"CSNY
Can Still Carry On"
Washington Post Staff Writer
By David Segal
Friday, April 7, 2000; 12:41 PM
By the middle of the third hour, with the band eight minutes into an arduous,
ten-minute guitar solo, a question hung heavy in the smokeless air of MCI Center, where a
packed crowd of mid-career types had gathered to watch folk rock's most famous foursome,
Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young:
Dudes, how about calling it a night?
The quartet had already played a dozen of their greatest hits, including "Teach
Your Children," "Our House," "Carry On," "Woodstock"
and "Helplessly Hoping." Neil Young had long ago trotted out some of best loved
numbers, such as "Cinnamon Girl" and "Southern Man." The graying
quartet had proven – a good two hours earlier – that it can still
harmonize,
strum and protest the way they did when Richard Nixon ran the country and Watergate was a
scandal rather than a posh address.
Still, they played. And played. Having ditched some well-publicized chemical
addictions, the stage is now CSNY's drug of choice and there's not a 12-step program on
the planet that can help them.
The crowd, meanwhile, were happy co-dependents. Even when they were checking their
watches and fretting about that 7:30 a.m. spinning class, they seemed overjoyed to revisit
a by-gone era and a little awed that the early '70s answer to the Rat Pack is still alive
and high-fiving.
Inevitably, some of the material sounded dated. "Almost Cut My Hair," a
brooding Crosby composition from "Deja Vu," seemed rich with metaphorical
meaning in 1970, back when the length of your locks placed you firmly on this or that side
of starkly drawn political divide. Now, the song just seems like a guy getting waaay too
worked up about skipping a date with his barber.
But getting retro and tie-dyed was the point of the evening. By the time they got to
"Woodstock" – about half-way through the night – they were just
getting warmed
Review: Crosby Stills Nash
& Young
Washingtonpost.com Music
Editor
April 7, 2000
From the Washingtonpost
site.
At their concert
last night at the MCI Center, David Crosby, Stephen Stills, Graham Nash and Neil Young,
reached back and recalled who they were before petty jealousies, drug abuse problems and
their egos did them in. They remembered a time when they were just young kids in bands
whose greatest sense of joy came from making music. At least, that's what it felt like.
Certainly Young's decision to rejoin his former band mates
on tour is responsible for rejuvenating the enthusiasm of both the group and its fans. His
presence on this tour, the first tour of all four members since 1974, has added a vitality
and vigor to CSN that has been long absent and the difference was readily apparent at the
MCI show. Maybe the harmonies weren't always quite as sweet–or as high–as they
used to be, and the timing was occasionally off, but that wasn't really the point
anyway.
It was the spirit of the evening that mattered. With Young finally back on stage,
Crosby,
Stills and Nash looked like they were once again excited about what they were doing and
not just on nostalgia cruise control.
Starting things off with "Carry On," the group
launched into a marathon, three-hour plus performance in which it paraded its catalogue of
hits, but also played a good chunk of the songs from "Looking Forward," the CD
it released last year. "It's not that we don't love the old songs, we do,"
Crosby told the sold-out MCI crowd. "We love the old songs a lot, but it's the new
songs that keep us alive."
The new songs–among them Young's
"Slowpoke," Crosby's "Dream For Him," and Stills's "Seen
Enough" –went over surprisingly well with the crowd. They were rewarded for
their patience with a slew of CSNY hits including "Marrakesh Express,"
"Guinnevere," "Teach Your Children,' "Suite: Judy Blue
Eyes,"
"Love the One Your With," and "Our House."
Onstage, CSNY seemed relaxed and at ease. They joked and
laughed with each other, commented several times on the excellent sound system, and played
with a youthful enthusiasm you might not expect from guys in their mid and late 50s. The
music was kept on track throughout by the superb veteran rhythm section of Jim Keltner on
drums and Donald "Duck" Dunn on bass.
Not surprisingly, it was Young's songs that gave the show
its greatest bursts of energy. At a time when controversy still swirls about the
Confederate flag, his "Southern Man," remains relevant 30 years after it was
written. The group's performance of another Young song, "Ohio," showed why it
was one of the most powerful and gut-wrenching protest songs of the Vietnam War era. And
on "Cinnamon Girl," and a 15-minute version of "Down by the River,"
Young proved, with his almost maniacal solos, that he is still one of rock and roll's most
inventive guitarists.
The band's final encore, a hard-rocking version of the
Byrd's "Eight Miles High," was a suitably spirited ending to a concert that was
livelier and more rewarding than probably even the most ardent fans expected.
