Crosby, Stills and Nash

At one level or another, I have fairly good reason to believe that “Suite: Judy Blue Eyes” has been consistently playing on repeat somewhere in the farthest reaches of my subconscious for the better part of my sum 28 years of living. I mention this on account of the reoccurring moments of silence and stillness, when the whirlwinds and dust storms of life’s desert set to calm and then…there it is — a hushed voice comes singing from somewhere down deep in my innermost ear:

“…can I tell it like it is
Listen to me, baby
It’s my heart that I have to lose…”

Of course, it seems a perfectly normal phenomenon for a person to have the same song stuck in their head from time to time. Yes, I know — especially a song as contagious as “Suite: Judy Blue Eyes.” But I more or less have had Stephen Stills’s voice ringing in my head since the hot summer days when I used to mount my mighty big wheel on the dead-end street that I grew up on, barefoot and sunburned, with a head full of ideas and dreams as brightly and psychedelically colored as my oversized jam shorts.

At what level does the personal experience of a five-year-old in the mid-1980s overlap with the countercultural harmonies and musical convictions of a band as integral to the paradigmatic shift of Western civilization that took place nearly two decades before he was even born?

I’m not far enough removed from the first time I first heard Crosby, Stills & Nash to even begin to try and answer that question. But the question itself, perhaps in its being so unanswerable, is what keeps me here, listening to this recent release of Demos (out June 2^nd on Rhino Records) over and over again.

The Demos LP is a collection of very stripped-down demo sessions of David Crosby, Stephen Stills, and Graham Nash (with Neil Young joining in on “Music is Love”) recorded between 1968 and 1971.

From the first acoustic upstroke of the classic “Marrakesh Express,” there is an energy that bleeds off the strings with all the same strange, new vibrations that shook this country’s more conservative core in the mid- to late ’60s. Yet, I suppose what gives the softer, gentler sounds of Crosby, Stills and Nash such a presence — such incredible staying power amid the loud, psychedelic cacophony that surrounded their music is the esoteric quality of their combined harmony. Whatever it was that undergirded the seemingly vapid rhetoric of “peace,” “unity,” “communion,” and “love” which once rang from the high grounds of New York State and was then rendered mute by the reelection of President Nixon in ’72, seems to still resonate in CS&N with an odd sort of relevance — an easy urgency that music of our time can’t seem to muster. What Demos offers to the CSN collection is an intimate portrait of the makings of some of those songs that perhaps defined this so-called “supergroup” and the generation from which they sprung.

The album opens with a simple rendering of “Marrakesh Express,” recorded four months before they recorded their self-entitled debut, and features all three voices of the band.

The second track is the first solo demo of David Crosby singing “I Almost Cut My Hair” — a beautiful, haunting version, I must say. This track was the one that caught me off-guard. I’ve heard the song, of course, but hearing it again in the car after I picked up this album gave me a new sensation I haven’t felt before — new thoughts and ideas I’d never considered…

What does it mean anymore to “Let my Freak Flag fly”?

How, in this day and age of such a robust, diverse, plural, ever-expanding universe of absurd sel-expression and ridiculous trends and marketed, manufactured “originality,” can I possibly “Let my Freak Flag fly”? Certainly, in ’69, the answer may have been as simple as letting your hair grow long against the grain of buzzcuts, “Leave It To Beaver,” and tucked-in post-Korean War moral rigidity. But what about today?

“I Almost Cut My Hair” is, at the same time, a song of resolution and defiance — a simple piece that tells of a man’s simple decision to not give in to the systems of conformity and/or oppression that push against him. Honestly, the song sits strange and distant on the conscience of a kid who came of age out of Desert Storm, the Lewinsky Scandal, 9/11 and her bloody aftermath, and now the Obama Administration.

Yet, Crosby explains, “I feel like I owe it to someone…”

The words have a bite, no less. As for me, my own refusal to submit to “The Man” or what-have-you is based, more or less, on my own feeling that, dammit, I really do owe it to someone. Who? Maybe I owe it to the hardworking, honest guy who got laid off while his boss sips from the straw of a stimulus package down in Cozumel, or the single mother working two or three jobs to feed the kids who are all that remain of a marriage stolen by some younger hussy who caught her man’s fickle fancy? I don’t know…maybe I owe it to you…?

Ah…I can’t exactly say why, but this familiar song is unraveling itself with a million new layers with every listen to this demo version. To some degree, perhaps Crosby’s song is calling me to just persevere in my efforts to defy the odds, whatever those odds are. I can’t really say…but the nonchalance of merely choosing to forgo a haircut is fascinating to me insofar as it provides a person a sense of nonviolent defiance, a rebellion against the status quo. (Yes…haha! The nonchalant rebellion of this song!! What an insane concept!!!) Nonetheless, there is a refreshing honesty — a profound parable, of sorts — to be extracted from this CS&N classic here on this Demos album, as Crosby’s voice rings as pure and true as a flock of nightingales from somewhere behind his gigantic, mangled mustache.

(Pause)

Where am I? I’ve barely begun to get down to actually reviewing this album and I’m already being swept away with stream-of-conscious nonsense about the avian populations in David Crosby’s lip duster.

My God, man!! Pull it together!!! But wait — in some ways, this absurd aside speaks to the power of Crosby, Stills & Nash’s music in a way that a more formal, monotonous review that merely diagramed the same old clichés and sterile descriptions of their harmonious vocal prowess or their hallowed place in the shrine of any bearded hipster trying to pull off some originality under Ray Bans and flannels couldn’t do.

In fact, it does do just that. The songs on this Demos album, while not quite the high production and quality of their final forms that appeared on the original CS&N full-lengths, are songs to get lost to — songs to lose your mind in. Put the Stills recording of “You Don’t Have to Cry” or “My Love Is A Gentle Thing” on the turnstile soft one Saturday morning while the lady’s still sleeping, and sit and watch her dreaming and you’ll know exactly what I’m talking about.

It’s these sorts of vibrations and visions that permeate my thoughts as I listen to the Demos recordings. Yes, you can catch a glimpse of some of the same in their final cuts — but, here on this album, the layers of production have been stripped off and the songs just stand there naked, which is an overwhelming experience, given the natural honesty and vulnerability of Crosby, Stills & Nash’s music as we know it already.

Overall, the album has a gentle, easy pace that offers the same peace and serenity of a fireside jam between perhaps the most dynamic vocal songwriting trio of the ’60s. Some folks, I suppose, may write a CS&N release, at this point in history, as a mere nostalgia of a movement hinged on the bygone ideas and dreams long lost. Yet, CS&N is not so simple and it’s not so easy to overlook the power depth of these songs. What Demos adds to the CS&N catalog is a face-to-face confrontation with songs we’ve been hearing for years, such as “Love the One Your With,” “Déjà vu,” and “Music Is Love,” and offers a chance to hear them again like we’ve never heard them before.

This is a heavy and valuable gift to have right now, at the onset of summertime here in Austin, Texas. There is certainly something transcendent and beautiful about listening to Stills singing “Singing Call” alone with his acoustic while driving up South Lamar with the windows down and the sun humming harmony as she drifts off to sleep in the western horizon.

Although “Suite: Judy Blues Eyes” failed to make the cut on this record, if I close my eyes and the wind blows through the window just right, I can hear these songs like I’m flying away down the street on a mighty big wheel with a head full of kaleidoscope ideas and psychedelic dreams.

Tracklisting:

“Marrakesh Express” [1969 Demo]
“Almost Cut My Hair” [1969 Demo]
“You Don’t Have To Cry” [1968 Demo]
“Deja Vu” [1969 Demo]
“Sleep Song” [1969 Demo]
“My Love Is A Gentle Thing” [1968 Demo]
“Be Yourself” [1971 Demo]
“Music Is Love” [1970 Demo]
“Singing Call” [1970 Demo]
“Long Time Gone” [1968 Demo]
“Chicago” [1970 Demo]
“Love The One You’re With” [1970 Demo]