Déjà Vu (1970 - RECORDING REMASTERED in 1994) TIP

For Déjà Vu, the trio added a fourth guitarist and songwriter, Neil Young, and a bass player who wanted to be a songwriter, Greg Reeves. Actually, Neil was added right after the first album to shore up the live shows. Live, it was always CSNY until 1977. CSN, composed of players unable to work with their prior bands, was already a volatile, outspoken, ego-driven group. Adding the mercurial Young created an even more unstable chemistry (see Crosby’s Cowboy Movie on If I Could Only Remember My Name).

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4 Way Street  (1971) TIP

This is one of those albums where you'll want to cherry-pick favorites. Recorded live when the supergroup was at its commercial zenith, it's sloppy in spots where precision is called for. And the hyperbolic counterculture rants sound a bit silly these days (Bellows Stills: "Jesus Christ was the first nonviolent revolutionary! Ah, dig it, dig it!"). On the other hand, the electric jams are enlivened by some charged guitar skirmishes between Stills and Young.

So Far  (1974 - ORIGINAL RECORDING REMASTERED)

If you restrict yourself to 11 CSN&Y songs at this point in the group's history this is pretty much a perfect collection. This was the first CSN album I owned and it opened a door in my music library. I loved every song in this compilation and it drove me to buy more CSN albums and the box set.

Crosby, Stills & Nash

CSN (1977)

In 1977 we finally got a follow up to the debut album from the trio, and it was a very worthy follow up. Solo agendas seemed to be gone and everyone brought their best songs. The material is very good, if not up to the standard of the debut.

Graham Nash is in rare form. This is his best CSN album...

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Crosby & Nash

Graham Nash/David Crosby (1972)

Everything you likely already cherish about these two is present here, heartfelt and immaculate harmonies, strong and distinct compositions from both artists, and superb musicianship -again provided by the 60's elite of California's session players.
When it comes to specific songs, it's more a matter of personal choices than objective hierarchies. Nash's songs are particularly moving and fiercer -as much as "fierce" is ever something to be said about Graham Nash- than anything in "Songs For Beginners." Crosby's pieces carry the wonderful dramatic undertow he could invoke -it seems, at will- ever since The Byrds' days and, more poignantly, in his first solo album and Deja Vu.

Wind On The Water (1975)

Crosby and Nash never sounded better, never played better, never wrote better, and their back up band was spot on from the first note to the last. I remember walking down Bloor Street when I first heard this from a record shop. I was hooked. I wore out 6 vinyl copies of this.
Crosby and Nash seemed positively liberated from the chains that went with being in the Supergroup that was more ego than substance. For all of Neil's posturings, at this point in their career, Cros and Nash were the best songwriters in rock music, touching on themes of life, death, love and environment with a poignancy any writer would sell their soul for.

Whistling Down The Wire (1976)

The mood of "Whistling Down the Wire" is different, there's a certain melancholy to it which I did not think as present before and, particularly in Nash's tunes, a somber tone than in prior compositions. "Marguerita" and "Broken Bird" are gorgeous examples of Graham's depth of feeling, proving that his "sweet" or "tender" spirit does not mean that the man is a "light" composer.
Crosby, it's worth saying, sings two songs of his own fitting with the emotional urgency of Nash's offerings, and clearly belonging to the list of his most powerful compositions. "Time After Time" and, perhaps even more, "Foolish Man" will leave you speechless, and justifiably comparing them with some of his prior classics.
All in all, this album is a must and a testament to one of the most significant and long-lasting musical pairs in popular music, for the last thirty years.

Crosby & Nash Live (1977)

The album is a real live album. You can hear some things are a bit rough compared to the studio-albums. The recording quality is not so good. But there are just a few bands that often visit studio's that have made live-albums work. Being there is most of the time better, probably because there's to much noise going on a popstage to hear what's going wrong.
Here you can hear a band that can really play: not just loud, but subtle too. The choice of the songs will only be original for the younger listener, who only buy the threesomes or foursomes of CSNY. Because I was about 5 years old when the album came out, the album, for me, has something more to offer. It gives an insight of the live sound of Crosby and Nash at that time and it (together with the CN studio-albums) helps understand why the album CSN is so good.

Stills & Young

Long May You Run (1976)

Neil Young's songs from this ill-fated collaboration are widely regarded as toss-offs, but the disc does contain three or four swell Young tunes. The title track is among his finest work from the mid-'70s, with its generous pop hook wrapped in shambling rhythms, laconic pace, nostalgic subject matter, and subtle, country-fried accents. The slow, powerful "Fountainebleau"--a story of rock-star hotel decadence--is "Powderfinger"-ish with some of Young's most nimble-fingered fretwork ever, and his vocals on "Midnight on the Bay" are stunningly on key.

David Crosby

If I could Only Remember My Name (1971 - RECORDING REMASTERED in 2006) TIP

Thanks to his much-publicized personal travails, it's easy to overlook the multiple talents that originally made Crosby a star in his days with The Byrds and Crosby, Stills and Nash. This, his first solo effort, was recorded in 1971 (following Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young's Deja Vu) and contains some of his most impressive vocal and songwriting work, including the haunting "Laughing," the mantra-like "Music Is Love," and the extended, impressionistic "Cowboy Movie." With guest appearances by such famous friends as Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, Grace Slick, and Jerry Garcia, it's a fascinating chapter in an always-interesting career that's all too often been overshadowed by headlines.

Stephen Stills

Stephen Stills  (1971) TIP

This is Stills' solo masterpiece, a work of such greatness that made his follow-up solo recordings -very good albums indeed- impossible to match it. Perhaps Manassas' debut is the only other album Stills put out -then as a band leader again- that can be compared to this one.
This is an album that belongs in any serious Rock worshipper's CD collection, not because of its possible historical significance nor any prior sentimental attachment to those times, but exclusively on the strength of its musical content, as relevant and soulful today as thirty-odd years ago.

Stephen Stills 2  (1972)

This album was originally released in 1971. It has 12 songs and the total time is 43 minutes. The sound quality of the original CD is good, but not excellent. It does have some problems with level control. Some of the songs are very quiet, requiring you to crank up the volume. And then, the next song will be very loud. Is there a remastered version of this CD yet?
With the exception of three tracks, all the songs on this CD are very good. That have that Stephen Stills atmosphere about them. Some of them sound as if Crosby, Stills and Nash could have done them (especially since Crosby does background vocals).
This is a great CD to pop in and be taken back to the early seventies.

Stills  (1975)

This is an engaging CD. A number of these songs, such as 'Turn Back...', 'My Favorite Changes', 'In the Way', 'First Things First', 'As I Come of Age', and 'Myth of Sisyphus' could have easily claimed a spot on any of Stills' other solo productions. There are some weaker compositions, in particular 'Love Story' and 'Cold Cold World', but even those songs have their redeeming moments. This is certainly a 'must-own' for any avid collector of Stephen Stills.

The album is featuring on the 2007 digitally remastered double CD with "Illegal Stills" and "Thoroughfare Gap"!

Stills Live (1975)

In 1974, after completing a summer tour with David Crosby, Graham Nash and Neil Young, Stephen Stills launched a solo tour which stopped in my home town of Detroit in March. I was fortunate to see a sterling, dynamic performance at the largest Masonic Temple in North America, an old and ornate venue, from a front row balcony seat. Stills was at his peak, and he put together what had to be one of the hardest rocking bands of his career, the sort of band Crazy Horse has always been for Neil Young.
Inspiration is dripping from these performances, and the recording is remarkably clean, especially the acoustic set. Indeed, it is hard to imagine a rock audience showing enough discipline today to actually allow an uninterrupted performance of acoustic music such as we have here.

Illegal Stills (1976)

This album should have been recognized for what it was: an unmistakable statement from a great artist that, contrary to popular opinion, his skills had not diminished one bit. "Ring of Love" and "Circlin'" would have sounded right at home on top 40 radio, while "Soldier" was haunting and "The Loner" blew Neil Young's version of the song out of the water. The band is hot, the songs are excellent, the arrangements are imaginative, and on the whole this compares very favorably with the two Stills albums that get all the accolades - the debut, and the first Manassas album.

The album is featuring on the 2007 digitally remastered double CD with "Stills" and "Thoroughfare Gap"!

Still Stills: The Best of Stephen Stills(1976)

This is an out of print greatest hits album released on December 2, 1976 from Atlantic Records.

Thoroughfare Gap (1978)

This is an out of print album, but the album is featuring on the 2007 digitally remastered double CD with "Illegal Stills" and "Stills"!

Graham Nash

Songs for Beginners  (1971) TIP

After finding fame with the Hollies and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, expatriate Englishman turned West Coast rock icon Graham Nash made an auspicious solo debut on this 1971 disc. It's an exemplary singer-songwriter effort, striking a vital balance between graceful introspection and political fervor, with an organic intensity that Nash would never quite match in his subsequent solo work. With assistance from the likes of David Crosby, Jerry Garcia, and Dave Mason, highlights include the sensitive internal explorations "I Used to Be a King" and "Man in the Mirror" and the impassioned protest anthems "Chicago" and "Military Madness."

Wild Tales (1974)

Must have cd for those long drives. Ideal to lift the spirits and enjoy some really good Graham Nash tracks. Irony in abundance, excellent vocals and tight backing for the fast numbers with gentle melodies for the slower tracks. An album that has not dated and borders on crossover on one or two tracks You'll never be the same.

Neil Young

After The Gold Rush (1970)

After laboring in Buffalo Springfield and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, Neil Young finally hit perfect pitch--if his endearing off-center whine can be called "perfect"--with his third album. He's equally passionate with stripy riddles (has anybody figured out what "We've got mother nature on the run" means in the title track?) and pointed protest (after 30 years of rock-radio overplay, "Southern Man" still rings with truth about redneck racism). His creaky ensemble, including pianist Jack Nitzsche and rotating members of Crazy Horse, transforms ramshackle country and folk songs into soulful hippie hymns.

Harvest (1972) TIP

Proclaiming his intentions with "Are You Ready for the Country?" Young detoured briefly to the Nashville mainstream. On this No. 1 1972 album, even the singer's acquired-taste voice comes across smooth and beautiful--the smash "Heart of Gold," with steel guitars and Linda Ronstadt's backup vocals, is by far Young's most commercial-sounding song. His usual dissonant touches, like the otherworldly guitar in "Out on the Weekend," are less spooky in this new context. The last two tracks, the deceptively gentle "The Needle and the Damage Done" and the hypnotic rocker "Words (Between the Lines of Age)," predict "Tonight's the Night," Young's haunted 1975 classic.

Journey Through the Past (1972)

This was Neil's soundtrack for his first film "Journey Through The Past". The documentary film was a hodpodge of television appearances of buffalo Springfield, concert footage of Crosby, stills, Nash & young, rehearsal footage of the harvest sessions and various footage concerning religion, The soundtrack contained an audio record of everything in the film from music to dialogue. Unlike most Neil young records out there this one will mostly appeal to the die-hard fans (like me), there is a wealth of live and rehearsal versions of the songs listed above, not the best sound thou since most here were transferred straight from film to the master tape, it's reasons like this that has kept journey through the past out of print on CD.

Time Fades Away (1972)

Neil Young has offered a mountain of reasons why the completely live 'Time Fades Away', released on vinyl on 10-15-73, remains his only official work not available on CD. These reasons vary from not being particularly impressed by the work, to not wanting to be reminded of the tensions among the Stray Gators during the tour, to technical problems with reassembling the recordings, which were fed into a computer along with overdubs to press the original vinyl version. Yet 'Time Fades Away' may well be Neil's most affecting collection of songs, and is widely regarded by many die-hard fans as his finest production.

On The Beach (1974)

Sparse, under produced, and at times downright dour, On the Beach was Neil Young's first studio album after Harvest had transformed him into a mainstream superstar two years before. It was a career move akin to "pissin' in the wind," as the artist himself describes life on one of the album's most famous lines. Full of despair and little hope, "On the Beach" would nevertheless eventually come to be reappraised as a rock culture masterpiece.

Tonight's The Night (1975) TIP

By 1975 Young had written some of the most enduring anthems in rock history. But from the slow, tension-building piano opening of "Tonight's the Night," he downshifts into darkness and Crazy Horse's folk-country melodies take on a guttural hum that would eventually speak to generations of punk and grunge musicians. Inspired by the overdose deaths of two of Young's friends, roadie Bruce Berry and guitarist Danny Whitten, the title track (and its closing reprise) is a hypnotic cry of "why?" Even the relative party songs, "Come On Baby Let's Go Downtown" and "Roll Another Number," fit the album's bus-to-nowhere resignation.

Zuma (1975)

If Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere and Ragged Glory are the two finest studio albums Neil Young recorded with Crazy Horse, Zuma certainly qualifies as a close third. Recorded in 1975, Zuma exudes both a sense of focus and a tentative optimism, two qualities that were completely MIA from the bleak Time Fades Away/Tonight's the Night/On the Beach trilogy that preceded it. "Barstool Blues," "Don't Cry No Tears," and "Drive Back" are terse, punchy rockers, while "Danger Bird" and "Cortez the Killer" are extended guitar workouts in the grand Crazy Horse tradition. And the two acoustic entries--"Pardon My Heart" and "Through My Sails" (the latter was recorded with Crosby, Stills & Nash)--are absolutely gorgeous. Ignore the crappy cover art, and treat yourself to one of Young's most underrated records.

American Stars 'N Bars (1977 ORIGINAL RECORDING REMASTERED)

2003 Remastered reissue of 1977 album. This roots 'n' rock album features guests, Emmylou Harris & Linda Ronstadt, & the fan favorite 'Like A Hurricane'. The album initially peaked at #21 & achieved gold status. Nine tracks.

Decade (1977)

The first stop for anybody new to Neil Young's music, this 34-song set (originally released in 1977) traces his growth from Buffalo Springfield and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young to Crazy Horse to his Harvest band, the Stray Gators. The album defined Young to rock radio the way Hot Rocks determined which Rolling Stones songs would become classics, but this is more than a quickie greatest-hits collection. Rarities and hits--Springfield's "Mr. Soul," CSNY's "Ohio," and Young's "Cinnamon Girl," "Heart of Gold," and the closing "Long May You Run"--develop in thematic and chronological patterns.

Comes A Time (1978)

Often overlooked as it comes between Young's career-defining 1977 three-LP set Decade and the decade-ending Rust Never Sleeps, Comes a Time is a gentle album that includes some of Young's most soft-spoken material. "Lotta Love" became a hit for Nicolette Larson, who adds harmonies throughout the album, and tracks such as "Look Out for My Love" and "Human Highway" are indicative of Young's divergent styles. With four producer credits, six studio listings, an orchestra, and Crazy Horse all on the same album, Comes a Time is an interesting pastiche of all the things that make Young tick. Lacking his usual conceptual thrust, you'll just have to settle for some great songs.

Rust Never Sleeps (1979) TIP

Young has recorded many live albums, but none capture his two dominant musical personalities with as much power as 1979's Rust Never Sleeps. The acoustic side opens with "My, My, Hey, Hey (Out of the Blue)," a devastating anthem about the state of rock & roll. Comparing the Sex Pistols' Johnny Rotten to the late Elvis Presley, Young delivers perhaps his most famous line: "It's better to burn out than to fade away." Side 2 demonstrates the emotional power of Young's hard-rocking quartet, Crazy Horse, with the scathing political songs "Powderfinger," "Welfare Mothers," and the loud reprise of "My, My, Hey, Hey." 

Live Rust (1979)

Mere months passed between the release of Neil Young's mid-career milestone Rust Never Sleeps and this 1979 tour recording, which documents a late-'78 San Francisco performance. Indeed, Live Rust boasts four songs from the album that gave it its name. It's also sequenced in the same spirit as its studio sibling. As with Rust Never Sleeps, Live Rust opens with steady-flowing acoustic numbers before swirling into an electric vortex. What was side 4 off the original two-record version--"Like a Hurricane," "Hey, Hey, My, My," and "Tonight's the Night"--is arguably Young and Crazy Horse at their peak as a live unit, with all due respect to 1991's estimable Weld and 1997's desultory Year of the Horse. Few rock bands rank with Young and his stalwart electric trio, and Live Rust presents them in all their raging glory.

Manassas

Manassas (1972 - ORIGINAL RECORDING REMASTERED) TIP

Manassas was, at once, a band put together by Stephen Stills, the name of the album released by that band, and Stephen Stills' double album. Despite the presence of other well-known musicians, the album is very much a Stephen Stills project from beginning to end. The band is very good and the musicianship is tight, but Stills is out in front throughout. He plays the leads, he's the lead singer, and he wrote almost all of the material.
This is a solid album that spans a number of musical genres, and hearing it re-mastered on CD is a treat. This album can reduce a man to tears. Stephen Stills... what a talent. He has never received the dues he so richly deserves. The tears are not because this is a sad album. It's because he is so completely talented in every way imaginable. 
The tracks in each of the four segments flow into each other without breaks which gives the record a live performance feel.

Down the Road (1973)

Down The Road often receives the disdain usually dealt those who must follow a great performance (in this case, the first MANASSAS album), and that's a shame -- it's a solid set of good songs, and only suffers because it is directly compared to its predecessor. 
It is better than the first Manassas album because there is no filler on it. Especially awesome is Pensamiento and Business In The Street.
Stills sounds like he is in his prime to me, and I'm more than thankful that he put one more Manassas album under his belt before Carrying On. Buy and enjoy.