"Live It Up was drastically
overproduced, and only had three things on it that were really any good." David
Crosby
Beware of albums with extraterrestrial
cocktail weenies on the cover. It is hard to believe that CSN could make an album this
bad. In spite of the presence of three great songwriters, outside material and songs
written with/by band members is surprisingly dominant. This is very
disappointing given that CSN had hardly been releasing a lot of product. In fact, since
1977, they had released four solo albums and two full band studio projects. One would
expect a backlog of good songs, but this release seems to indicate a complete song writing
breakdown.
In 1969, CSN went against the grain with
their homemade, stripped down debut album. Great song writing carried the
day, and they
made a transcendent album. In 1990, they were slaves of fashion, and their song writing
talents were barely in evidence. This was the follow up to the poorly received CSNY effort
American Dream. While Neil went off to make a string of commercially and critically
successful albums, CSN made this, and it drove a stake in the heart of the group’s
credibility.
Three songs held up well enough to make
the CSN box. After the Dolphin and Yours and Mine were good compared to the others
here,
but the real star is Haven’t We Lost Enough. Stephen Stills wrote a great song, and
it received a stripped down, acoustic CSN treatment that allowed it to avoid the
production ills that further mar this weak effort. The shame is that this great song is
lost on this album, serving only to show how bad, and un CSN-like, the rest of it is.
The return of David Crosby, which seemed
to be great news for CSN, had so far yielded meager returns. David’s prolific output
on solo and CPR projects makes the simple lack of material on Live It Up all the more
puzzling.
Raincheck.
