When I finally started listening to music around the age of 12 or so, the Beatles came first, as I have written before. When at last my musical tastes began to broaden (ever so slightly), there were three acts that quickly took up second position: The Doors, Simon & Garfunkel, and Crosby Stills & Nash (and Young). On Sunday night, I got to go to a show and see all four members of CSN&Y, in a concert overwhelmingly devoted to protest songs. All the better, I say.
The show was down in Irvine, and we went there because you could get better seats for less money than at the Hollywood Bowl concert Monday night. A bit of a drive, sure, but with nice people and a bunch of CDs, so what? It's a nice venue: yet another of those great Southern California spots where an amphitheatre is built out of a hillside, with trees and grass and very good acoustics. And the weather was fabulous: the awful heat of the last several weeks finally broke a few days ago, and it was so nice to be outside for a while without melting.
What with traffic on the 405, we arrived late--and were just walking to our seats when CSN&Y took the stage, which made for pretty great timing. It took us a little while to get situated and comfortable, and it took the band a little while to get really warmed up, so we were ready for them at about the same time they were ready for us.
The rap against Crosby Stills & Nash, with our without Neil Young, has always been that their live shows can be a bit spotty. It's no great surprise: they are defined by the quality of those gorgeous harmonies, those incredibly well-matched voices, but those harmonies are tough to pull off outside a studio. And indeed, on the second song of the evening, "Carry On," the harmonies weren't working and I was rapidly getting worried. But then they moved into "Wooden Ships," and suddenly it all started to gel.
The problem, we decided, is that Stephen Stills really doesn't have much of a voice anymore. At full volume he can do tough rock numbers pretty well (in fact on one solo turn he sounded almost like Ray Charles), but more delicate numbers seem to be beyond him now. The man is in his early 60s, and it's a shame but these things happen. (He also looks as if the flesh is slowly sliding off his face and onto his neck--who would've thought that David Crosby would be the one looking hale and healthy out of that group?) With one of those four voices struggling, the real close-harmony stuff gets problematic ("Helplessly Hoping," in the second half of the show, didn't come off very well at all); but for songs where Stills could sing out strongly, the four voices mixed very well. And given that there were so many protest songs being played, there actually weren't too many times when delicacy was required of Mr. Stills.
The tour is clearly taking its cue from Neil Young, whose recent album, Living With War, dominates the first half of their show (eight out of ten tracks were played). And since that record, released less than three months ago, is already notorious for its anger toward the current political climate and features a track titled "Let's Impeach the President," small wonder that this CSN&Y tour would lean heavily on tracks like "Ohio," "Almost Cut My Hair," "Immigration Man," "Find the Cost (of Freedom)" and "Rockin' in the Free World." They even played Buffalo Springfield's "For What It's Worth," which was a special treat. (And on which Mr. Stills sounded just fine, thank you.)
The second half of the show made room for more delicate numbers, plus some solo turns or smaller groupings of the four: Crosby and Graham Nash backing up Neil Young for "Only Love Can Break Your Heart," Young and Stills doing another great Buffalo Springfield number, "Treetop Flyer," Nash's "Our House," and maybe the single best performance of the evening, Crosby and Nash doing a delicate, perfect rendering of "Guinivere." (Indeed, Crosby sounded fantastic through the whole night, and a long night it was--35 songs were played, and through all of it, when not playing a guitar Crosby would stand there, his hands in his pockets as if it were all the easiest thing in the world, singing so incredibly well that after his first solo turn I leaned over to Buffie and said "I'm so glad he's not dead!")
Of course, the other candidate for best performance of the evening was "Rockin' in the Free World," which got played about as hard as it could possibly be played, and for a while it seemed the song would never end, that it would just build and build until we all fell over and died, but eventually every single string on Neil Young's guitar got busted and they simply had to stop.
All in all, it was one of the best concerts I've seen. There was a particularly nice segue when everyone left the stage and the legendary recording of Hendrix's Woodstock performance of the Star Spangled Banner was played, which then moved straight into "Let's Impeach the President." Several audience members stood for the Star Spangled Banner, their hands over their hearts as Jimi wailed; then some of the same audience members (it was Orange County, after all) left once "Let's Impeach" got rolling, with its wicked "Flip! Flop!" bridge while video of the President contradicting himself was played on the screens.
Hell of a show. And for my friend Buffie, a musician herself who recently celebrated a birthday, it made for a hell of a nice suprise.
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