R.E.M. - An appreciation...

I didn’t get R.E.M. in the Eighties. Their music was something you heard on college radio, and I never listened to college radio. College radio program directors and I didn’t remotely have the same musical tastes. I was into classic rock, hard rock, heavy metal, and I began a love affair with the blues. I liked The Police, Pretenders, U2, and Peter Gabriel. I liked the Clash, and I liked English pop [there were quite a few one-hit wonders therein]. R.E.M. was one of those bands that was “political” with a small “p.” They weren’t partisan per se, but whatever political cause there was [environmentalism, what is now called “social justice,” gun control, abortion rights, Tibet, etc], you could count on R.E.M. [and singer Michael Stipe specifically] to lend their voices to the chorus. I wasn’t interested. I wanted to kill Communists. R.E.M. were critical darlings. Rolling Stone loved them. That fact alone made them suspect in my eyes. But the passage of forty years has a way of changing things. R.E.M. is but a memory, Rolling Stone discredited themselves with false rape story, and the Evil Empire is long gone. The issues R.E.M. were concerned with are still around, but they aren’t around to rub your face in them. Their music, which I avoided then, sounds a lot better today. Their music has endured, which is as it should be. I like it now.

Here it is thirteen years since the band called it a day, and only now can I appreciate the music. When Carol was in her final illness I became [and still am] ever more nostalgic for that time when we were the happiest – the 1980s. Given the sorry state of music these days, R.E.M.’s music sounds pretty damn good. What was the music’s charm? Spin Magazine described them as a cross between the Velvet Underground and the Byrds. Guitarist Peter Buck was a guitar anti-hero who eschewed guitar solos. His jangly Rickenbacker sound was the hook. Bassist Mike Mills and drummer Bill Berry were a rock-solid rhythm section. Singer Michael Stipe was the wildcard. One never knew quite what he was singing about. Perhaps he didn’t either. Maybe the hardcore faithful knew, but I grew up on I Am the Walrus and other John Lennon songs about nothing. What do I know? Stipe’s lyrics were oftentimes more than a bit obtuse. To compound that problem, he couldn’t enunciate to save his life. But somehow it worked. They had three distinctive phases – the college rock radio days when they were on an indie label [I.R.S. 1983-87], alt-rock superstardom after they moved to Warner Brothers [1988-96], and their final “three-legged dog” phase [Michael Stipe’s description] after Bill Berry retired from music [1997-2011].

Their fifteen studio albums can be neatly broken into each of the band’s phases [five each]. I know they didn’t plan it that way, that’s just how things worked out. Although the band were ubiquitous during their alt-rock superstardom [thank you, MTV], I find that my favorite R.E.M. came from their college radio days. It’s a cliché to like a band’s music before they move to a major label and hit the big time, but in this case it happens to ring true. I can skip their first two albums – Murmur [1983] and Reckoning [1984]. The songs were ok – the production was a bit thin. They hit musical paydirt with their next three albums – Fables of the Reconstruction [1985], Lifes Rich Pageant [1986], and Document [1987]. Fables sounds a bit hazy [as if that was a bad thing – it’s not], but Lifes Rich Pageant and Document are clear and punchy. One glance at my playlist below and you’ll know these are my favorite R.E.M. albums.

After Document, they signed with Warner Brothers. Green [1988] didn’t do anything for me – it still doesn’t. It hasn’t aged well. But the two albums that came next have aged very well. While U2, a band to whom R.E.M. was often compared, decided to become loud, detached rock stars with Achtung Baby, R.E.M. went the other way. After being on the road to support Green, they unplugged and made two rustic, mostly acoustic albums [Out of Time (1991) and Automatic for the People (1992)]. Where there were once loud guitars and drums, there were acoustic guitars, mandolins, pianos, and bouzoukis. They didn’t tour to support them. They didn’t need to. MTV was in full flight, still showing music videos, of which R.E.M.’s were in heavy rotation. These albums sold by the boatload. After five years of being off the road, the band decided to plug in again. This band was a different animal than the one that last toured five years previously. The Rickenbackers were out, to be replaced with Gibsons and Fenders, all solid-body guitars. There were some good songs [which I like very much] from Monster [1994] and New Adventures in Hi-Fi [1996], but their jangly calling card was missing. It was as if they were trying too hard to justify the megabucks they were making at Warner Brothers. Or maybe they were trying something different for the sake of being different, and maybe that was the point. I guess if you want to grow artistically you have to try different things.

Peter Buck used to tell interviewers that his vision of the band ending was to play a show on New Year’s Eve 1999, and when the clock struck midnight the band would break up. I confess that sounds like a cool way to end a band. However, it didn’t turn out that way. Bill Berry had a brain aneurysm on stage in Lausanne, Switzerland in 1995. He made a complete recovery, but it made him rethink his priorities. In 1997 he decided he didn’t want to be in the music business anymore. There were other things in life he wanted to do. He showed up to the band’s very first session for their next album [Up, 1998], gave them the bad news, and left. The remaining three guys didn’t want to stop, but soon they realized the extent of the hole created by Berry’s absence. He wasn’t just “the drummer.” He was a songwriter, and his lack of songwriting going forward upset the balance. It showed in the music. Exit Bill Berry, enter the drum machines, tape loops and synthesizers. These elements might work for some, but not for R.E.M. Electronic music was not their thing. Up showed they could do it, but it doesn’t work for an entire album. Three good songs an album doesn’t make. Reveal [2001] upped the electronic quotient with uninspiring results. There were no catchy hooks and most of the songs sounded the same. It was pretty dull. There are maybe four good songs, but that’s it. Even worse was Around the Sun [2004]. There’s one good song – Final Straw. Why? It’s an acoustic song with the electronics kept to a minimum.

I found a very good article about the last third of R.E.M.’s career by freelance author Brady Gerber. Here he writes:

“R.E.M.’s final chapter is the story of how a family publicly tried to carry on after losing one of its own. In that sense, these last albums loosely and unintentionally play out as different stages of real-life grief. The coldness of Up is the sound of shock and denial, with drum machines replacing the human Berry. Reveal, touted as the “happy” record upon its release, is full of aimless and muted anger, but in that Brian Wilson way of feeling helpless and bitter on a beautiful day. Around the Sun, having nothing to say, awkwardly tries to bargain with new ideas…”

Damn, I wish I could write that well. Despite the doom of the first three albums post-Berry, the R.E.M. story has a happy ending. The fourth album of the period, Accelerate [2008] is a damn good album. It’s the album that Monster and New Adventures in Hi-Fi should have been. The synths were gone, the guitars were back, and they were loud. Michael Stipe enunciated! There’s an energy that was missing from Up, Reveal, and Around the Sun. This quality carried over to Collapse Into Now [2011]. The band found their mojo again, and having done so, they thought it was a good time to put R.E.M. to bed. One has to admire a band for working through a rough patch, rediscovering why they became beloved by many, and having the sense to quit while they were ahead. Not only did retire somewhat gracefully, they’re still friends today.

Tony’s R.E.M. playlist
Fall On Me [Lifes Rich Pageant, 1986]
The One I Love [Document, 1987]
Cuyahoga [Lifes Rich Pageant, 1986]
Swan Swan H [Lifes Rich Pageant, 1986]
Driver 8 [Fables of the Reconstruction, 1985]
Feeling Gravitys Pull [Fables of the Reconstruction, 1985]
Maps and Legends [Fables of the Reconstruction, 1985]
Old Man Kensey [Fables of the Reconstruction, 1985]
Begin the Begin [Lifes Rich Pageant, 1986]
King of Birds [Document, 1987]
Oddfellows Local 151 [Document, 1987]
The Flowers of Guatemala [Lifes Rich Pageant, 1986]
Welcome to the Occupation [Document, 1987]
Disturbance At the Heron House [Document, 1987]
Fireplace [Document, 1987]
Bad Day [Document, 1987]
Man on the Moon [Automatic for the People, 1992]
The Great Beyond [Man on the Moon (Music from the Motion Picture), 1999]
Losing My Religion [Out of Time, 1991]
Drive [Automatic for the People, 1992]
Low [Out of Time, 1991]
Try Not to Breathe [Automatic for the People, 1992]
Half a World Away [Out of Time, 1991]
Monty Got a Raw Deal [Automatic for the People, 1992]
Fretless [Out of Time, 1991]
Crush With Eyeliner [Monster, 1994]
Bang and Blame [Monster, 1994]
I Don’t Sleep, I Dream [Monster, 1994]
You [Monster, 1994]
New Test Leper [New Adventures in Hi-Fi, 1996]
Undertow [New Adventures in Hi-Fi, 1996]
Bittersweet Me [New Adventures in Hi-Fi, 1996]
Suspicion [Up, 1998]
Diminished / I'm Not Over You [Up, 1998]
The Lifting [Reveal, 2001]
Imitation Of Life [Reveal, 2001]
Final Straw [Around the Sun, 2004]
Houston [Accelerate, 2008]
Until the Day Is Done [Accelerate, 2008]
Living Well Is the Best Revenge [Accelerate, 2008]
Supernatural Superserious [Accelerate, 2008]
Horse to Water [Accelerate, 2008]
Discoverer [Collapse Into Now, 2011]
Me, Marlon Brando, Marlon Brando and I [Collapse Into Now, 2011]
All the Best [Collapse Into Now, 2011]

Stephen Stills - Manassas

After their summer 1970 tour, Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young imploded. With 20/20 hindsight, it seemed inevitable. As if having four highly opinionated musicians with titanic egos to match wasn’t enough, Stills’ girlfriend Rita Coolidge decided dump him and run off with Graham Nash. David Crosby wrote the coolest song of his career about the entire saga, Cowboy Movie. She was the little Indian girl in the story [Raven], Stills was the fast gunslinger from the South [Eli], and Nash was the group’s dynamite expert [The Duke]. Stills’ subsequent album after CSNY’s implosion [Stephen Stills (1970)] was a very fine album that mixed folk, rock, blues, and gospel. It is the only album to feature both Eric Clapton [Go Back Home] and Jimi Hendrix [Old Times Good Times]. Stills dedicated his album to “James Marshall Hendrix,” who died two months before its November 1970 release. The second album incorporated horns, and this is where things began to slip. Stephen Stills 2 was ok, but not as good as the first album. The Memphis Horns were just NOT a good fit.

The beginnings of Stills’ third album after CSNY started with a 1971 chance meeting Stills had with Chris Hillman in Cleveland. Stills was on tour with bassist Calvin “Fuzzy” Samuels, drummer Dallas Taylor, and the Memphis Horns, promoting his first two solo albums. Hillman later opined that Stills and his band sounded really shitty that night in Cleveland. I’ve heard the Live at Berkeley 1971 release – he wasn’t wrong. Hillman’s Flying Burrito Brothers were having their own problems with losing money and continuous turnover in personnel [most notably Gram Parsons and Bernie Leadon]. Stills and Hillman had known each other since the mid-1960s. Stills was with Buffalo Springfield while Hillman was in the Byrds. But in 1971 both men were at somewhat of a career crossroads. Hillman was weary of the chaos that was the Flying Burrito Brothers, and Stills wanted a foil with whom he could collaborate. Stills jettisoned the horn section, and went to Miami to record with Samuels, Taylor and two other musicians from his band – keyboardist Paul Harris and percussionist Joe Lala. He also invited Hillman and fellow Burrito Brother Al Perkins to join them. Magic ensued and Manassas was born.

Stills earned the nickname “Captain Many Hands” because he can not only play guitar, he also plays bass, assorted keyboards, and percussion. He handled most of the instrumental work on Crosby, Stills and Nash’s debut album as well as his first two solo albums. But Manassas is a different animal. It is the work of a band. Stills still played lots of parts, but he didn’t have to do all the work this time. Hillman played rhythm guitar [as opposed to his usual bass as he did in the Byrds and the Burrito Brothers] and mandolin. Al Perkins is not only proficient on guitar but is also an excellent steel guitarist. Paul Harris can play piano in any style. Stills, Hillman, Samuels and Lala sang four-part harmonies that sound better to my ears than those sung by CSN.

How does Manassas sound? The debut solo album effortlessly mixed folk, blues (acoustic and electric), hard rock, R&B and gospel. Manassas does that and more, adding country, bluegrass, and Latin textures to the mix. The songs of the album’s four sides are thematically grouped. Side One is The Raven [three guesses what the theme here is]. Latin-influenced blues rock, the sides five songs are arranged such that there are no gaps between the songs, like the medley on the second side of Abbey Road. The band would play these songs as-is from start to finish in concert. Side Two [The Wilderness] is the country/bluegrass side of the band. Chris Hillman and Al Perkins show of their talents here, bringing the Burrito Brothers vibe. There are steel guitars, fiddles, mandolins, acoustic guitars, and lush vocal harmonies that would make David Crosby and Graham Nash jealous. The Wilderness is the contemplative, back-to-nature side. One can experience the healing power of the Rockies [Colorado], lick his wounds and lament a lost love [So Begins the Task], then try to recover from it [Jesus Gave Love Away for Free]. Conversely, Fallen Eagle is a bluegrass protest song about helicopter-flying ranchers who kill endangered golden eagles for fun. Don't Look At My Shadow takes a detour to Bakersfield.

Side Three is Consider. This is the folk/folk rock side of Stephen Stills, Chris Hillman and Al Perkins. It Doesn’t Matter [which would appear with different lyrics on Firefall’s debut album in 1976] is my favorite song on Manassas. I first heard it in Fort Collins and it always reminds me of Carol. Johnny’s Garden is Stills’ tribute to the gardener who worked at the English house he bought from Ringo Starr. Bound to Fall is a Stills/Hillman duet that again strays into Burrito Brothers territory. The Love Gangster is a co-write with Bill Wyman that goes back to rock territory. It doesn’t fit with the rest of Side Three, but because of the constraints of vinyl it had to go somewhere. It is a good segue to Side Four - Rock & Roll Is Here to Stay. Right Now addresses Rita Coolidge running off with Graham Nash. Stills didn’t drop any names, but… What to Do is a commentary on CSNY. The Treasure [Take One] is “jam city.” There’s a better, shorter version to be found on Stills’ box set Carry On. Manassas ends with Blues Man, a solo acoustic blues dedicated to Jimi Hendrix, Duane Allman, and Al Wilson [of Canned Heat]. It’s a companion piece to Black Queen from Stills’ first album.

Manassas is for Stephen Stills what Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs is for Eric Clapton – it is both a masterpiece and a career high water mark. And like Derek and the Dominos, the band that made Manassas didn’t last long. Chris Hillman was distracted by an ill-fated Byrds reunion in 1973, while Atlantic Records [and Ahmet Ertegun in particular] were more interested in a CSNY reunion, which happened in 1974. What a shame. Manassas is better than anything he did with CSN [and sometimes Y].

Albums I Listen To The Most

There I was… I haven’t written a music blog in a while, because after more than 300 entries, what else is there to write about? Then I found something on YouTube – “Ten Albums I Listen to the Most.” If you’ve read my blog before, you know that I don’t usually listen to “albums” per se – more like “playlists” [it is the digital age, after all]. I like compilations, especially ones that I can make. I can cherry-pick what I like and forget the rest. But where do I do the cherry picking? On closer inspection my playlists tend to skew toward albums that I really like a lot. There are times where I will listen to a lot of one thing. This week it could be Motorhead. Next week it could be The Clash, or Waylon Jennings. Who knows – maybe next month I’ll have a “what am I listening to this month.” But there are some albums that are my “go to” albums. Yes, there are a couple of Beatles-related things here, but unlike my teenage years this isn’t “all Beatles all the time.” Even I have my limits. Unlike the creator of the video that inspired this blog entry, I can’t narrow it down to ten, but I’ll try to keep it short. Here they are…

1.      The Allman Brothers Band At Fillmore East [1971] – The original six [Duane Allman, Gregg Allman, Dickey Betts, Berry Oakley, Butch Trucks. Jaimoe] recorded four shows on a weekend in March 1971 and captured lightning in a bottle. The original four-sided vinyl release contained seven [!] songs. There was so much material recorded that they had two and a half vinyl sides leftover for Eat a Peach. When it was time to do a deluxe version of At Fillmore East [2003], all the songs from the original release were there, Polydor added the live tracks from Eat a Peach and made a double CD package with thirteen songs. This is the version I listen to. In 2014, Polydor went the whole hog and released all the shows recorded in March 1971, and also the final-ever show at the Fillmore East [June 27, 1971]. I passed on the super deluxe version. The double CD was enough for me. My only complaint – no Dreams. They played it at the Fillmore West six weeks earlier – why not the Fillmore East?

The songs

Statesboro Blues / Trouble No More / Don’t Keep Me Wonderin’ / Done Somebody Wrong / Stormy Monday / One Way Out / In Memory of Elizabeth Reed / You Don’t Love Me / Midnight Rider

Hot ‘Lanta / Whipping Post / Mountain Jam / Drunken Hearted Boy

2.      Abbey Road [The Beatles, 1969] – This isn’t their best album [I think Revolver is], but it’s my favorite. It’s the last one they recorded, and it’s their best-sounding album. George Harrison’s two best Beatles songs are here [Something, Here Comes the Sun], as is John Lennon’s last great Beatles song [Come Together]. Ringo’s Octopus’s Garden is thought by some to be a children’s song [it’s not], but there’s some tight playing from all four Beatles and great guitar work from George. The medley on side two was a novel idea that worked fairly well. The only thing that keeps Abbey Road from being the perfect Beatles album is Paul McCartney’s Maxwell’s Silver Hammer. It has been and always will be a stupid, stupid song. “Granny music” indeed – just as crappy as When I’m 64, Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da, and Honey Pie. I don’t know what possessed Paul McCartney to put out such dreck. I loathe and despise this song [as did John, George and Ringo]. But even with this significant flaw, Abbey Road is still a great album. I wished there was more to follow, but these guys were done. They broke up at the right time.

3.      All Things Must Pass [George Harrison, 1970] – Of all the albums that came after the Beatles breakup, this one is the best. As much as I like John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band [1970], All Things Must Pass for me is the closest thing I will ever get to an Abbey Road follow-up. To my ears it sounds the most like Abbey Road. Paul’s first album [McCartney, 1970] had its moments [Maybe I’m Amazed, Every Night], but it was a decidedly homemade, lo-fi exercise. John’s album was a stark contrast to the slick Abbey Road. Ringo’s first solo venture was Sentimental Journey [1970], a collection of standards. ATMP was the best-sounding of all the immediate post-Beatles albums [having Phil Spector as a co-producer didn’t hurt], and most of the songs are of the highest quality. There isn’t a bad one in the bunch. I even like the extra disc of studio jams, cut mostly by musicians who would become Derek & the Dominoes later in 1970. This album demonstrated it was wrong for Lennon and McCartney to ignore George’s songwriting.

4.      Who’s Next [The Who, 1971] – After two years of flogging Tommy, Pete Townshend searched for a new idea to follow it. After much thought, he found one in the form of Lifehouse. He hit on an idea that combined spirituality, music, and a dystopian future. The problem with the concept was that he was the only one who got it. The rest of the Who were puzzled. The concept was hard to explain. Fifty years later it’s still hard to explain. After a year of trying, PT just couldn’t get the idea to work. He was about forty years ahead of his time. Lifehouse was supposed to be a double album, like Tommy. Carol and I had a running argument over which was the best Who song ever. She said it was Baba O’Riley. I said it was Won’t Get Fooled Again [we never settled the argument]. One begins Who’s Next, the other one ends it. Bargain, Behind Blue Eyes, The Song Is Over, and John Entwistle’s My Wife are sandwiched in between. Those are some pretty good songs. As good as Who’s Next is, it could have been better. Pure And Easy and I Don't Even Know Myself are better songs than Getting In Tune and Love Ain’t For Keeping. I’m on the fence about Going Mobile.

5.      Machine Head [Deep Purple, 1972] – We all came out to Montreux… On Made In Japan, Ian Gillan says of Machine Head “it tells the story of how we recorded it and what went wrong when we did it…” Smoke on the Water is one of rock’s most recognized, most indestructible riffs ever. But Machine Head has some much more – Highway Star, Lazy, Space Truckin’, Pictures of Home, Maybe I’m a Leo, and Never Before [probably the weakest track but still good]. My only complaint about Machine Head is what was left off – When a Blind Man Cries. As Ian Gillan said, “Ritchie no likee.” This is Deep Purple’s perfect album, and that’s saying something because they also have Deep Purple In Rock.

6.      Permanent Waves and Moving Pictures [Rush, 1980 & 1981] – In the 1970s, Rush did three albums of progressive rock that had long [sometimes side-long] songs with complex arrangements and science fiction themes [2112, A Farewell to Kings, Hemispheres].   As good as the albums were, you didn’t hear much of them on the radio, except maybe late at night when DJs could still play whatever they wanted. And let’s face it – one can take only so much of Geddy Lee communicating with bats. But starting with Permanent Waves, the songs became shorter, the arrangements were tighter, and Geddy Lee toned down the vocals. The Spirit of Radio opened the floodgates. More and more Rush songs began to be heard on the radio. While synthesizers had been a part of Rush’s sound [think Xanadu], here they come forward on songs like Jacob’s Ladder and Entre Nous. There isn’t a note wasted on Permanent Waves. All of these elements contributed to Rush becoming more “radio-friendly”.  The only “epic” is Natural Science.  I remember Geddy Lee telling Rolling Stone about making Permanent Waves that it was “time to come out of the fog and put down something concrete”. If there’s such a thing as a “perfect Rush album”, Moving Pictures is it.  Moving Pictures is the ‘big brother’ of Permanent Waves.  Synthesizers begin to come to the fore - the single Tom Sawyer and all of the album’s second side.  We get an unforgettable song about the price of fame [Limelight], fast cars in a world where they are banned [Red Barchetta], and an instrumental [YYZ].  Witch Hunt begins a three-album arc of songs about what scares people [it’s subtitled Fear, Part 3].  For me, the centerpiece is The Camera Eye.  This song is a very good balance between the old [Lerxst’s guitars] and the new [Geddy’s synths], and so it was for Permanent Waves and Moving Pictures. After these two albums, there was an imbalance between guitars and keyboards that wouldn’t be corrected until 1994 with the release of Counterparts.

7.      Master of Reality [Black Sabbath, 1971] – This is my favorite Sabbath album [with Vol. 4 and Sabotage close behind]. It must be the band’s favorite album as well, because when Carol and I saw them in San Jose in 1999, they played seven of the album’s eight songs [they didn’t play Solitude]. To these ears, Master of Reality is Sabbath’s heaviest album. Tony Iommi tuned his guitar down three steps as did Geezer Butler with his bass. The resulting sound was darker with a significant sludge factor.

8.      Physical Graffiti [Led Zeppelin, 1975] – Ask any Zeppelin fan what their favorite album is, chances are the answer will be the LZ IV or LZ II. Not so for me. Most of this was recorded in 1974. There were too many songs for a single album, but not enough for a double. They had leftover songs from the LZ III, LZ IV, and Houses of the Holy. Physical Graffiti has two blemishes – Down by the Seaside and Black Country Woman [I can’t stand Robert Plant screeching about having beer in his face]. The first and second sides are perfect.

9.      The Dark Side of the Moon [Pink Floyd, 1973] – What is understood need not be discussed…

10.  Workingman’s Dead/American Beauty [Grateful Dead, 1970] –American Beauty could well be sides three and four of Workingman’s Dead as they are similar. Carol’s favorite Dead song was Box of Rain. My favorite is New Speedway Boogie [Bertha is a very close second]. Box of Rain is Phil Lesh’s ode to his dying father, while New Speedway Boogie is a commentary about Altamont [Jerry Garcia pleading “one way or another this darkness got to give…”]. On both albums the Dead dispensed with psychedelic jams and concentrated on songcraft.

11.  Morrison Hotel/L.A. Woman [The Doors, 1970/71] – These are the first Doors albums I ever bought. Jim Morrison supposedly “whipped it out” at a concert in Miami in March 1969. The Soft Parade [1969] had horns and strings, two things that shouldn’t be on any Doors album anywhere. What to do after the disaster that was 1969? Seek solace in the blues. I wouldn’t go so far to call these “the blues” [except Crawling King Snake] but they are “bluesy.” Gone was the psychedelic acid-drenched music from the first two albums. The Doors became a hard rock bar band here. The music was no frills, no bullshit. One thing hadn’t changed - this music sounds best when played at night, especially L.A. Woman and Riders on the Storm.

12.  Superunknown [Soundgarden, 1994] – Not quite as old as the rest of the albums on this list, this is a monster of an album. Of its fifteen songs, Soundgarden played nine of them when Carol and I saw them at Red Rocks in 2011. These guys could be as dark and sludgy as Black Sabbath and as psychedelic as the Beatles. Superunknown is dark, moody, fast, relentless, intense, and thunderous. It’s also plodding when it needs to be. In my opinion, it is the last truly great album made by anybody. I miss Chris Cornell.

Tony's Picks - Dave Alvin

I saw Dave Alvin live once, though I didn't know it at the time. It was the summer of 1983 at Red Rocks. He was in a band called the Blasters, and they were opening for Eric Clapton. I had no idea who these guys were. They played music that sounded like a throwback to the 1950s. They looked the part too – greased back hair and blues bowling shirts.  KILO never played their music, so I had no clue about them. There wasn’t much of a music press back then. Rolling Stone was more interested in stuff like Duran Duran and various and sundry New Wave shit. They were no help – I still no clue. The Blasters were an unknown quantity to me. I couldn't name a single song of theirs. They played for about thirty minutes. Their music wasn't bad, but I just wasn't interested. I was there to see Clapton, who had yet to enter his Adult Contemporary Hell phase. While I didn't rush out to buy any of their music, I hadn't forgotten about them either.

About three months ago I was searching iTunes for new music when I came upon a couple of albums by Dave Alvin [Eleven Eleven and From An Old Guitar: Rare and Unreleased Tracks]. I know him by his reputation for being a damn fine guitar player. I knew he wrote Long White Cadillac [Dwight Yoakam]. I wasn’t sure what to expect, but what I did find was pure roots music gold. Alvin once wrote on his Bandcamp page “There are two types of folk music: quiet folk music and loud folk music. I play both.” This is the best description I have found anywhere that describes the music that writers classify as ‘Americana.’ Alvin’s music incorporates elements of blues, R & B, rockabilly, country, jazz, gospel, Western swing, Tex-Mex and Cajun music. Gram Parsons had a different name for it – he called it Cosmic American Music. Whatever one chooses to call it, I call it my latest musical addiction. As addicts are wont to do, I’m always searching for my next fix. Right now, Dave Alvin is the next fix that will do for awhile.

A fellow Scorpio, Dave Alvin was born November 11, 1955 [“Eleven Eleven”] in Downey, California. He and his older brother Phil [two years older] used to frequent places like the Ash Grove and the Shrine Auditorium. They would see the likes of Big Joe Turner, T-Bone Walker, Buddy Guy, Lightnin' Hopkins, and Johnny "Guitar" Watson. Not only did the Alvin brothers watch these guys, they got to be friends and hang out with them. They learned roots music from the source. They and their friends formed The Blasters in 1979. They were rockabilly but a little bit more, including blues, R&B and country. Their music could easily have come from Sun Records. The Blasters were contemporaries of Dwight Yoakam, Los Lobos and X. In the early 1980s they weren’t in the picture as far as musical interests go. English hard rock and heavy metal and American blues rock were more my speed, but as they say, better late than never. All was not well in the band, though. Phil Alvin was of the mind of “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” Dave wrote most of the songs and wanted to go in a more singer/songwriter direction. The Blasters lasted three albums before they imploded. Phil got his way, and Dave went solo. Of the band, Dave Alvin said: 

“The Blasters were 5 guys who all grew up together loving old blues, rockabilly, etc. So we were/are all brothers and we all played together and fought like brothers. It wasn’t just Phil and I who were fighting. We all did. That emotional intensity between all five of us is why I think we were such a tight and, well, intense live band. I left for too many reasons to go into but that intensity that I just mentioned, got to be to too much to take on a daily basis.”

Eleven Eleven and From an Old Guitar were the hook. I figured that whatever he did in between the two albums had to be good as well. He recorded two albums with Phil - Common Ground: Dave Alvin & Phil Alvin Play and Sing the Songs of Big Bill Broonzy [2014] and Lost Time [2015] – and one with Jimmie Dale Gilmore - Downey to Lubbock [2018]. All three albums were done with the same band, The Guilty Men. The two albums with Phil were blues records. The album with Jimmie Dale Gilmore, the “hippie country singer” with a high lonesome voice, was a little of everything [blues, country, folk, rock]. It’s all good and I was “all in” – I had to get the rest. Not only is the choice of material first-rate, but I like the band. Alvin plays with another guitarist [Chris Miller] who plays slide. They trade solos much like two guitar players from a band of renown from Georgia. Phil Alvin and Jimmie Dale Gilmore are great singers. Dave Alvin isn’t as good, but he doesn’t embarrass himself, either. He does that “half-singing, half-talking” thing the way Frank Zappa did.  Alvin and Jimmie Dale Gilmore are recording their second album together as I write this. It will be mine!

Dave Alvin’s music is fairly eclectic, and I can put it into three different “boxes”: blues rock, singer/songwriter, and musicologist/song interpreter.

Blues rock

Romeo's Escape [1987] – After Alvin left The Blasters, he joined The Knitters [recording Poor Little Critter on the Road], a country folk offshoot of X. In a “seemed like a good idea at the time” moment, he joined X, long enough to record See How We Are. But Alvin wanted to go his own way. This album was Alvin’s first as a singer, about which he said:

“I had never sung before, and I had to get drunk to do it. So when I listen to it, I hear a drunk caterwauling. Now, I'm more gentle about it. It's taken a lot of years to figure out how to sing.”

Here Alvin rearranged three Blasters songs [Long White Cadillac, Border Radio and Jubilee Train] and the one song he wrote for X [Fourth of July].

Blue Blvd [1991] & Museum of Heart [1993] – If Raymond Chandler wrote songs instead of novels, this is what they would sound like. The songs are very good, the musicianship is top-notch. I have only one complaint – the drums are too loud. If I was “king for a day” I would fix that and put them lower in the mix. Dave Alvin’s songs don’t need an arena rock sound.

Ashgrove [2004] – After two albums of acoustic music [King of California and Blackjack David], Alvin plugs back in and looks back. The album alternates between blues rock and country folk. The opening title song describes the long-closed LA nightclub where Dave Alvin and brother Phil would see their musical heroes – Big Joe Turner, Lightnin’ Hopkins, the Rev. Gary Davis and many more. Not only does he look back but he also describes his own life of being a musician and all it entails. The blues are spread out in Black Sky, Black Haired Girl, Sinful Daughter, and Out of Control. He leaves the blues of the Ashgrove and heads for Texas where he does a country tune, Rio Grande. Another country tune, Nine Volt Heart, is a nostalgic look back on the importance of the radio in peoples’ lives. The hushed, fingerpicked The Man In The Bed is a eulogy to his late father. Somewhere in Time co-written with Los Lobos’ David Hidalgo and Louis Pérez which appeared on their release The Ride, released a month before Alvin’s version here. Alvin’s band of minstrels, the Guilty Men [including Greg Leisz], are superb.

Singer/Songwriter

King of California [1994] – Alvin decided, after three records with an electric band, to cut his next batch of tunes acoustically. Relieved of the burden of having to compete with a loud band, Alvin found his voice, to which he credits producer Greg Leisz. As with Romeo’s Escape, Alvin decided to re-record several songs from his back catalog [Border Radio, Barn Burning, Fourth of July, Bus Station, Little Honey, Every Night About This Time]. These songs from loud electric bands [The Blasters, X] are done in a quiet, intimate setting. He added some well-chosen covers [East Texas Blues (Whistlin' Alex Moore), Mother Earth (Memphis Slim), and What Am I Worth (George Jones), a duet with Syd Straw].  The 25^th anniversary release also includes a duet with Katy Moffat (The Cuckoo), and a very fine cover of Merle Haggard’s Kern River. The addition of several covers goes a bit against the “singer/songwriter” thing, but it does add to a quitter, acoustic direction that accommodates Alvin’s limited singing range. He’s not a shouter like his brother Phil, but with these songs he doesn’t need to be. The quiet arrangements and his low baritone voice are a perfect fit.

Blackjack David [1998] – Blackjack David picks up where King of California left off. Like King of California,  Blackjack David  is produced by Greg Leisz and was recorded with pretty much the same team that created King of California. Unlike King of California, Blackjack David has only one cover – the title track. The two albums complement each other very well.

Dave Alvin & the Guilty Women [2009] - Dave Alvin & the Guilty Women [2009] was done with an all-female band [most of whom are from Austin], excellent musicians all. The most notable collaborator is Cindy Cashdollar on dobro and steel guitar. The drummer is Lisa Pankrantz, who replaced Don Heffington in the Guilty Men [making them the Guilty Ones] after he passed away. There are two fiddle players [Laurie Lewis and Amy Farris], one other guitarist [Nina Gerber], bassist Sarah Brown, and singer Christy McWilson. The band came together as a one-off to play San Francisco’s Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival, but Alvin like playing with these musicians so much he wanted to cut an album with them.  The music combined folk, blues, rock and roll, Western swing,  bluegrass, R&B, rockabilly and Cajun. They change the Blasters’ Marie Marie into a zydeco number. Boss of the Blues is a Western swing nod to Big Joe Turner, with whom Dave and Phil Alvin got to know and hang out as teenagers when they would see him at the LA nightclub the Ash Grove. Nana and Jimi is about Dave’s mom dropping him off at the LA Forum to see a Jimi Hendrix concert. Downey Girl is about Karen Carpenter. They even recorded Que Sera, Sera [!].

Musicologist/Song Interpreter

Public Domain [2000] – As the title suggests, these are traditional songs that have been around so long nobody knows who wrote them  Instead of note-for-note recreations that would be museum pieces, Dave Alvin does these old folk, country and blues tunes in a most nontraditional way.

West of the West [2006] - Unlike his collection of traditional folk and blues songs, this one is a tribute to California songwriters. I am unfamiliar with some of the songwriters - Kate Wolf, Kevin Blackie Farrell, Richard Berry, Jim Ringer. Conversely, everybody knows the others – Merle Haggard, Jerry Garcia, John Fogerty, Jackson Browne, Tom Waits, and Brian Wilson. He also gives Los Lobos a shout. Wait! A Beach Boys song? Yes, Surfer Girl. It has to be heard to be believed. Dave Alvin the musicologist gives us a California history lesson in song.

I put the two albums with Phil Alvin and the one album with Jimmie Dale Gilmore in the Musicologist/Song Interpreter box

Just when I thought I’d heard all of Dave Alvin there was to hear, along came The Third Mind. He read a biography of Miles Davis that detailed how he made such works like Bitches Brew and Jack Johnson. Miles gathered musicians in a studio, picked a key and a groove then had the musicians play for days while he recorded the whole thing. Once recorded, Miles and producer Teo Macero would edit the music into compositions. Alvin had the same idea. He said “I had a crazy idea and was looking for musicians who perhaps didn’t think it was so insane.”  Alvin had a safety net that Miles Davis didn’t have [or need]. He picked music that was associated with the 1960s underground from the likes of Michael Bloomfield, Fred Neil, Alice Coltrane, and Roky Erikson. The musicians didn’t rehearse. They decided on a key and started recording to see what happened. They sat in a circle, watched and listened to what each other played, and improvised, as much as one can within the confines of known songs. Hearing an improvised 16-minute take on Bloomfield’s East West is well worth the purchase. It’s a tuneful psychedelic freakout.

In 1980, a guy named Chris Desjardins [aka Chris D.] formed a punk band in Los Angeles [The Flesh Eaters]. This band had three members of The Blasters [Dave Alvin, drummer Bill Bateman, and sax player Steve Berlin] and two guys from X [bassist John Doe and percussionist D.J. Bonebrake]. They recorded one album - A Minute to Pray, A Second to Die [1981]. Band members came and went with regularity. Chris D. recorded six more Flesh Eaters albums between then and 2004. In 2007, the ”all-star” lineup reformed and played shows whenever schedules allowed. They went back into the studio in 2019 and created I Used to Be Pretty. Of the album’s eleven songs, there are two new songs, three covers, and the rest are new recordings of songs from the previous six albums. Alvin gets to be just the guitar player here. Alvin gets to rip your face off on Peter Green’s The Green Manalishi, and the 13-minute finale Ghost Cave Lament reminds me of those really long Doors songs like The End and When the Music’s Over.

What about that Blasters music that I ignored forty years ago? In 2002 Rhino Records compiled Testament: The Complete Slash Recordings. I didn’t feel like paying $55 for the set on Amazon, but I found two live recordings from the reunited original band - Trouble Bound [2002] and The Blasters Live: Going Home [2004]. Of the 33 songs between the two albums, only four of them appear on both. This is a comprehensive enough overview of the Blasters, and it’s live [even better].

Here's my recommended playlist:

The Green Manalishi [The Flesh Eaters, I Used to Be Pretty – 2019]

Downey to Lubbock [Dave Alvin & Jimmie Dale Gilmore, Downey to Lubbock – 2018]

World's in a Bad Condition [Dave Alvin & Phil Alvin, Lost Time – 2015]

Mister Kicks [Dave Alvin & Phil Alvin, Lost Time – 2015]

Silverlake [Dave Alvin & Jimmie Dale Gilmore, Downey to Lubbock – 2018]

Harlan County Line [Eleven Eleven – 2011]

Johnny Ace Is Dead [Eleven Eleven – 2011]

Dirty Nightgown [Eleven Eleven – 2011]

Who's Been Here [From an Old Guitar – 2020]

Highway 61 Revisited [From an Old Guitar – 2020]

Sonora's Death Row [West of the West – 2006]

Murrietta's Head [Eleven Eleven – 2011]

Mobile Blue [From an Old Guitar – 2020]

Signal Hill Blues [Eleven Eleven – 2011]

Downey Girl [Dave Alvin & the Guilty Women – 2009]

Marie Marie [Dave Alvin & the Guilty Women – 2009]

Beautiful City 'Cross the River [From an Old Guitar – 2020]

Never Trust a Woman [Eleven Eleven – 2011]

On the Way Downtown [From an Old Guitar – 2020]

Southern Flood Blues [Dave Alvin & Phil Alvin, Common Ground – 2014]

Wee Baby Blues [Dave Alvin & Phil Alvin, Lost Time – 2015]

Get Together [Dave Alvin & Jimmie Dale Gilmore, Downey to Lubbock – 2018]

Dry River [Blue Blvd. – 1991]

Andersonville [Blue Blvd. – 1991]

Thirty Dollar Room [Museum of Heart – 1993]

As She Slowly Turns to Leave [Museum of Heart – 1993]

Stranger in Town [Museum of Heart – 1993]

King of California [King of California – 1994]

Fourth of July [King of California – 1994]

Border Radio [King of California – 1994]

East Texas Blues [King of California – 1994]

Bus Station [King of California – 1994]

Mother Earth [King of California – 1994]

Blackjack David [Blackjack David - 1998]

California Snow [Blackjack David - 1998]

Evening Blues [Blackjack David - 1998]

1968 [Blackjack David - 1998]

Shenandoah [Public Domain: Songs From The Wild Land – 2000]

Out in California [The Best of the Hightone Years – 2008]

Ashgrove [Ashgrove – 2004]

Rio Grande [Ashgrove – 2004]

Black Sky [Ashgrove – 2004]

Black Haired Girl [Ashgrove – 2004]

Loser [West of the West – 2006]

Kern River [West of the West – 2006]

East West [The Third Mind, 2020]

Ghost Cave Lament [The Flesh Eaters, I Used to Be Pretty – 2019] 

Gordon Lightfoot: If You Could Read My Mind

Geddy Lee [Rush] - “He sent a message to the world that we’re not just a bunch of lumberjacks and hockey players up here. We’re capable of sensitivity and poetry."

I was in California a couple of weeks ago on business. I was looking to see if I could see any live music while I was there. I don’t remember which venue it was, but I saw an ad for a Gordon Lightfoot show [and a slew of others] in Anaheim. Underneath the ad, however, was the word ‘canceled.’ I knew he hadn’t been in the best of health. Seeing such a notice didn’t surprise me, but it did make me think that something was amiss. I heard yesterday morning that he had passed, and I thought back to something I had seen on Amazon Prime a few years ago. Shortly after he turned 80, I saw this documentary called Gordon Lightfoot: If You Read My Mind. As music documentaries go I thought it was pretty good. It wasn’t a hagiography, nor was it a ‘Behind the Music’ kind of thing [but it skirted the edge]. One thing I liked about this film was the stories behind some of the songs, and insights to his songwriting process. When it comes to music, I like learning about ‘how the sausage is made.’ As told by the man himself [and a few others], here are those stories.

For Lovin' Me [1966] – “I’ll never write another song like that as long as I live. I’m not talking about the quality of the song; I’m talking about the content. That song was a very offensive song, for a guy to write, who’s married, with a couple of kids. At the time I was so naïve that it just came out of my brain. You know, like…I didn’t know what chauvinism was. I was married when I wrote that song. So what do you think that Brita thought about it? In the meantime, Peter, Paul & Mary recorded it pretty soon. So did Johnny Cash and a couple of others. And the next thing I know, I hear it on the radio. All of a sudden, boom, it’s a hit. There’s a great deal of regret there. I guess I don’t like who I am. I vowed I would never write another song that bizarre again, where I said some of the things that were said. And so, I stopped doing it about twenty years ago, because I just don’t like it.” He was the unfaithful partner in his first marriage.

Early Morning Rain [1966] – “I was living in a basement apartment which was very nice, and I loved it there. I had a little room, and I had a desk, and I had a chair. I knew that I had to sit down and do the work. Then all of a sudden, one day I popped off with ‘Early Morning Rain.’ That turned out to be one of my biggest, most important tunes. We would go to the airport and watch the planes coming and going. One time, it was a misty day. I was standing watching the approach, and all of a sudden, out from the clouds, brand spanking new, Boeing 707 just getting ready to land. One night, Ian and Sylvia heard me do Early Morning Rain and the next day Ian called me and said ‘we’re just in the middle of doing a recording, and we really like Early Morning Rain.’ In the meantime, Ian played the material for Peter, Paul & Mary. They made a damn good recording of the song. I said ‘these guys are pretty good.’

Song for a Winter's Night [1967] – ‘I quite often write with some kind of locality in mind that keeps coming back to me. When I wrote that, I was thinking about being right out in the middle of the mountains somewhere. Right out in the middle of nowhere.’

On songwriting – “Truly, it comes from the unconscious mind. I swear, it’s an imaginary process. Everything that I’ve done has really, basically, been a figment of imagination. You just want to make sure it rhymes. All I did was write songs. I was always isolated. Somewhere in an apartment, somewhere in a space I would find. It wasn’t even getting away from people. You knew that you would have to be isolated to do it. Sit down at the table and actually do it. When you’re working on the tune, and you’re sort of describing the feel that you’re getting from that. And sort of looking inside yourself for something to say, and having a melody, and having a chord structure already prepared, it sometimes, the imagination just does the work for you.

I always say to kids who ask me how to go at it, first the chord progression, and then the melody, and then the words – if you can do it.”

He wrote his own lead sheets. When he was young he played drums for a local dance band in his hometown of Orillia, Ontario. This was when he started to write songs. He couldn’t write to his own satisfaction, so he went to music school in Los Angeles. He wanted to learn how to write music and how to write notation.  He began to write his own lead sheets on onion-skin paper and get his songs copyrighted.

Canadian Railroad Trilogy [1966] – 1967 was Canada’s centennial. The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation commissioned Lightfoot to write a song to help celebrate the Canadian Centennial. The song describes the building of the Canadian Pacific Railway.

The Circle Is Small [1978] – Lightfoot lived in an apartment building in Toronto that was round, like the Capitol Records building in Hollywood. He refers to this “apartment hopping” song as an “unrequited love song.” He was living with Cathy Smith at the time. If that name rings a bell, she was the person who injected John Belushi with the speedball that killed him. Lightfoot’s relationship with Smith was “mercurial.”

Sundown [1974] – “There’s always been lots of questions about Cathy Evelyn Smith. All my life, people have always asked me “What about this?” Cathy Evelyn Smith was a wonderful lady. I really loved her. I would like to have married her, but I was just newly divorced, and I was telling myself  “I’m never getting married again.” I knew that it was not a good idea to carry out. It was one of those relationships you get a feeling of danger comes into the picture.”  Brian Good [actor] – “Gord was pretty tough when it came to relationships. But she managed to hurt him. He wrote that song referring to more than one person that might have been involved with her, and some of them were Gordon’s friends. And I think that she was part of a breaking point.” Murry McLauchlan [musician] – “Some of the best things that he’s written are from when such a disturbing thing happened in his personal life. He was just writing it out. And as a songwriter, you try to amalgamate your experiences, however destructive or wonderful they may be. Putting them in some form that they become universally understood by other people.” Steve Earle [musician] – “Sundown has this whole, sort of, spaghetti western kind of feel to it, but the details are left out to the point where you can kind of make up your own movie.”

The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald [1976] – The story of this doomed Great Lakes freighter is often told. It sank in Lake Superior the day I turned 13. Not only was the recording you hear a “first take,” it was also the first time Lightfoot and his band played the song together.

Sarah McLachlan [singer/songwriter] – “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald, I remember that one the most out of any of his songs, and I think because, as a high schooler, I busked that song out in front of the library in Halifax. The melodies are so powerful, and he’s such a good storyteller, and such a beautiful lyricist. And the combination of those things just really makes for a great song.”

Rick Haynes [bass] – “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald. Well, it was kind of the tail end of an album session, putting an album together. And Gord came in one day and he said “I’m working on a song about something that just happened. He said ‘I’ve been getting newspaper articles and looking at this stuff. It’s not finished yet but it’s gonna go something like this…’ and he started playing. I don’t know if it was the next day or a couple of days later, we came back in the studio and Gordon started singing it again.”

Barry Keane [drums] – “Kenny, the engineer, said ‘Well, you’ve got the studio booked. Why don’t we put it down on tape?’

Rick Haynes – “So, tape was rolling, so Barry said to Gord ‘When do you want me to come in?’ He said ‘I’ll give you a nod.’

Barry Keane – “We get to whatever it is, the third verse, and Gord gives me the big nod. I do a drum fill to come in.”

Rick Haynes – “We went right through the song, top to bottom. It was very elemental and raw, but it had magic to it.”

Barry Keane – “It was not only a first take, it was the first time we’d ever played the song. That’s the record.”

Rick Haynes – “After that, we tried a number of times to record it and get it better. You always try to get it better in a studio. And we never could. So it was basically a first take that came out and became a hit record, which is very unusual. Nobody ever expected that to be a single. It was too long for airplay.”

Steve Earle – “When I got to Nashville when I was 19 years old, Guy Clark and I were drunk for a week when the record, the Edmund Fitzgerald, went to number one, because, you know, we were writing these long story songs, and everybody was telling ‘no, you need three minutes and choruses.’ And then this big, long story song becomes a huge hit. So we got hammered for a week ‘cause we thought maybe there was some hope for us after all.”

The rest of the film has the usual stuff – where he grew up, how he got into the business, clips of live performances, how alcohol nearly wrecked his career and what he did to kick the habit. If you are an Amazon Prime subscriber, the cost for a rental is three dollars and ninety minutes of your time. I liked it.

RIP Gordon Lightfoot

David Crosby - If I Could Only Remember My Name

David Crosby surpassed all expectations and lived until he was past eighty. He died on January 18^th at the age of 81. His passing was not unexpected, but it was sad, nonetheless. While it is tempting to write about his famously irascible personality and his long-time dalliance with substance abuse, I’ll pass. Others have written about those things – I don’t need to go there. Usually when a musician I like [usually a guitar player] passes, I’ll put together what I would consider a career-spanning playlist and talk about the “hits and misses.” Not so today. I want to address the single work which I think defines David Crosby – his album If I Could Only Remember My Name, released in February 1971.

By the fall of 1970, David Crosby was still thunderstruck by the sudden death [in a traffic accident] of his girlfriend Christine Hinton [Author’s note: she was the subject of the Flying Burrito Brothers’ song Christine’s Tune (Devil in Disguise)]. His means of coping with tragedy involved living on his sailboat in Sausalito, drinking lots of alcohol, doing hard drugs and creating music in his “safe space,” the recording studio. The recording studio in question was Wally Heider Studio in San Francisco, where CSNY did the bulk of recording 1970’s Déjà Vu. By this time Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young had gone their separate ways. Stills, Nash and Young had each recorded solo albums [Stephen Stills, Songs for Beginners, and After the Gold Rush respectively]. Each album had the same radio-friendly accessibility as Déjà Vu. The album David Crosby would make, the only album under his own name for eighteen years, would be a different story.

In that fall of 1970, Wally Heider’s was a busy place. The Grateful Dead were recording American Beauty. Jefferson Airplane’s Paul Kantner was recording his first solo record, the science-fiction themed Blows Against the Empire. It featured musicians from the Grateful Dead, Santana and the Jefferson Airplane – when assembled it was the San Francisco musical collective known as the Planet Earth Rock and Roll Orchestra. These people were all friends, and these friends were all hitting their respective peaks of success at the same time. Not only did these musicians pool their resources for Blows Against the Empire, they also featured on If I Could Only Remember My Name. While Stills' and Nash's albums both produced enduring Top 40 hits ("Love the One You're With" and "Chicago," respectively) and After the Gold Rush became a “stone cold classic,” Crosby’s album would become, to borrow a phrase, a stoner classic.

David Crosby’s music had always been different. He would use alternate tuning to great effect on songs like Everybody’s Been Burned, Guinnevere, and Déjà Vu. The somewhat exotic qualities of each of these songs made the albums from whence they came a bit more interesting. With this album, Crosby got to indulge himself for an entire album. From start to finish, Jerry Garcia was the album’s midwife. He helped Crosby arrange and produce the record. Whether it was his transcendent guitar solos or his keening steel guitar, Jerry had a sense for what each song needed. This period saw Jerry Garcia at his absolute best as a musician and as a creator of music. Jerry was a true musical foil for David Crosby. Croz would later say this about Jerry - He’s a decent human being with a nice heart, and he’s funny and stoned and good and can play like God on a good day. Every time he sits down with a guitar and I sit down on a guitar with him, magic happens. Magic. Not bullshit. Magic.

As much as I don’t care for Graham Nash as a singer, songwriter, or as a person, I have to give the devil his due on this album. His harmonies with David Crosby throughout this album are exquisite. He and Crosby are consistently in a vocal sweet spot. This album is a masterclass in harmony singing. Sometimes the voices are Crosby and Nash in harmony. When Nash isn’t singing, Crosby harmonizes with himself, recording stacks of harmonies that are simply breathtaking. It isn’t for nothing that Crosby’s voice was considered one of the very best of his generation. Sometimes, Joni Mitchell’s voice is thrown in the mix. If that wasn’t enough, Grace Slick and Paul Kantner would also chime in. There are no vocal missteps on this album.

To call each of the individual tracks on this album “songs” is a bit of a misnomer. A “song” would imply lyrics with a verse- bridge [maybe]-chorus-verse structure. That structure does not apply here. It was this lack of song structure that would baffle some, including me. I didn’t “get it” until roughly fifteen years ago, then suddenly the light went on. Without sounding too cliché, this music is cosmic. It has a “CSNY meets the Dead” vibe. The opener Music Is Love is a folky communal hippie campfire singalong. Two of the songs have wordless vocals - Tamalpais High (At About 3) and Song with No Words (Tree With No Leaves). Imagine CSNY harmonies matched with acid-drenched music from the Grateful Dead. Laughing has one of those alternate tunings [DGDDAD] with lyrics written for George Harrison where Croz cautions Beatle George to take the Maharishi with a large grain of salt. Jerry Garcia’s otherworldly steel guitar takes the song into the stratosphere.

Cowboy Movie is my absolute favorite David Crosby song. It’s the only song on the album with any kind of narrative, but still no verse-chorus-verse structure. Clocking in at just over eight minutes, this “CSNY meets the Dead” epic is Crosby’s narration of the first breakup of CSNY, told as if it was an Old West story. The four members of the outlaw gang in the song were celebrating a train robbery [CSNY’s last tour before their implosion] that is complicated by a love triangle which began when an Indian girl named Raven appeared at their camp.  The characters of the story:

Fat Albert – the story’s narrator with a twelve-gauge shotgun (a 12-string guitar) – [Crosby]

Eli - the gang’s “fastest gunner [guitarist], kinda young and mean, from the South” [Stills]

The Duke – the gang’s dynamiter [Nash]

Young Billy – the gang’s sentry with a sixth sense of impending doom [Young]

Raven – the Indian girl [Rita Coolidge]

After Raven wandered into their camp, Eli and the Duke each wanted Raven for himself. Fat Albert cautions them about her, saying “she might be the law.” A fight broke out between Eli and the Duke, with Fat Albert being the only gang survivor. As he lay dying in Albuquerque, Fat Albert confirmed that Raven really was “the law.” If you know the history of CSNY, they really did bust up because Stills and Nash fought over Rita Coolidge. A clever bit of storytelling this one.

On Traction in the Rain [a song about loss], Croz puts the listener in a trance without a band, just his voice and acoustic guitar [with some autoharp for coloring]. He injects politics once with What Are Their Names. If Neil Young’s Ohio has a cousin, it’s this song:

I wonder who they are
The men who really run this land
And I wonder why they run it
With such a thoughtless hand
What are their names and on what streets do they live?
I’d like to ride right over this afternoon and give
Them a piece of my mind about peace for mankind
Peace is not an awful lot to ask

The album concludes with two short pieces, the first of which is a traditional French song – Orleans. Croz layered many vocal parts, all in French, with only two acoustic guitars for accompaniment. At less than two minutes, it’s over almost as soon as it begins. The final piece, I'd Swear There Was Somebody Here, is Croz singing a cappella. This was David Crosby experimenting with the studio’s echo booth. As Croz told it many years after the album’s creation:

I don't know where that came from. It was a hallucination. I've always been drawn to strange vocal works. I overdubbed six tracks a cappella, with echo. Later I was left with a persistent feeling it was about Christine Hinton, my girlfriend who was killed. I was very much in love with her, and she went away very suddenly. I was not equipped to deal with the loss. This piece was a sudden, improvised, overwhelming requiem.

If I Could Only Remember My Name can be described with many adjectives, all of which are equally valid – psychedelic, ethereal, hazy, hallucinatory, ghostly, dreamy, floating, and loosely coherent. David Crosby suffered for his art on this album. He wouldn’t pull out of his downward spiral until he was a guest of the Texas prison system. This album is like John Lennon’s John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band in that it is one an artist can make only once. David Crosby would later make records with Graham Nash that were listenable, but they were nowhere near as this creative, or interesting. In the last eight years of his life, David Crosby would finally rediscover his muse and make some of the best music of his life.