gets a bit more exciting towards the end with Nash's singing during the up-tempo verses.
Finally there is his "Lady Of the Island", a gentle acoustic ballad that pales against the more important material, though it's still nice. Crosby and Stills have the stronger material by far, but Stills does give us the one and only relatively weak song on the set with the closer "49 Bye-Byes", a mid-tempo rock tune with a halfway decent lightly-played organ/guitar riff that rambles and repeats on for a seemingly 49 minutes (though it's a whole 44 minutes shorter than that). However, that's only a small dent in an album that brings us a lovely union of three voices in Rock together.
Hmmm......As much as I enjoy this album, I still hold something against it. This was the one that basically created "soft rock" as a genre, and thus is indirectly responsible for modern "adult contemporary" music, which to quote my good friend Neil Strickland, "sucks like a vacuum on overdrive." However, to dismiss this genuinely good offering from hippie pseudo-gurus Stephen Stills, David Crosby, and Graham Nash, would be identical to dismissing Deep Purple and Led Zeppelin simply because of the existence of cruddy metal. No offense meant to fans of either adult contemporary or especially of metal (mainly because there are probably a jillion of them reading this now based on some of the band review pages here); just an observation. By the way, I am not some sort of sissy pop light-music freak. I'm an eclecticist, and I figure, hey why not fill some gaps here with some reviews? But anyways, enough digression.
In 1967, Stephen Stills (formerly of Buffalo Springfield and Poco), David Crosby (formerly of the Byrds) and Graham Nash (formerly of the Hollies) got together and jammed some. About 2 years later, they released this. I don't remember if this was released before or after Woodstock, but at any rate they played there and were a massive hit with the audience. And assuming they stuck to these songs, there's no question why. Each member contributed songs, though Stills certainly contributed the most, as well as the best. Probably everybody has heard or heard of Suite: Judy Blue Eyes, the 7 minute classic that opens the album. I have. I heard it on a flight home from France while I was sitting next to an extremely attractive girl from Arizona. Amazing what we remember, isn't it? At any rate, the song is fantastic. It's multi-part, mostly acoustic, and it features trademark soaring harmonies. Very laid back, but laid back describes this album to a tee. The words are essentially a love poem written by Stills while he was involved with (and breaking up with) Judy Collins. Hence the name. Duh.
Graham Nash contributes the next song, a short pop song called Marrakesh Express. I used to loathe this song. I still don't love it, but I don't despise it either. The words are poppy but decent, and the song really does sound like the Hollies with a few different voices singing backup. Perfect if you're a poppy one. Now it's Crosby's turn, and he really knocks the proverbial ball out of the park with Guinnevere. This is the kind of folk that everybody needs to listen to at least once in there life. Screw Phil Ochs and Joan Baez; this is what it's all about. The lyrics do have a lot of significance. Crosby wrote this about his girlfriend who later died in a car accident. It was that accident that got him using cocaine so heavily. Sad story, but what a beautiful song.
I absolutely love You Don't Have To Cry. It's one of those songs that speaks to me. In my own cruddy love experiences, I've known (in the totally NON-biblical sense of the word) several people who have just let "that demon life" as the Stones put it run their lives and sap away their personality and youth. I totally dig the song. Plus, I can play it on my guitar. That's a plus too. Pre-Road Downs is another transplanted Hollie-song. It's okay I suppose. The backwards guitar and organ do make the arrangement sound better than Marrakesh Express, so I figure it's a winner in at least one way.
And now comes the 2nd epic of the album, Wooden Ships. This one is a sweeping anti-war song with sung dialogue, moody organ, typical harmony, and a great message. I do prefer the Jefferson Airplane version (it actually was written by Paul Kantner contrary to what else you may see; conflict between their record companies), but this one is excellent as well. Graham Nash strikes again with a song totally unlike his previous two, Lady Of The Island. This one is a gentle acoustic ballad with an almost dark midsection. Kind of ambiguous in that respect. Very soft, softest track as a matter of fact, but quite relaxing and romantic. I consider it to be Nash's finest composition.
Helplessly Hoping is another Stills song, and while neither the musicianship or words are outstanding this time, the singing is. Easily the best on the whole blame album. Next up is Long Time Gone, one of the best known songs here. This is certainly the hippiest track on here, with excellent counterculture lyrics from Crosby, good singing, and excellent moody organ playing. Finally, we have 49 Bye-Byes, which seems to drag on for about 49 minutes, WAY too long. All in all, this one is an essential album in the branching out and evolution of rock. Very good songs, very gentle, very soothing and relxing, but almost never cheesy.
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released by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young
(Casey Brennan's review)
The three chums added Buffalo Springfield-turned solo star Neil Young to the lineup here, whose presence gave them his chunky guitar skills and two-and-a-half song-writing credits. Luckily he and the remaining band-members were pretty good song-writers because this album is democratically set up so that each guy gets about two tracks each (there is also one celebrated cover on here, but I'll get to that later). A big hippie album is what's created - to some the 'ultimate hippie album' - mostly due to Crosby's and Nash's offerings. What makes Deja Vu pale in comparison to Crosby, Stills, & Nash though is the fact that Crosby's contributions are a lot weaker this time (which isn't to say that they are bad), and also because the harmonies are diminished and not as distinctive as they were before.
But really, those flaws become rather minuscule in the light of several great songs, all of which show the different sides of each songwriter. Stills shines first with his two-part opener "Carry On", a great track that goes from being a mostly feel-good acoustic Rock tune in its' first two minutes, before the sky-reaching harmonies come in to shift it into a darker melody complete with appropriate moody organ and masterful electric guitar soloing, while an accessible sing-a-long melody floats on top. An enduring CSN&Y classic, it is. Next in line, Graham Nash brings in a short, but excellent cut, with his country-flavored pop song "Teach Your Children". It's lyrical matter may be dated (hippie moms and dads learning to fend for their children), but the melody is top-notch and enjoyable much like the delightful piano-pop of his "Our House" found later on in the album. Nash uses the short six minutes he's given to his advantage.
On the opposite end of the spectrum, Neil Young brings in two tunes that while eventually ranking near the best of them, take a little longer to get used to; the subtle Country-Rock of "Helpless" is a fairly moving piano-laden tune that may or may not sink in after awhile(I have pretty good feelings about it now), and "Country Girl" is a sweeping epic with stately melody. The final great track comes in the form of a Joni Mitchell cover called "Woodstock", which is an all-out rocker with lots of trebly electric lead from Young, and an amazingly knock-out chorus (memorable as hell).
That leaves us with four songs of lesser quality including two from David Crosby, who proudly lets his freak flag fly, an unnecessary acoustic song from Stills called "4+20", and "Everybody I Love You", a Stills-Young rocker that closes off the album on a messy note. Crosby's hippie anthem "Almost Cut My Hair" is notable for the sloppy and grungy guitar-work that I love so much, but the lyrics have admittedly dated badly, and the title track just doesn't work after that promising complex arrangement in the beginning fades away. So, all in all, despite the horrible datedness of the lyrics and couple of filler-like tracks, Deja Vu is an admirable effort whose rating gets upped a notch just because there are that many great tunes to be found. Unfortunately, this was to be the last studio effort from these four guys in years to come due to great tensions in the recording studio - even CSN wouldn't make an album for another seven years.
I think I first heard this album when I was a college frosh, this guy played it a lot, he lived with me in the same dormitory (but not in the same dorm room; we weren't bunkmates). I've avoided naming names, but those of you who knew me when I was an undergrad will recognize the personal details of this story all too well, and thus will know who I'm talking about. At any rate, the guy who first introduced me to this album was the dorm's joint roller -- the pot came in from somewhere else, but its representatives always visited his dormroom first before the pot they brought was smoked or otherwise spread to other people's bodies within the dorm. This was back in the early 1980s when you could get high in the dorms without being busted by the RAs or the cops, back before the War on Drugs reached into every crevice of life, and (happily) back when the government subsidized education to a much greater extent than it does today. It was a less expensive era of history to be sure, the early '80s.
At any rate, this friend of mine was fairly cool in the early portion of the 1980s, especially when he was living on campus and playing CSNY's Deja Vu on his great stereo. This was one of his canon of oft-played albums. Cool people hung out with him, occasionally bringing Guinness Stout or psychedelics, talking about classes or music, politics or culture, and smoking the weed that came to his sunny, south-facing dormroom. But then, some years later, he became an economics major (a mode of practiced shortsightedness, to be sure -- please read Marc Linder's stunning two-volume "Anti-Samuelson" or Deirdre McCloskey's "The Rhetoric of Economics" for a stab at why this is so), he moved into a house on the west side of town, on Escalona Drive near the Zanzibar Restaurant (a place where I lived briefly, in the garage). There, he took to watching violent TV shows and televised (American) football while hanging out with some fairly decadent Deadheads. I tore down the bright-red cloth poster of Jerry Garcia that was hanging on a wall of the living room in a fit of pique, one day late in the summer of 1984. I guess I was making up for winning $1000 in some Safeway bingo contest, and giving half of the winnings to the rest of the household.
At any rate, eventually the truth of my friend's petty racism, sexism, and homophobia slowly leaked out to those of us in our little white mostly-male party clique, back in its waning days when only two of its members actually lived in a house in town. Remember, back then (and in my white little college town) it was really easy to find out what racism, sexism, and homophobia were, but difficult to recognize them in oneself. During that late period, I remember hearing from him that he swore off pot, and that he apparently did so because the visions it brought to his brain were too much for him, or shall I say it (his brain). I don't smoke it anymore either, but that's not why. Even later in life I heard that he took a job as an auto sales rep in Orange County, California, where he grew up. My last contact with him was in calling him up on some New Year's Day, during the Rose Bowl. I was very proud of myself for having dialed his phone number and contacted him, after all those years. He basically told me "don't bother me now," because he was too busy watching the Rose Bowl on television to talk to me. What a joke. In my dream life I imagine that he still owns this album.
I guess what I want to say, by way of this little story, is this: The type of music one enjoys says nearly nothing about one's personality, one's politics, or one's social position. (This is why I don't pass judgment upon any of the other reviewers at Music Junkies Anonymous.) My suspicion that this was in fact so was confirmed by some guy (white, male, drove a sports car) who picked me up while I was hitchhiking in the 1980s, who told me that the guy who created the databases for Nixon's 1972 re-election campaign was, in fact, a Deadhead. I ought to generalize further on those grounds, and show how the recreational drugs one enjoys (or doesn't enjoy) say almost nothing about who one is, either.Instead, I think I'll review a CD. At any rate, my memories of this album are inseparable from memories of this stoner friend of mine, whom I described here.
At any rate, this album starts with "Carry On," a song that itself makes you high, no need for weed (you're putting a tar into your body anyway when you smoke that stuff, go visit http://www.chemfinder.com and type in "THC"). "Rejoice, rejoice, we have no choice but/ To carry on." "Teach Your Children," the next song, is a Graham Nash sentiment to intercede between the generations at a time in history when a "generation gap" was something worth talking about. I do believe the melody has been bought up by a corporation and used on a TV commercial to peddle insurance or something like that -- could someone please check on that?
"Almost Cut My Hair" is a David Crosby invocation of the symbolic power of long hair -- no, not for girls, that's beauty culture, beauty culture started out as the consolation meted out to women and girls for getting such a raw deal in social relations during the 19th century and thereafter. Crosby sung about long hair for GUYS. It meant something different in March of 1970 when Deja Vu was released, and it wasn't even that distant a memory back in the 1980s when my stoner friend played this album for me and for his friends. See, somewhere in historical time, short hair for guys became the standard. An old friend of mine once said that John Philip Sousa (the marching band guy) invented the standard. Anyway, cops used to hassle guys with long hair just for wearing it. Now long hair is the sort of thing grown by tough guys like WWF wrestlers. The Cros is there to help us remember when things were different. His hair is _still_ long. Classic paranoid electric guitar accompanies this one.
"Helpless," the next tune, starts out with pedal steel and "There is a town in north Ontario." Lots of nature imagery in "Helpless." Neil was very cool when I was an undergrad -- I knew more about Neil than CSN back then. This is not top-quality Neil, though, see my review of Neil's Comes A Time... Next is the rockin' version of "Woodstock," if you love this song you have to go out and buy Joni Mitchell's Ladies Of The Canyon with the melancholy version, and compare. "Deja Vu" is about the experience of deja vu. "We have all been here before," the boys harmonized. Great guitar, by Neil I think. "Our House" is a Graham Nash song for homebodies, "Such a cozy room/ The windows are illuminated/ By the sunshine through them/ Fiery gems for you," they harmonize and I'm sure this song has been on a TV commercial, too. "4 + 20" is a Stills sad song, "Country Girl" is another weird Neil song, with the other boys on harmony, I like the orchestral drum touches. "Everybody I Love You" doesn't pique my interest.
I tend to agree with George Starostin's overall assessment of CSN at http://starling.rinet.ru/music/csn.htm, but his negative assessment of this album is a bit too much for me. I like the Crosby songs and "Carry On" _way_ better than he does. Sure, the Graham Nash stuff is the sort of syrup that was destined for corporate colonization. And _some_ of the harmonies have a boring, "Byrdsy" quality to them, tho' Starostin overstates his case. But even though it's bland, this album does indeed draw you in, even if it doesn't have any of CSN's cool political stuff like "Chicago" or "Ohio". The rating is a compromise. Add a point if you're attached to this album like most of the reviewers at amazon.com; subtract at least a point if you're not. Subtract a point from your self-understanding if you used to be someone cool who liked this stuff but are now a self-absorbed car dealer.
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