byrdsongs, xxxiii

Pros and Cons

Pros

The Byrds + the Springfield + the Hollies = CSN...

who arguably had the best harmonies ever…

and if you can check your cynicism at the door, they kinda sorta seem to have their hearts in the right place, maybe…

and there's a handful of their songs that I’ll never get bored of.  Tonight's song still mesmerizes me.  Crosby uses some very unusual folk/jazz chord changes.  Usually, I'm suspicious of this sort of thing, but he has a real gift for turning what would normally be dissonant into  musical passages that are magical sounding. Earlier examples are this and this...

I read somewhere that when they were together Joni Mitchell used to call Graham Nash her ‘old lady.’  Dunno whether this is pro or con, but it sure is funny if true, and it’s right on the money...

’We’d like to introduce our friend, Neil Young…'

The decadent excess of their tours – and, in particular, the mountains of blow that were scaled during the CSN&Y 1973 world tour – is legendary and fun to think about…

In some ways, CSN were a key inspiration for punk rock, though in a purely negative way…

Have you ever heard Crosby’s stoned banter before he sings Triad on Four-Way Street?  Have a listen. If only he could remember his name. It still cracks me up.

CSN’s first record used to sound great from the back of the rusty old VW bug that would take me to day camp. The blending of their voices was warm and sultry as the summer sunlight…

Cons

*I grew up reading Robert Christgau. His consumer reports in the Village Voice were quite addictive.  He made two observations about Crosby Stills and Nash that have stayed with me.  He said that their first album is ‘perfect’ but that this isn’t necessarily a compliment.  And related to this, I think, he referred to their goody-two-shoes politics.  I suspect that what he was getting at is that if you cut beneath the veneer of earnest hippy authenticity, CSN are the ultimate corporate super group, providing a soundtrack to the counterculture becoming a marketable commodity.  So much for checking my cynicism at the door...

When CSN were good, they were very good. Even still, with their combined pedigree I feel that they should have been so much better…

There’s not one iota of pop in CSN.  They are 100% rock, meaning overly serious and taken with themselves and their supposed artistic importance. And even when they’re lighter than light, there's a heaviness there that grates after awhile...

Along with having goody-two-shoes politics, they’re very arch sounding in the delivery of their Laurel Canyon righteousness...

One of their best songs is ruined by this lyric: They are one person / They are two alone / They are three together / They are for each other. Somebody get me an airsick bag.  Another one I really hate is: You are living a reality I left years ago, it quite nearly killed me.  Oh, please. Grow a set. It's really too bad because the harmonies are lovely. And the tambourine makes the song almost sound poppy. 

*The rise and fall of David Crosby became a depressing spectacle, but not as depressing as his re-birth, in which he morphed into an anodyne commentator on the meaning of the 60s.  His toothless makeover gets me feeling nostalgic for the edginess of Almost Cut My Hair...

*I’m not sure I entirely like the way CSN is so closely associated with my city...

*I love the Springfield but I’ve never been completely sold on Steve Stills, especially when he gets into macho penis jousts with Neil Young.

*CSN still tour to this day, one of those 60s monsters that won’t die.

*My ideas on the con side of the ledger are generally more specific and elaborated than those on the pro side.  This itself says something not very complimentary…