Crosby Stills & Nash - Greatest Hits
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Free Music Notes for Greatest Hits
Free Music Review: Excellent choice
Hit: 5 Stars
CSN is a great band for all time, the recopilation in tha cd is very good.Free Music Review: Buy it!
Hit: 5 Stars
They need the cash to keep David in livers and Donovan in art supplies.Free Music Review: harmony defined
Hit: 4 Stars
As though from some cobwebbed corner of your memory, these Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young tunes emerge as an instantly recognizable memory. The harmonies could belong to no other than this inimitable sixties and seventies band, acoustical as it gets, tightly harmonic as any folk or Rock & Roll voices could possibly become intertwined.
This compilation is a bit of a disordered mosaic, but who cares? CSN&Y are at their best with the haunting sounds of 'Helplessly Hoping':
'Wordlessly watching he waits by the window
And wonders
At the empty place inside
Heartlessly helping himself to her bad dreams he worries
Did he hear a good-bye, or even
Hello'
Assonance helps itself to tonalities that no other quartet of male human beings could replicate.
It is the spareness of this music that strikes one in retrospect. Ornamentation is absent. They don't do all that they could with their voices. They simply do enough to engage the soul and, of course, the memory.
'Love isn't lying, it's
Loose in a lady who lingers
Saying she is lost
And choking on
Hello'
One of CSN&Y's most winsome tunes is the odd tale of happiness that makes it into the canonical memory, an instrument much more receptive to angst, loss, and woe. But who can forget:
'I'll light the fire
You place the flowers in the vase
That you bought today
Staring at the fire
For hours and hours
While I listen to you
Play your love songs
All night long for me
Only for me ...
Our house is a very, very fine house
With two cats in the yard
Life used to be so hard
Now everything is easy
'Cause of you'
These guys must have known a tune like this couldn't possibly sell, would instantly be dismissed as musical cotton candy, and would leave their reputation as a thoughtful band besmirched.
Yet they released it anyway, and it went and became permanently hummable.
Quite the contrary the enigmatic fight-or-flight story sketched out in 'Southern Cross'. It was standing in South Africa's Krüger Park, looking up at the Southern Cross (for the first time) that brought me back 'round to the iTunes Music Store, to downloading this album, and now to the re-hearing of these almost-eschatological, almost dissolute words:
'... But on a midnight watch I realized why twice you ran away.
Think about how many times I have fallen.
Spirits are using me; larger voices callin'.
What heaven brought you and me cannot be forgotten.
I have been around the world,
looking' for that woman-girl
Who knows love can endure.
And you know it will ...
So we cheated and we lied and we tested.
And we never faijled to fail; it was the easiest thing to do.
You will survive being bested.
Somebody fine will come along
Make me forget about loving you
In the Southern Cross.'
Is this prediction or wish, certainty or the desperation of a jilted lover hoping he won't forever live with this ache? CSN&Y aren't telling.
If the band was willing to risk whimsiness, they also took a chance on the side of sentimentalism, with equally good results. Witness the quintessentially benign 'Teach Your Children':
'Don't you ever ask them why, if they told you, you would cry,
So just look at them and sigh and know they love you.
And you, of tender years,
Can't know
The fears your elders grew by,
And so please help them
With your youth,
They seek the truth before they can die.
Teach your parents well
Their children's hell will slowly go by
And feed them on your dreams
The one they picked
The one you'll know by.'
One of the greatest uses of the tenor range by CSN&Y is undoubtedly 'Just a Song Before I Go', arguably their best song:
'Just a song before I go,
To whom it may concern ...
She helped me with my suitcase,
She stands before my eyes.
Driving me to the airport
And to the friendly skies.
Going through security
I held her for so long.
She finally looked at me in love,
And she was gone.'
Who knew where this song was going? Tragedy or triumphant? Love or irreversible separation?
Once again, CSN&Y are at their best when at their most enigmatic. The song ends:
'Just a song before I go,
A lesson to be learned.
Travelling twice the speed of sound
It's easy to get burned.'
What happened? Silence, then a new track.
Crosby, Still, Nash, and Young were that rare phenomenon: an assemblage of great voices that together created a unique sound. I don't mean 'unique' as in 'cool', but in its proper sense : 'one of a kind'. One can venture influences upon CSN&Y from their foreground and one can, in retrospect, point to a number of artists who have picked up one or two of their characteristics. But there has been no CSN&Y tradition and - heaven be thanked - no recorded CSN&Y Impersonator conventions.
One has to look far afield to find a band that has imbibed their spirit: to Matchbox Twenty, for example. Admittedly, the sound is altogether different. How could it be otherwise, given the musical water that has passed under the bridge between these two fine acts?
Yet the poignance, the memory, the longing, and the predilection for harmony over, say, an imitable voice like the Stone's Jagger is a thin line that might run from CSN&Y to MT without doing violence to the integrity of either one.
Listen to them back-to-back and see whether you agree. For that, you'll need to pick up CSN (and Young's) Greatest Hits. That'll be a smart decision on its own.
Free Music Review: Redundant (again), but Still Great
Hit: 4 Stars
In their heyday, Crosby, Stills and Nash could have been singled out as the most important figureheads of the music driven, politicized hippie movement. They were counterculture leaders whose unity as a group strengthened their individual images, while serving as an example of the bond that ultimately eluded hippie culture. They were musicians who could openly admit that they also loved each other as friends, a quality that is unique and, to today's cynical culture, sadly quaint. Anybody interested in late `60s alternative pop culture does not know half of the story if they don't know the music of Crosby, Stills and Nash, and this Greatest Hits collection does an excellent job of presenting some of this band's finest moments.
My only regret with this disk is the decision to exclude all of their work with Neil Young - particularly their stellar recording of "Helpless" - but I can understand the reasoning, since Young's presence here would have deflected attention from the core trio and may have forced the necessity for a two-disk retrospective. As it is, Greatest Hits consolidates the best material from four separate CD releases, 1969's classic, eponymous debut album, 1970's "Déjà Vu", "77's "CSN" and 1982's "Daylight Again." All four albums are worth owning in their entirety but if you buy this CD, you're still doing all right - all but three tracks from the debut album appear here, while the truly best songs from "CSN" and "Daylight Again" are compiled here quite nicely. Only "Déjà vu" is short-changed, not just because of the afore-mentioned disregard for Neil Young's input, but also because of missing classics like Crosby's "Almost Cut My Hair", and Stills' chilling acoustic tune "4 + 20" - if only they had cut Nash's hopelessly dated and frankly embarrassing hippie-pop tune "Marrakesh Express" for either of these, but so much for the griping.
The good bits here far outweigh the shortcomings. Hearing the artistry of Stephen Stills in this context only makes me wonder why he never achieved the universal appeal of his lifelong friend Neil Young. His songwriting is nothing short of stunning throughout this collection, while his tasteful musicianship and multi-cultured, blues-y feel makes everything he touched sound timeless. "Suite: Judy Blue Eyes" is a masterpiece for the ages, while "Southern Cross" is a textbook example of perfectly executed song construction. Crosby and Nash have their moments, too, particularly on Nash's intense indictment of organized faith entitled "Cathedral" and Crosby's lush, textural "Shadow Captain." "Wooden Ships" contained a semi-political anti-war message that sidesteps confrontation by utilizing a cinematic approach, which keeps it sounding fresh over three decades later. The pleasant lilt of "Teach Your Children" has also aged well, probably because of the fabulous pedal steel guitar part that is played by none other than Jerry Garcia (who never liked the way he played pedal steel and eventually - regrettably - abandoned the instrument). Their career together was sporadic, full of stops and starts, but this collection proves that what they lacked in continuity, they more than made up for with quality. If judged by the majority of songs on this collection, then it is easy to recognize that Crosby, Stills and Nash are truly one of the most important and relevant bands of their generation. A- Thomas Ryan
Free Music Review: No surprises in the song selection, but it sure sounds good!
Hit: 4 Stars
It should go without saying that CSN's "Greatest Hits" package (making the redundant "So Far" and "Replay" even more redundant) would have all the hits, and of course it does. You name it, odds are it's here, and the running order doesn't really make you miss what might be missing. Of course the opener is "Suite Judy Blue Eyes" (though I prefer the mix on the box set with the drums throughout the track). "Our House." "Teach Your Children." "Southern Cross." "Shadow Captain." All the goodies.
I hear people complaining about the lack of any Neil Young songs on this CD, which would defeat the purpose in the first place. Even Neil admits that CSN and CSNY are like two different bands, and the funny thing is, I've always considered him to be like a fifth wheel when playing with CSN. His talents are wasted, for one thing. For another, with the (possible) exception of "Helpless", he hasn't really given CSNY any really worthy material..at least none to match the caliber of Stills' or Nash's. So you don't really miss him here.
My only big complaint is that the package ignores material post "Daylight Again", which insinuates that the trio has done nothing of worth since. Not so. The addition of tracks like "Only Waiting For You" or "Camera" (off of "After The Storm", which for me is right up there with the first album and "CSN" in my opinion) would not only make the compilation more comprehensive but an improvement. Keep in mind that Graham Nash assembled this package personally.
Bottom line, for those who want a CSN complilation of more substance than "So Far", yet not as vast as the box set (which had way too much Crosby and Nash and not enough Stills and Young, as far as I'm concerned) you not only want this CD, you NEED it. Also, as great as the original remastered albums sound, this sounds even better! On "Judy Blue Eyes", for example, they sound like they're playing the thing right there in front of you. However, the remastered sound also brings out some of the production deficiencies; i.e. the massively overdubbed "Carry On" sounds like it was massively overdubbed. Which it was, of course (Stills as 'Captain Manyhands') but the multitude of guitars and vocals sound more natural on "Deja Vu." But I'm just nitpicking, maybe (I'm also a musician and producer myself, so there you go.)
In short, I liked this better than Neil Young's own long-overdue greatest hits package.