This past Saturday, I was in an Uber cab with my daughter heading from New York Presbyterian Hospital-Columbia Cancer Center in Upper Manhattan to my home to my home in Lower Manhattan. Even though, I was ripped on painkillers, my neck was hurting (they told me I might experience some "minor discomfort", which is a little like putting someone in front of a Tsunami, and telling them, "You might experience a little moisture"). Anyway, we were stopped at a red traffic light, and I had Déjà Vu, and then again at the next light and once again at the following light. When I told my daughter of my déjà vu, she thought it was funny, and in a soft voice started singing:
"We have all been here before...We have all been here before".
(she was raised on Hippie music, Jazz and Blues)
So, here's Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young's 'Déjà Vu' (50th Anniversary Deluxe Edition), which is a 1 LP/4 CD boxed set.
24-bit/192 kHzstandard CD 16-bit, 44.1kHz format, which also sound pretty darn good.
For the freeload, tell us what your favorite song on 'Déjà Vu' is.
Definitely Country Girl - big Neil fan.
ReplyDeleteHelpless. Least favourite almost cut my hair, but that Crosby doc from a couple years ago was great.
ReplyDeleteThe 'Remember My Name' doc, was better than I expected.
DeleteCountry Girl
ReplyDeleteWhen I was younger, my friends and I liked Almost Cut My Hair. Letting our freak flag fly. Today it's probably 4 + 20.
ReplyDelete"Almost Cut My Hair" really captured the anti-authoritarian counterculture zeitgeist of the era.
Delete"Helpless" is a lovely evocation of the past, and Young's voice has rarely sounded so vulnerable. The arrangement leaves lots of space and is carefully constructed—altogether a high point in the CSNY canon.
ReplyDeleteAnother vote for Country Girl with the title track at second.
ReplyDeleteCarry On.
ReplyDeleteI like "Our House" ...don't ask why!! I just do!!
ReplyDeleteIt's the only song on the album written by Graham Nash perhaps?
DeleteTeach Your Children
ReplyDeleteCarry On
ReplyDeleteCarry On
ReplyDelete4 + 20
ReplyDeleteGbrand
There's really not a clunker on the album, but my favorite is "Country Girl".
ReplyDeleteDitto to Country Girl
ReplyDeleteFurther elaboration on why I chose Carry On. I've always loved Manassas, even more so than CSNY. I know its heretical to say so, but the latin underpinnings to Manassas always got to me. Carry On has that great break about half way throughh it, where Stills' inner latin side takes hold.
ReplyDeleteI've always liked Steven's (implied) Latin rhythm on "Dark Star" and "Fair Game" from the 1977 album 'CSN'.
DeleteThat 77 lp was a definite mixed bag, but it did have a few nice tunes. I met Stills a few times, and actually got absolutely shit faced with him once, and as best as my memory serves me from then, he unequivocally stated that Manassas was his favorite music eperience.
DeleteI have a Hi-Res version of Manassas that will be a forthcoming post.
DeleteIt's impossible for my to pick a favorite. This is one of two albums that I have never not listened to in its entirety (the other being Blood on the Tracks). I consider it single magnum opus. If I had to nitpick, the two tracks, House and Teach, sorta break the flow as too poppish (not withstanding Jerry Garcia on pedal steel). I fear the day they back a commercial for Remax or Huggies.
ReplyDeleteA while back, there was a hysterically vague TV commercial for Viagra. All the through the ad, groaning and growling and playing his harmonica, is Howlin' Wolf, doing "Smokestack Lightning". Somewhere, Sigmund Freud was laughing with delight.
DeleteWhat would Freud make of the Rolling Stones' Rice Krispies Jingle?
DeleteLink1
ReplyDeletehttps://workupload.com/file/PNVwrKMDGup
Link2
https://workupload.com/file/u4nnmdXA2cm
Carry On!
ReplyDeleteI thought Manassas was a masterpiece. Too bad they couldn't pull off a decent follow-up. Kinda like Derek & the Dominos.
ReplyDeleteI thought the 2nd lp was very good, but not as consistently great as the first. Wish they could have kept it going awhile longer to see what more they had.
DeleteSome of you might have seen/heard this last year, but I tried to make an improved version of that second Manassas album.
DeleteRight here, if you want to check whether I succeeded:
https://onebuckrecords.blogspot.com/2023/12/manassas-and-sophomore-album-curse-in.html
You most definitely succeeded!
DeleteHi OBG! Can't seem to access from your website (404 File Not Found)... Can you help?
DeleteI sure can!
Deletehttps://workupload.com/file/nvqDLpZD56p
Thx, OBJ!
DeleteThat comment wuz supposed to be up there after pmac...
ReplyDeleteWell for me with my very 'English' ear it has to be 'Our House' which is a delightful piece of (British written by Nash on Joni Mitchell's piano) Pop Psych. After that shouts for Country Girl and the title track.
ReplyDeleteThe great enigma of the album is their 'cover' (as Joni Mitchell in part wrote it for them) of Woodstock which sounds nothing like Mitchell's own interpretation or the CSN soundalike version by Matthews Southern Comfort which if it had been released by CS&N would have been an almost perfect successor to Marrakesh Express. In the CSNY version it seems for some reason as if the lyrics are almost secondary to the guitar solos going on. It loses all its potency and dramatic effect (compared to Mitchell's own version) by being given what in some ways is a heavy handed treatment.
I like 4+20 and Country Girl and agree that Joni Mitchell's version of Woodstock is far superior to the one on this LP.
ReplyDeleteAs Babs said, no clunkers, but Country Girl and the title track have the spookiest edge to them, and that and the sheer pop perfection of Our House are my choices for 'best'. This, and Spirit's 12 Dreams of Dr. Sardonicus, are the two iconic albums of my childhood, and both are still favorites. Dallas Taylor became a junkie plumber in SoCal who shot up in the back of the work van with my bud before getting clean and becoming a drug counselor.
ReplyDeleteC in California
PS Thanks tons for this, Babs! I can't think of a download I've more looked forward to diving into than this one.
You're welcome, C in California.
DeleteHelpless and Teach Your Children
ReplyDeleteIt's me, OBG, by the way, but for some reason I can't log in with my account this morning. Thanks, Google...
ReplyDeleteI always liked the opening title track personally -- creates such a dank off-kilter mystical vibe like they are truly tapped into the source for a fleeting moment. Of course "Our House" is the sober tin pan alley rejoinder to that ephemeral sense of divinity.
ReplyDelete