Buffalo Springfiield - Unique Demos (1966-1968)

I'm attempting to sort out all of Buffalo Springfield's stray tracks. It turns out they cut many acoustic demos that wound up on the 2001 box set (just titled "Buffalo Springfield"). About half of those demos are of songs done by the full band elsewhere, and about half are songs that apparently only were recorded in that demo form. This is the album of all of those unique demos.

Nearly everything here comes from the box set. I could have included a bunch of Neil Young demos from his "Archives" box set that were done in 1965, not long before Buffalo Springfield was formed. But I have other plans for an album of just those demos.

Similarly, I could have included some Stephen Stills songs from his "Just Roll Tape" album, which were recorded in early 1968. But that's arguably after Buffalo Springfield broke up. (It's hard to say when that happened, since the band was pretty much breaking up over and over ever since it was formed, and it had a long decline of fading away. The band's last concert was in May 1968, a month after "Just Roll Tape" was recorded, but Young was barely involved with the band by then.) However, I didn't include those either, because I think the "Just Roll Tape" is a strong album on its own, so there's no need to repeat material from that here.

The only song I added that's not on the box set is Stills doing a demo of "49 Reasons," an early version of the song "49 Bye-Byes" that would appear on the first Crosby, Stills and Nash album in 1969. This demo was made in early 1968 too, around the same time as "Just Roll Tape," but I'm including it here since it doesn't have a good home in my music collection elsewhere. (A few months later, Stills would do another demo of the same song, but with David Crosby taking part as well.)

If you've been following this blog closely, you may have noticed that I'm not shy about editing songs if I feel it will improve the song. I've made significant edits to four songs here, and all for the same reason. The four songs, "Come On," "Can't Keep Me Down," "I'm Your Kind of Guy," and "Words I Must Say," were all unusually short, about one minute long each. Some songs are meant to be that short, but in these cases I feel that's not true.

In fact, at the end of "Words I Must Say" one can hear the songwriter, Richie Furay, mutter, "There's a whole bunch of instruments. Then it repeats. That's all there is to the song." So I did just what he intended, and repeated the song, making a one-minute long song into a two-minute long song. But I don't mean I simply have the song play twice. I had to carefully edit the music so the guitar strumming never stops, and the first half seamlessly goes into the second half.

I did very similar things with "Come On," "I'm Your Kind of Guy," and "Can't Keep Me Down." Generally speaking, I repeated a verse and chorus at the end. In all cases, that turned a one-minute long song into a two-minute long one. I feel that turned song fragments into what sounds like full songs, making for a more satisfying listening experience. (Even after my edit, "I'm Your Kind of Guy" still ended up only one minute and forty second long.) If you don't like this sort of editing, you can still go back to the original versions found on the box set.

Oh, I also did a little more editing in that I cut out any talking before or after the demos. The makers of the box set generally kept all the studio talking in, but I didn't find any of it that interesting. Generally, it would be the engineer saying "Take one" or the like. If these had actually been released on album in the 1960s, I'm sure all of those little talking bits would have been removed.

Finally, I added two bonus tracks. The reason they're bonus tracks is because they're way out of time from the rest of the album. But I'm including them because I don't have any better place to put them in my music collection, and I'll bet that's the same for you. They are "Travelin'" a Stills demo dating all the way from 1962, and "High Flying Bird," just about the only song sung by Stills when he was briefly a part of the Au Go Go Singers folk group in 1964. Both songs come from Stills' box set "Carry On."

Neil Young has lots of recorded music from before his Buffalo Springfield days, most of which ended up on his "Archives" box set, but with Stills, as far as I know, only these two songs have been released. Musically, they fit in well with the rest of the demos on this album, although his voice sounds different, especially on the 1962 demo.

01 Come On [Stephen Stills Demo] [Edit] (Buffalo Springfield)
02 I'm Your Kind of Guy [Neil Young Demo] [Edit] (Buffalo Springfield)
03 Can't Keep Me Down [Richie Furay Demo] (Buffalo Springfield)
04 Hello, I've Returned [Stephen Stills Demo] [Edit] (Buffalo Springfield)
05 High School Graduation [Neil Young Demo] (Buffalo Springfield)
06 One More Sign [Neil Young Demo] (Buffalo Springfield)
07 So You've Got a Lover [Stephen Stills Demo] (Buffalo Springfield)
08 Round and Round and Round [Neil Young Demo] (Buffalo Springfield)
09 Words I Must Say [Richie Furay Demo] [Edit] (Buffalo Springfield)
10 The Rent Is Always Due [Early Version of 'I Am a Child'] [Neil Young Demo] (Buffalo Springfield)
11 My Angel [Stephen Stills Demo] (Buffalo Springfield)
12 The Old Laughing Lady [Neil Young Demo] (Buffalo Springfield)
13 49 Reasons [49 Bye-Byes] [Stephen Stills Demo] (Buffalo Springfield)

High Flying Bird (Stephen Stills & the Au Go Go Singers)
Travelin' [Demo] (Stephen Stills)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15904595/BuffaloS_1966-1968_UniqueDmos_atse.zip.html

I made the cover art based on a 1968 poster by David Schiller. The poster is rectangular, so I had to make some big changes to fit it into a square space. That included shrinking and widening the tractor in the middle so it would fit within the rest. I also changed the background color from tan to light purple and added in the album title.