Crosby, Stills & Nash: CSN

Crosby, Stills & Nash: CSN

1977

Atlantic Records

Format I Own it on: Vinyl

Track Listing: 1. Shadow Captain  2. See the Changes  3. Carried Away  4. Fair Game  5. Anything at All  6. Cathedral  7. Dark Star  8.  Just A Song Before I Go  9.  Run from Tears  10. Cold Rain  11. In My Dreams  12. I Give You Give Blind




You're just in time for CSN Theater:

 "Whatever happened to us, Man? Pffft (bogarts joint).  We were never gonna settle down...I thought we were just going to smoke grass forever...Living off the land,  making love to whomever we pleased all day long for the rest of our lives...But here we are...Settled down in our Million Dollar houses...2.5 kids...Respectable jobs..."

"Don't be so down on yourself, man...You should be happy...You've got your own million dollar Holistic Yoga Mat business...Carol has her Couple's Vibrational Therapy business and besides...We have been smoking grass forever..."

 "Yea...It's just..."

 "I tell you what! Why don't you and Carol come over this weekend...We'll get high, swap wives...I'll cook up some grass-fed tofu and spindly twigs and we'll put on some Crosby, Stills & Nash for old times sake..."

 "Yea, that sounds good...I've been trying to get back into music...I wrote a song for Carol...Let me play it for you"

(gently finger-bangs an acoustic guitar)

"Oh, Carol, Carol,
Sweet love-makin' lady,
Woman-Childe of the moone,
lay your sweet solstice down on me...
 I'll bear your burden, woman,
make sweet love all the night...
Sail, on Ocean Momma,
bear my fruitful children, mother momma... 
Bear Momma, moon momma, bear boon moon..."

"That's beautiful, man..."

"I think I'm going to play it for her while we're making love..."

(Applause)


Okay, I hope you all enjoyed "CSN" theatre...Now onto the album itself...My copy doesn't have the nice, sail-boating cover that you see above...Apparently the photo is just pasted on the album cover, because mine appears to have fallen off, so I just have a great, gaping, gray void where the picture should be...

 For the longest time I stared at it and was like, "Y'know, I just don't get this album cover" and figured it was some avant-garde experiment I didn't understand...

I don't especially listen to this group...I'm more of a "...& Young" fan. I bought this for my wife sometime in the 90's at some little thrift/record shop that briefly existed in Hale, Michigan, circa 2001...I don't know if my wife ever actually listened to it...I know I hadn't...But I knew of the band's hit singles and figured it was just going to be a lot of hippie platitudes and sail-boat songs...

Even the record label had a sailboat on it...

And then the first song, "Shadow Captain" comes on and surprise, surprise, it's a hippie sailing song...And a pretty dull one too...So to be honest I kind of settled in for the long, soft slog at this point...But it turns out this album was marginally more interesting than I had originally expected...

My ears perked up for the first time when I was listening to the latin-tinged soft-rocker "Fair Game." It all bopped along inoffensively enough...Gentle, glossy vocals...detailed acoustic guitar...But suddenly from out of nowhere, a radiant three part harmony comes together, and they sing like a choir of angels, "She's pleasant and she's friendly while she's looking at your CROOOOTCH!!!"

Wait, what? I hurriedly grabbed the lyric sheet and sure enough, I'd heard it right...And not only that, Stephen Stills just keeps bitterly nailing some girl to the wall for the duration of the album...

A little bit of online research reveals that Stills was going through a messy divorce at the time and decided to exact his revenge in the only manner he knew how...LATIN-TINGED SOFT ROCK!!!  So his contributions end up giving the album a little much needed blood and bile...God damn is the guy bitter as hell...

And then Graham Nash surprises me too with "Cathedral" where he has an LSD FREAKOUT IN A CHURCH!!!! And then goes on to bash religion for awhile in his chirpy, cute chipmunk voice:

"All religion has to have its day
Expressions on the face of the Saviour
Made me say, "I can't stay."

Open up the gates of the church and let me out of here!
Too many people have lied in the name of Christ
For anyone to heed the call.
So many people have died in the name of Christ
That I can't believe it all..."

They even kind of rock out (in the politest way possible) in the song...Damn, these guys are kind of bad-ass in their own way...Crosby is the only one who doesn't really have a moment on the album...I think he was in full-blown Coke-Walrus mode at this point, as he just kind of floats around harmlessly throughout the proceedings...

I really thought I was going to do a whole post doing nothing but busting on Crosby, Stills & Nash (and I guess I did, somewhat...) but honestly this was a pretty enjoyable record...I think this would totally appeal to Fleetwood Mac fans who can't get enough of slick break-up material...These guys might not know how to rock but at least they have a lot of personality, and I think that counts for something...

Here's "I Give You Give Blind" by Crosby, Stills, & Nash...Enjoy....