Laughter, Love and Music, Bill Graham Memorial, Golden Gate Park, San Francisco, CA, 11-3-1991, Part 3: Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young

Here's the third out of four volumes of the 1991 Bill Graham memorial concert, called "Laughter, Love and Music." This one features Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young (CSNY).

Bill Graham was pivotal to the career of CSNY, so it was fitting they were one of the headlining music acts for his memorial concerts. He was involved in most of the really key concerts for the band, from Woodstock to Live Aid. In 1970, when CSNY was just starting out, he called them "America's Beatles." That quote got a lot of mileage and really helped them. But probably his most important role was in 1974, when he organized their big reunion tour. 

Graham Nash told a interesting story relating to Graham in his autobiography "Wild Tales: A Rock & Roll Life." It relates to an episode at one of their Fillmore East shows in New York City in 1970. After a three-hour show and two encores, the band was in their dressing room, refusing to come out while the crowd was cheering for more. Nash wrote, "Bill Graham slipped a note under our door. It said: 'Your audience awaits you.' 'We’re not coming out, no matter how much you pay us,' Neil told Bill. The next thing we knew, a hundred-dollar bill came sliding under the door. As soon as Neil saw that, he shouted, 'Not enough!' Seven more hundred-dollar bills came sliding through at regular intervals. We were all laughing our asses off about it. Neil scooped those bills up and we went out to do another encore." 

That showed the lengths Bill Graham would go to in order to make sure the audience went away fully satisfied. I would guess that any other concert promoter would have figured two encores was plenty after a long concert, and kept all the money.

CSNY got together for a reunion album in 1988, "American Dream." But they only played about five concerts together from 1988 to 1990, all of them benefit concerts. Graham's death caused them to reunite again, after over a year of not performing together. It would be their last concert as a foursome until they went on tour in 2000. In this concert, they skipped the songs from their reunion album and stuck to their classics.

This album is 43 minutes long.

46 talk by emcee (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
47 talk (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
48 Teach Your Children (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
49 talk (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
50 Love the One You're With (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
51 Long May You Run (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
52 Long Time Gone (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
53 talk (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
54 Southern Cross (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
55 talk (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
56 Only Love Can Break Your Heart (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
57 Wooden Ships (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
58 talk (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
59 Ohio (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
60 talk by emcee (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/Le4MDZsb

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/en/KA7dtrXCoVKLj0i/file

I have to admit I cheated with the cover. I couldn't find any good photos of CSNY together at this concert, and even only a couple of bad ones. They were spread too far apart on the stage. But I did find a good one of Neil Young and David Crosby on stage at this exact concert, so I used that one. I also found a good one of just Stephen Stills, also at this exact concert. So I cheated by using Photoshop to paste Stills into the image between Young and Crosby. Sorry if that bothers anyone, but I liked it better that way.

Joe Walsh with Stephen Stills - VetsAid 2023, North Island Credit Union Amphitheater, Chula Vista, CA, 11-12-2023

The other day, this concert appeared on my YouTube feed. I was intrigued by the fact that it wasn't a typical Joe Walsh concert, because Stephen Stills joined him for three songs, singing lead vocals on two of them. It was originally from a webcast, meaning the sound quality is excellent, so I decided to post it.

It turns out this set was from a larger benefit concert called VetsAid. It's been held annually since 2017. Joe Walsh has been a prime mover behind the concerts, along with his wife Marjorie. Both of them had parents who were military veterans. The money raised by the concerts goes to fund non-profits that help veterans. Unusually, the concert is held in different towns each year, towns that typically don't have concerts like this. For instance, this one was held in Chula Vista, near San Diego. The 2025 one was in Witchita, Kansas, and the 2022 one was in Columbus, Ohio.

Each year, there's a different line-up of prominent music acts. For this concert, the other acts were the War on Drugs, Lucius, the Flaming Lips, and Electric Light Orchestra. Stills didn't perform a set of his own.

All the songs here came from a YouTube video of the webcast, except for one song, so the sound quality was excellent. As I often do, I converted the video to audio, then chopped it into mp3s. However, the vocals were low in the mix, so I fixed that with help of the MVSEP program. 

 

The one song not from that webcast was "Rocky Mountain Way," which was removed due to some copyright issue. I found a different version of that song on YouTube, probably recorded by someone in the audience with their cell phone. Not surprisingly, the sound quality isn't as good on this one. I did some extra edits on that to try to improve the sound quality. It sounds somewhat better, but it's still rougher than the other songs.

Walsh and Stills were no longer spring chickens at the time of this concert, but they certainly could still play guitar. There's a lot of excellent lead guitar work here. For instance, "Turn to Stone" is 11 minutes long, with most of that soloing. And the songs with Stills are a highlight, due to the guitar dueling between Walsh and Stills.

 

I found an article about this concert in a San Diego newspaper, if you want to know more: 

https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/2023/11/13/joe-walsh-and-fellow-rock-roll-hall-of-famers-made-san-diego-vetsaid-a-benefit-concert-to-remember/

By the way, if anyone has any of the other webcasts of the VetsAid concert, including the other acts from this one, please let me know. I got the impression that there have been webcasts of these concerts every year, but they're surprisingly hard to find. 

This album is 57 minutes long. 

01 talk (Joe Walsh)
02 In the City (Joe Walsh)
03 Life's Been Good (Joe Walsh)
04 talk (Joe Walsh)
05 Turn to Stone (Joe Walsh)
06 Funk No. 49 (Joe Walsh)
07 talk (Joe Walsh)
08 talk (Joe Walsh & Stephen Stills)
09 For What It's Worth (Joe Walsh & Stephen Stills)
10 Love the One You're With (Joe Walsh & Stephen Stills)
11 talk (Joe Walsh & Stephen Stills)
12 Rocky Mountain Way (Joe Walsh & Stephen Stills)
13 talk (Joe Walsh)
14 All Night Long (Joe Walsh)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/geYXyByG

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/L1ue4d2PVQgQoAr/file

The cover photo is from this exact concert. Stephen Stills is on the left, with glasses, and Joe Walsh is on the right.

Various Artists - Monterey International Pop Festival, Monterey County Fairgrounds, Monterey, CA, 6-18-1967, Evening Show

This is the fifth and last album I'm posting from the 1967 Monterey International Pop Festival. As I've mentioned previously, the festival itself was divided into five parts, and one had to buy tickets for each part. This is the longest album from the festival, and probably the most important in musical history, especially due to the set by Jimi Hendrix.

With most of the previous parts from this festival, I've made reference to a Wikipedia page listing all the songs known to have been performed at the festival. Let me do that again, as I mention the missing portions:

Monterey Pop Festival set list - Wikipedia 

The Blues Project started the evening show. The two songs here are the only ones listed at the Wikipedia page, but it's known they performed more. Unfortunately, the band was in the process of breaking up when this concert happened. A key member, Al Kooper, left a couple of months prior to this. (He had his own solo set at the festival.) The band collapsed shortly thereafter, though there were later reunions.

The second set was by Big Brother and the Holding Company, starring their lead singer Janis Joplin. As I mentioned previously, they were the only act to perform twice at the festival. That's because they went over very well the first time, the day before, but the band's manager didn't allow them to be filmed at that time. (The cameras were running but pointed at the ground, which at least allowed the audio to be recorded.) By the next day, the band members were convinced that getting included in the documentary about the festival would give their career a big boost. So they played a short set of just 15 minutes, compared to 23 minutes the day before, in order to get enough film footage. It turned out to be a very smart career move indeed. When the "Monterey Pop" movie documentary came out in 1968, Joplin's performance in it helped make her a big star.

The next set is quite a mystery - even the band's name: "the Group with No Name." This band was led by Cyrus Faryar, a singer-songwriter who had previously been in the Modern Jazz Quartet. But no songs from this set have been made public, and none or the names of any of the songs performed are known, nor is the number of songs. It seems they were not well received. A Newsweek review of the festival said they "were terrible and may well not last long enough to get a name." That turned out to be accurate, because the band broke up before they released any music. 

After that came Buffalo Springfield. I'm especially excited about this, because up until 2024, only five of the songs they performed were publicly available. But that year, there was a "record store day" release of their entire set here. That release included three songs that were previously unreleased, and even unbootlegged: "Hung Upside Down," "Nobody's Fool," and "Pretty Girl Why."

Here's a review about the Buffalo Springfield set in Rolling Stone Magazine in 2024: 

First-Ever Buffalo Springfield Live Album Released on Record Store Day 

This performance is unusual in that key member Neil Young quit the band about a week before the festival, only to rejoin shortly afterwards. (He quit and rejoined multiple times.) Young was temporarily replaced by two people: lead guitarist Doug Hastings and rhythm guitarist and vocalist David Crosby. Crosby's involvement was controversial, because he was still a member of the Byrds at the time, and in fact he performed in their set at the festival as well. 

Here's a quote about the controversy by Roger McGuinn, the leader of the Byrds: "I didn't know David was going to sit in with Buffalo Springfield, and that wasn't really a big deal. What was happening was that we were not happy with each other, like a marriage breaking up. He was really upset because we didn’t do his song 'Triad.' That was the big bone. He wanted to be the lead singer of the Byrds, you know, the head Byrd. That wasn't happening. To his satisfaction, we were sharing vocals equally. At Monterey I was trying to be a trooper, like Bobby Darin taught me, and try and soldier on and do it."

I don't know how much Crosby's sitting in with Buffalo Springfield impacted his role with the Byrds, if at all. But he was kicked out of the band a few months later. And his involvement with Buffalo Springfield was key to his future music career, because he would later be a member of Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young with two members of Buffalo Springfield: Stephen Stills and Neil Young.

The next act up was the Who. Jimi Hendrix moved to Britain in late 1966 and soon found fame there. One he was living there, he and the Who had seen each other perform. They were both impressed with and intimidated by each other. Neither wanted to be upstaged by the other at this festival, especially since both had made destroying their instruments part of their acts. They decided to toss a coin. The  Who won the right to play first.

Adding to the competition between the two acts, backstage before their sets, Hendrix played his guitar while staring at the Who's lead guitarist Pete Townshend, trying to impress him with his skills. Townshend said later, "It was just Jimi on a chair playing at me. Playing at me like 'Don't fuck with me, you little shit.'" 

Here's how the Wikipedia entry about the festival describes the finale to the Who's set: "At the end of their frenetic performance of 'My Generation,' the audience was stunned as guitarist Pete Townshend smashed his guitar and slammed the neck against the amps and speakers. Smoke bombs exploded behind the amps and frightened concert staff rushed onstage to retrieve expensive microphones. At the end of the mayhem, drummer Keith Moon kicked over his drum kit as the band exited the stage." 

The Who's set was relatively short, only 25 minutes, when they were allowed to play up to 40 minutes. So their set here is complete. But their performance was very impactful, especially due to the destruction of their instruments. They were a British band, and hadn't had any hits in the U.S. yet, except for "Happy Jack" in 1966, though there already was a lot of buzz about them. Their performance at the festival would raise their profile in the U.S., helping them to have two more U.S. hits later that year, "Pictures of Lily" and "I Can See for Miles."  

Eric Burdon of the Animals later commented about the Who's performance: "The American audience went: 'What the hell is this?!' The climax of the show was just like a terrorist attack, with the bombs and the smoke. It was just shocking!"

After the Who came the Grateful Dead. The band would go on to play concerts for decades, becoming one of the most popular touring bands in the U.S. But keep in mind this was very early in their career, with their debut album ("The Grateful Dead")coming out only three months prior to this festival. In a Newsweek review of the festival, music critic Michael Lydon commented: "The Grateful Dead were beautiful. They did at top volume what Shankar had done softly. They played pure music, some of the best music of the concert. I have never heard anything in music that could be said to be qualitatively better than the performance of the Dead, Sunday night.

The next act was the Jimi Hendrix Experience. This was possibly the most musically historic set of the entire festival. As an aside, Hendrix was not well known in the U.S. at the time of the festival. The main reason why he appeared at the festival, and especially at a pivotal spot near the end of the final night, was because Paul McCartney of the Beatles was a member of the board of governors for the festival, and he absolutely insisted that Hendrix had to perform there. The Wikipedia entry on the festival has a good summary of what happened during Hendrix's set, so I'll quote that here:

"Brian Jones of the Rolling Stones introduced [Hendrix]. His use of extremely high volumes, the feedback this produced, and the combination of the two along with his dive-bombing use of the vibrato bar on his guitar, produced sounds that, with the exception of the British in attendance, none of the audience had ever heard before. This, along with his look, his clothing, and his erotic antics onstage, had an enormous impact on the audience. To take things further, aware of the Who's planned explosive finale, he had asked around for a can of lighter fluid, which he'd placed behind one of his amplifier stacks before beginning his set. He ended his Monterey performance with an unpredictable version of 'Wild Thing,' which he capped by kneeling over his guitar, pouring lighter fluid over it, setting it on fire, and then smashing it onto the stage seven times before throwing its remains into the audience. This performance put Hendrix on the map and generated an enormous amount of attention in the music press and newspapers alike." 

Actor Dennis Hopper had this to say: "Hendrix was certainly a great guitar player. He became part of the guitar, it was an extension of his, ah, his feelings and his sex and everything. He was unmatched in that."

And music critic Robert Christgau wrote this in The Village Voice decades later: "Music was a given for a Hendrix stuck with topping the Who's guitar-smashing tour de force. It's great sport to watch this outrageous scene-stealer wiggle his tongue, pick with his teeth, and set his axe on fire, but the showboating does distract from the history made that night - the dawning of an instrumental technique so effortlessly fecund and febrile that rock has yet to equal it, though hundreds of metal bands have gotten rich trying."

The final act of the evening, and thus the entire festival, was the Mamas and the Papas. They had had many big hits of their own by this time. But the band's main songwriter John Phillips had recently wrote a single meant to promote the festival, "San Francisco [Be Sure to Wear Flowers in Your Hair]." Rather than had his own band play it, he gave the song to Scott McKenzie, who was having a huge hit with it right when the festival was happening (as I detailed in the write-up in the first part of this festival). McKenzie wasn't just a random singer though. He and Phillips were friends since childhood, and played in different bands together. When Phillips created the Mamas and the Papas, he invited McKenzie to join, but McKenzie turned down the offer, wanting to try a solo career instead. In any case, towards the end of this set, McKenzie joined the band and sang his hit song with the Mamas and the Papas backing him.

Indian sitar player Ravi Shankar had this to say: "The group who really made me feel good, I can't tell you how nice, was the Mamas and the Papas. There was melody, there were lyrical moments, and beautiful - and they looked so good together." (As an aside, he enjoyed many of the other acts in the festival, but hated the destruction of instruments by the Who and Hendrix.)

Now, this is going to be an extra long write-up, because before I finish with this festival, I want to write a little bit about how it came to be in the first place. I'm putting that explanation here because it turns out the main instigators of the festival were actually the members of the Mamas and the Papas, so I think it's fitting to put this explanation after talking about their set. The festival came together rather quickly, in just a few months, but during that time the band members worked tirelessly on it, basically putting the band on hold for a while to do so.

The band put on a pretty good performance despite being too busy organizing the festival to rehearse much beforehand. But in retrospect, the fact the band spent so much time organizing the festival was probably a sign that they had grown tired of being in a band together. Phillips remembered as the apex of the band's career, saying, "There would never be anything quite like it again." The band put out a new album in October 1967. But after that, they decided to take long vacations to "get the muse going again," according to Phillips. But instead, the band fought during their vacation time, resulting in an announcement that they had broken up. They did manage to reunite for another album in 1968, only to break up again.

The festival was originally conceived as a money-making event. But the people involved didn't have the money to pay for star acts. So the organizers changed the idea to a benefit concert (although first class transportation was paid for all the acts). The profits from sales of albums drawn from the festival still help fund charities decades later, especially due to steady profits from the hit "Monterey Pop" movie documentary. Ravi Shankar was the only act to be paid, because he signed a contract early on, before it was changed to a benefit concert.

The festival had a very unusual board of governors to help organize it: John Phillips, Donovan, Mick Jagger, Paul McCartney, Roger McGuinn, Johnny Rivers, Smokey Robinson, Paul Simon, Brian Wilson, Lou Adler, Terry Melcher, Andrew Loog Oldham, and Alan Pariser. All the next except the last four were famous musicians at the time. The last four were successful music producers or managers. Some, like Phillips and Simon, were very involved, while others like Smokey Robinson basically just gave their name to the effort.

By the way, one of the last things I want to mention about this festival is all the bands that didn't play. Here are some names, plus the reasons why they didn't participate in paranetheses: the Beach Boys (internal squabbles), Donovan (couldn't get a U.S. work visa due to a drug charge), the Kinks (couldn't get a U.S. work visa due to being banned due to a union dispute), the Lovin' Spoonful (fighting a drug charge, plus internal squabbles), and Dionne Warwick (cancelled right before the festival because she had a schedule conflict). Kaleidoscope (the U.S. band, not the British one) did play at the festival, but only outside, for the crowd who didn't have tickets to get inside.

There were still more acts that were asked but declined. Producer Lou Adler later said, "There weren't a lot of tours [at the time]. We're still talking 1967. Not a lot of acts [were] working all the time. The San Francisco acts [were] playing around San Francisco. The big acts couldn't get visas to get in. The Motown acts were working, the blues acts were working, but the acts that we went after, they had time even though we had a short window [to get them]. ... Everyone jumped on very quickly. We tried for the Impressions. We got some no's, from some of the Motown acts, and Chuck Berry passed."

In my recent write-up about the 1969 Toronto Rock and Roll Revival Festival, I mentioned that legendary 1950s star Chuck Berry was notoriously cheap. This is another good example of that. John Phillips tried to invite Berry. "I told him on the phone, 'Chuck, it's for charity,' and he said to me, 'Chuck Berry has only one charity and that's Chuck Berry. $2,000.' We couldn't make an exception." 

Anyway, that's the festival. I hope you enjoy. Personally, if I could get in a time machine and see just one rock festival, I think it would be this one, even over Woodstock in 1969. Actually, the people who created the Woodstock festival came up with the idea immediately after watching the "Monterey Pop" documentary movie in 1968. Like many others, they wanted to repeat the success of Monterey, but make a lot of money from it instead of doing it as a benefit concert.

Here's an interesting quote from Chris Hillman of the Byrds, contrasting the two festivals. "I didn't do Woodstock, and I remember Gram Parsons and I were sharing a house in the San Fernando Valley, and Woodstock was on the news. The situation there. We were laughing, and I said, 'That's no Monterey.' And it wasn't! There was a sense of commaraderie at Monterey." 

This album is three hours and 35 minutes long. 

01 talk (Tommy Smothers)
02 talk (Paul Simon)
03 The Flute Thing [Instrumental] (Blues Project)
04 talk (Blues Project)
05 Wake Me, Shake Me (Blues Project)
06 talk (Tommy Smothers)
07 Combination of the Two (Big Brother & the Holding Company)
08 Harry (Big Brother & the Holding Company)
09 Ball and Chain (Big Brother & the Holding Company)
10 talk (Peter Tork)
11 For What It's Worth (Buffalo Springfield)
12 Nowadays Clancy Can't Even Sing (Buffalo Springfield)
13 talk (Buffalo Springfield)
14 Hung Upside Down (Buffalo Springfield)
15 talk (Buffalo Springfield)
16 A Child's Claim to Fame (Buffalo Springfield)
17 talk (Buffalo Springfield)
18 Nobody's Fool (Buffalo Springfield)
19 talk (Buffalo Springfield)
20 Pretty Girl Why (Buffalo Springfield)
21 talk (Buffalo Springfield)
22 Rock and Roll Woman (Buffalo Springfield)
23 Bluebird (Buffalo Springfield)
24 talk (Eric Burdon)
25 Substitute (Who)
26 talk (Who)
27 Summertime Blues (Who)
28 talk (Who)
29 Pictures of Lily (Who)
30 talk (Who)
31 A Quick One while He's Away (Who)
32 talk (Who)
33 Happy Jack (Who)
34 talk (Who)
35 My Generation (Who)
36 talk (Bill Graham)
37 talk (Bill Graham)
38 Viola Lee Blues (Grateful Dead)
39 talk by emcee (Grateful Dead)
40 talk (Grateful Dead)
41 Cold Rain and Snow (Grateful Dead)
42 talk (Jimi Hendrix)
43 Alligator (Grateful Dead)
44 Caution [Do Not Stop on Tracks] (Grateful Dead)
45 talk (Bill Graham)
46 talk (emcee)
47 talk (Brian Jones)
48 Killing Floor (Jimi Hendrix)
49 talk (Jimi Hendrix)
50 Foxy Lady (Jimi Hendrix)
51 talk (Jimi Hendrix)
52 Like a Rolling Stone (Jimi Hendrix)
53 talk (Jimi Hendrix)
54 Rock Me Baby (Jimi Hendrix)
55 talk (Jimi Hendrix)
56 Hey Joe (Jimi Hendrix)
57 talk (Jimi Hendrix)
58 Can You See Me (Jimi Hendrix)
59 talk (Jimi Hendrix)
60 The Wind Cries Mary (Jimi Hendrix)
61 talk (Jimi Hendrix)
62 Purple Haze (Jimi Hendrix)
63 talk (Jimi Hendrix)
64 Wild Thing (Jimi Hendrix)
65 talk (Paul Simon)
66 Straight Shooter (Mamas & the Papas)
67 talk (Mamas & the Papas)
68 Got a Feelin' (Mamas & the Papas)
69 talk (Mamas & the Papas)
70 California Dreamin' (Mamas & the Papas)
71 talk (Mamas & the Papas)
72 Spanish Harlem (Mamas & the Papas)
73 Somebody Groovy (Mamas & the Papas)
74 talk (Mamas & the Papas)
75 I Call Your Name (Mamas & the Papas)
76 talk (Mamas & the Papas)
77 Monday, Monday (Mamas & the Papas)
78 talk (Mamas & the Papas)
79 San Francisco [Be Sure to Wear Flowers in Your Hair] (Mamas & the Papas & Scott McKenzie)
80 talk (Mamas & the Papas)
81 Dancing in the Street (Mamas & the Papas)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/8vU9t776

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/3WanaF2nlZaXyl8/file

Like most of the cover art I've made for this festival, I had too many good options to choose from, so I broke the image into four smaller ones. From top left clockwise: David Crosby (with hat), Richie Furray (with glasses) and Stephen Stills of Buffalo Springfield, Roger Daltrey and Pete Townshend (smashing his guitar) of the Who, the Mamas and the Papas, and Jimi Hendrix.

The Stills-Young Band (Stephen Stills & Neil Young) - Boston Garden, Boston, MA, 6-26-1976

This year, 2024, Neil Young released his third big box set of his music career, "Archives, Volume 3." One thing I was looking forward to from this was a concert album from his 1976 tour with Stephen Stills. But there was nothing from it whatsoever. And even though his box sets have gathered up virtually all his previously unreleased original songs, there was one nice original song of his played on that tour, "Evening Coconut," that remains unreleased.

The reason I was looking for such a live album is because there are no known FM radio or soundboard recordings from the 1976 Stills and Young tour. But once I found out that tour had been skipped for the box set, I went looking for the best sounding bootleg from the tour, figuring we're probably never going to get anything better now. I found this concert from Boston.

But if you're a stickler for excellent sound quality, never fear. Although this is an audience boot, I edited the songs, and now it sounds just as good as a typical soundboard from that era. Really. First off, it sounded pretty darn good for an audience boot, heads above all the other concert bootlegs from the tour that get traded. But then I edited all the songs with the MVSEP program to remove a low constant level of crowd noise from all but the parts where you'd find crowd noise on a soundboard, especially at the ends of songs. Then I boosted the lead vocals generally for all the songs, and adjusted the mix. I'm proud of the result.

I even took extra steps for a couple of songs. For the songs "Black Queen" and "4+20," Stills either forgot some lyrics or had his mouth too far from the microphone for them to be heard. It was only about ten seconds for each song, but I found it kind of annoying. So I went to the next best bootleg from this tour, then pasted in just those few seconds of missing singing for each song. That's why those two have ["Edit"] in their titles.

Now, I feel the need to say a little bit about this tour in general. There's a long and tangled story behind the creation of the album they made for this tour to support, called "Long May You Run." It involved Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young (CSNY) getting back together, briefly, and then breaking apart again, leaving bad feelings all around. There's a good summary of the whole thing here, including information about this tour:

Long May You Run - Wikipedia

Here's my summary about the tour part. Stills and Young were together in Buffalo Springfield, and then again in CSNY. They often butted heads, but they greatly enjoyed their musical collaboration through all their problems. To this day, in 2024, they apparently remain very close friends. In 1976 though, Young was flying high creatively, writing tons of excellent new songs. By contrast, Stills was struggling somewhat. Once the tour started, Young got rave reviews while Stills was criticized. Stills didn't take this well. He started drinking heavily and acting like an asshole. 

After 19 concerts, Young quit the tour unexpectedly. He simply sent Stills a telegram that read, in full: "Dear Stephen, funny how some things that start spontaneously end that way. Eat a peach. Neil." That seems like a dick move to me, but it fits with Young's behavior over the years, in which he follows his muse, despite often leaving other people working with him frustrated. Stills was forced to finish the tour on his own.

Given all that, one might expect Young to sound great here and Stills terrible. I don't think that's the case at all. I think they both sound very good. It turns out this was only the third concert of the tour, so probably they both were still enthusiastic and the bad reviews and problems hadn't happened yet.

If you're a fan of the music of Young, or Stills, or both, you really should give this a listen. And by the way, in a sense Stills got the last laugh over the next year, because he pulled himself together, reunited with Crosby and Nash, and put out a very good Crosby, Stills and Nash album in 1977 that outsold what Young was doing at the time. And Stills and Young patched up their friendship. For instance, note that I've posted a concert they did as a duo in 2015. You can find that one here:

https://albumsthatshouldexist.blogspot.com/2023/04/stephen-stills-neil-young-light-up.html

This album is an hour and 51 minutes long.

01 Love the One You're With (Stills-Young Band)
02 talk (Stills-Young Band)
03 The Loner (Stills-Young Band)
04 talk (Stills-Young Band)
05 Long May You Run (Stills-Young Band)
06 For What It's Worth (Stills-Young Band)
07 talk (Stills-Young Band)
08 Helpless (Stills-Young Band)
09 Black Queen [Edit] (Stills-Young Band)
10 talk (Stills-Young Band)
11 Southern Man (Stills-Young Band)
12 talk (Stills-Young Band)
13 On the Way Home (Stills-Young Band)
14 Change Partners (Stills-Young Band)
15 talk (Stills-Young Band)
16 Too Far Gone (Stills-Young Band)
17 talk (Stills-Young Band)
18 4 + 20 [Edit] (Stills-Young Band)
19 talk (Stills-Young Band)
20 Stringman (Stills-Young Band)
21 Word Game (Stills-Young Band)
22 Band Intros (Stills-Young Band)
23 talk (Stills-Young Band)
24 Buyin' Time (Stills-Young Band)
25 Evening Coconut (Stills-Young Band)
26 Make Love to You (Stills-Young Band)
27 Cowgirl in the Sand (Stills-Young Band)
28 The Treasure (Stills-Young Band)
29 talk (Stills-Young Band)
30 Suite- Judy Blue Eyes (Stills-Young Band)
31 talk (Stills-Young Band)

https://www.imagenetz.de/gAS9m

alternate:

https://pixeldrain.com/u/MTeo7AjB

second alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/dZdbSpEvc9mm2nG/file

The cover photo shows Stills and Young in concert on this tour, but I don't know the exact date and location.

Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young - VH-1 Storytellers, MTV-VH-1 Studios, Santa Monica, CA, 2-18-2000

The flood of VH-1 Storytellers albums continues. This time, it's a episode of Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young (CSNY).

In 1999, CSNY had one of their occasional reunions, putting out the studio album "Looking Forward." Like most later CSN and CSNY studio albums, it had overproduction issues and song selection issues, so it wasn't nearly as good as it should have been. But all four of them remained talented songwriters just the same. That can be seen by the two songs here from that album, "Dream for Him" and "Seen Enough."

Other than those two, all the songs were classics from the late 1960s and early 1970s. There was a mix of acoustic and full-band performances. This was one of the first concerts for the band's 2000 tour, their first big tour as CSNY since 1974.

As I've done with most of these, I had to do a lot of editing to fix the flow from song to song. For instance, oftentimes, the applause cut off abruptly, so I'd have to patch in more applause from somewhere else. I made an especially big edit for the song "Helplessly Hoping," which is why that one has "[Edit]" in its title. As this series usually did, it started part way through the first song. So I found a soundboard version from the band's 2000 tour, and used that to fill in the missing part.

This album is 45 minutes long.

01 Helplessly Hoping [Edit] (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
02 talk (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
03 Our House (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
04 talk (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
05 Only Love Can Break Your Heart (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
06 talk (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
07 Guinnevere (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
08 talk (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
09 Long May You Run (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
10 talk (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
11 Dream for Him (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
12 talk (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
13 After the Goldrush (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
14 talk (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
15 Seen Enough (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
16 talk (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
17 Teach Your Children (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)

https://www.upload.ee/files/17102811/CROSBSTLLSNSHYNG2000Strytllrs_MTVH1StdosSntaMncaCA__2-18-2000_atse.zip.html

alternate link:

https://pixeldrain.com/u/vnAmSyFi

I could have used a screenshot from this exact concert, but it would have been poor quality, based on a low-res video file. Instead, I used one from a concert in San Jose, California, on February 4, 2000, just two weeks prior to this concert.

Woodstock '94, Winston Farm, Saugerties, NY, 8-12-1994 to 8-14-1994 - Day 2, Part 11: Crosby, Stills & Nash

The eleventh album from Day Two of the Woodstock '94 Festival is a set by Crosby, Stills and Nash (CSN).

CSN were one of the stars of the 1969 Woodstock Festival, playing then with Neil Young as Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young. It was reported that the promoters of this festival offered Young a large amount of money to reunite with CSN and play this festival. CSNY had last played a concert together in 1991, and wouldn't do so again until 2000. However, Young objected to the commercialization of the festival, for instance there were corporate sponsorships by the likes of Pepsi and Apple. He also felt it besmirched the reputation of the original Woodstock. So he refused to participate.

CSN was promoting their 1994 album "After the Storm," which by coincidence was released on August 16th, just a couple of days after this concert. That album was not well received. In my opinion, it was too slick and overproduced. They played five songs from that album (tracks 8, 12, 14, 16, and 20). In my opinion, the songs sound a lot better here, where the overproduction was largely avoided.

John Sebastian, the main singer-songwriter from the 1960s band Lovin' Spoonful, introduced CSN. He also played harmonica on the song "Deja Vu," just as he did on the original recording. He would have his own set at the festival a day later. An interesting fact is that Sebastian was strongly considered as a potential addition to CSN in 1969, but ultimately Neil Young was chosen instead.

This album is an hour and 24 minutes long.

01 talk by John Sebastian (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
02 Love the One You're With (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
03 Military Madness (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
04 talk (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
05 Helplessly Hoping (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
06 talk (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
07 Deja Vu (Crosby, Stills & Nash with John Sebastian)
08 Only Waiting for You (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
09 talk (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
10 Marrakesh Express (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
11 talk (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
12 It Won't Go Away (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
13 talk (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
14 Unequal Love (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
15 talk (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
16 In My Life (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
17 talk (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
18 Long Time Gone (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
19 talk (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
20 Street to Lean On (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
21 For What It's Worth (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
22 Pre-Road Downs (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
23 Southern Cross (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
24 talk (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
25 Wooden Ships (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
26 Carry On (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
27 Woodstock (Crosby, Stills & Nash)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/vuukR4Bk

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/en/IyFqGSzgD6QmsJ0/file

The cover photo shows Crosby, Nash, and Stills, from left to right. I moved Stills closer to the other two in Photoshop.

Various Artists - Children of the Americas Radiothon, United Nations Building, New York City, and Palace Theatre, Los Angeles, CA, 11-12-1988

Here's another big benefit concert with a bunch of different famous musical acts. But this one was unusual in a couple of ways. For one, it was held in two locations simultaneously and broadcast live over the radio. And for the other, it's quite an odd selection of acts. I like all of them, but it seems pretty random to me to have, say, Pat Benatar followed by Al Stewart, then followed by Midnight Oil, and so on, which is what happened here. But hey, it's all good music, with excellent sound quality.

This benefit concert certainly had a good cause, which was to fund non-profits helping poor children in Latin America. This was the second annual concert for this cause. I don't know anything about the first concert or subsequent ones. But we know about this one because it was broadcast live on the radio, and a bootleg recording of it survives.

I made many, many edits to make this listenable. The concert took the form of a radiothon, which is just like a telethon, except for the radio instead of TV. And if you're familiar with telethons at all, you know they're notorious for constantly asking for donations. That's what happened here. Between acts, and even during acts, there were emcees giving pleas to donate, with the donation phone number in particular repeated endlessly. Even the musical artists would sometimes mention the phone number between songs. I got rid of all that because it's all moot now, with the number obviously no longer working. I stripped this down to just the music and the banter relevant to the music.

I also did some edits to make this flow better. Oftentimes, as soon as a song wound end, the emcee's voice would come on with more pleas for donations. So I would patch in some more applause to give the songs a decent sounding ending. I didn't bother marking those edits with "[Edit]" in the song titles, 'cos I did it so much.

Some of the acts performed at the Palace Theatre in Los Angeles. Those were Jackson Browne, Midnight Oil, and Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young (CSNY), plus earlier appearances by Graham Nash and David Crosby. All the other acts performed at the United Nations Building in New York City. Note that the crowd in Los Angeles sounds much larger than the one in New York City. I'm guessing only a few dozen were allowed into the United Nations Building for this, based on the clapping one can hear.  

The star attraction here was CSNY. They put out a new album in 1988, "American Dream," but Neil Young decided not to take part in a tour to support it. However, he did take part in a very limited number of concerts with CSN around this time. There was the Bridge Benefit in 1988 (which I have also posted here), the Bridge Benefit in 1989, and this. (There also were a couple more in 1987 and 1990 and 1991, if you want to go that far.)

It's quite possible that there was more to these two concerts that what was heard here. For instance, there was no introduction to the CSNY set, and I doubt they started with the new song "This Old House." It also seems odd that Midnight Oil would have been recruited but only played less than ten minutes of music. I'm guessing this is just the stuff that made it to the radio broadcast, and while music was broadcast from one location, we were probably missing the music taking place at the other location. If anyone has any more of it, please let me know.  

This album is two hours and 25 minutes long.

01 Teach Your Children (Graham Nash)
02 talk (Emcee)
03 I Love L.A. (Randy Newman)
04 Dixie Flyer (Randy Newman)
05 Sail Away (Randy Newman)
06 talk (Randy Newman)
07 Political Science (Randy Newman)
08 Short People (Randy Newman)
09 talk (Randy Newman)
10 I Want You to Hurt like I Do (Randy Newman)
11 talk (David Crosby)
12 Crow on the Cradle (Jackson Browne & Graham Nash)
13 talk (David Crosby)
14 talk (Jackson Browne)
15 Lives in the Balance (Jackson Browne with David Crosby & Graham Nash)
16 talk (Jackson Browne)
17 My Personal Revenge (Jackson Browne with Sangre Machuwa)
18 talk (Jackson Browne)
19 Fruita Almarga [Bitter Fruit] (Jackson Browne)
20 talk (Jackson Browne)
21 Lene Verde [Instrumental] (Jackson Browne with Sangre Machuwa)
22 talk (Graham Nash)
23 Rock Me on the Water (Jackson Browne with David Crosby & Graham Nash)
24 Powerful Stuff (Fabulous Thunderbirds)
25 talk (Fabulous Thunderbirds)
26 Look at That, Look at That (Fabulous Thunderbirds)
27 talk (Fabulous Thunderbirds)
28 She's Tough (Fabulous Thunderbirds)
29 talk (Fabulous Thunderbirds)
30 Wrap It Up (Fabulous Thunderbirds)
31 talk (Pat Benatar)
32 All Fired Up (Pat Benatar)
33 Run Between the Raindrops (Pat Benatar)
34 talk (Pat Benatar)
35 Let's Stay Together (Pat Benatar)
36 talk (Emcee)
37 Antarctica (Al Stewart)
38 talk (Al Stewart)
39 Princess Olivia (Al Stewart)
40 The Year of the Cat (Al Stewart)
41 talk (Graham Nash)
42 Wealth Is Virtue (Midnight Oil)
43 The Dead Heart (Midnight Oil)
44 This Old House (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
45 Love the One You're With (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
46 talk (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
47 Name of Love (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
48 talk (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
49 Tracks in the Dust (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
50 talk (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
51 Don't Say Goodbye (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
52 talk (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
53 Southern Cross (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
54 talk (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
55 Long Time Gone (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
56 talk (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
57 My Country 'Tis of Thee (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young with J. D. Souther)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/DQZ2b6A2

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/z8t3Ajl7bhZ3NZF/file

I found the cover image from some promotional art related to this concert. It's a drawing of all the major stars that took part. In the top row, from left to right: Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young. In the bottom row, from left to right: Jackson Browne, Pat Benatar, Peter Garrett of Midnight Oil, and Randy Newman. The banner at the top was in the original, but I changed the text there, and added more text at the bottom. 

I couldn't find any actual photos from this concert, so I'm lucky to have found this.

Various Artists - KHJ Second Annual Appreciation Concert, Hollywood Bowl, Hollywood, CA, 4-29-1967

Here's a really special concert, in my opinion. It's a totally unreleased, and even rarely shared as a bootleg, concert from the magic year of 1967. Check out the acts: Buffalo Springfield, the Fifth Dimension, Brenda Holloway, the Seeds, Johnny Rivers, and the Supremes! Those are all acts who have little to no unreleased live recordings, and in some cases virtually no live recordings at all.

The reason this is unreleased and even rarely shared as a bootleg, has to do with sound quality. The concert was professionally recorded, probably by the radio station that promoted the show, KHJ. But there was one problem that was essentially a fatal flaw, making this nearly unlistenable. The concert took place at the famous Hollywood Bowl in Hollywood, California. In early 1967, this venue was updating their sound system. They introduced a new piece of equipment, the radio mic. Unfortunately, there were technical problems with this. A high-pitched squeal could be heard through the entire recording that apparently was heard by the audience there at the time.

Due to this problem, I had been aware of this recording for years, and intrigued by the list of acts, but I never added it to my music collection due to that fatal flaw. However, recently I remembered it, and realized that the technological advancements in audio editing could possibly get rid of that annoying squeal. So I gave it a try. The good news is, I got rid of the vast majority of the problem. The bad news is, I couldn't get rid of it entirely. But I believe this is now very listenable. Even when the squeal can be heard, it's much lower in the mix.

Actually, the squeal wasn't as bad as it sounds at first because it really was only a problem during times of relative quiet, usually between songs. When there was a full band playing, the squeal usually disappeared entirely. So my challenge was to get rid of the squeal whenever it showed up. Using the UVR5 program, I split the songs into different tracks (vocals, drums, bass, and other). I often found the squeal would only be on one track, which I could then reduce or eliminate entirely. For instance, during the banter between songs, much of the squeal would be on the "other" track, and all I needed was the "vocals" track. 

When that wasn't enough, I also used noise reduction with the Audacity program. People rightly object to the use of this technique because it degrades the music. But I've found it usually doesn't cause a problem when it's only used for talking between songs, so that's all I used it for here. Sometimes, even that wasn't enough, so I would manually drastically lower the volume of the squeal whenever it appeared during significant pauses in the banter.

I'd say I was about 90 percent successful overall. The squeal is still there in some places where I couldn't get to it without harming the music. One example is the song "Yesterday" by the Supremes. That one was quiet enough for the squeal to show up. But because it was a song and not just banter, I couldn't use noise reduction and other techniques. Luckily, there are only a couple other songs like that.

Otherwise, the recording is surprisingly good for a 1967 bootleg. At times, the vocals microphone would max out, especially when backing vocals were added. So some parts sound a bit rough. But overall, this is a good soundboard quality bootleg. Considering the acts involved, the recording is pretty amazing, in my opinion.

The only other significant problem I had was with the song "Do What You Gotta Do" by Johnny Rivers. The first half and then some was completely missing. As an experiment, I found his studio version from a 1967 album, and I tried filling in the missing section with that. I think it worked out okay, though not perfectly. The fact that it even comes close to matching is an indication of the overall quality of this boot. That's why that one song has "[Edit]" in the title.

Now, let me discuss the musical content here. This concert was put on by the Los Angeles radio station KHJ, and they used it as a way to promote themselves and especially their DJ's. I must admit I cut out a lot of what I consider unnecessary DJ chatter between the acts, while keeping all the music. Some of the DJs went on and on way too long. For instance, the DJ who introduced the Seeds took six minutes for the introduction, repeating the fact that he was holding flowers to give the band over and over. I suspect the band wasn't ready, so he was stalling for time. Still, it's painful to hear. I cut those six minutes down to one. I did a lot of editing with the others, cutting things down to just the basic introductions of each act, and getting rid of a lot of the radio station promotion and hype. 

There also was a section in the middle of the Supremes set where Berry Gordy, the head of Motown Records, gave a speech and presented an award. I thought that was somewhat interesting, since Gordy is a famous figure, so I kept most of his speech. But I cut out a lot of that section too, including the entire speech by the person who received the award.

Let's consider the acts involved here. The sheer musical diversity is pretty amazing. Every single act in the concert is interesting to me. Note that the more popular acts came later, with each succeeding act getting more stage time. The first two acts only got 16 minutes each, but the final act, the Supremes, got 48 minutes.

These days, I think people would be most interested to hear Buffalo Springfield's set. Unfortunately, it was only four songs long. But on the plus side, it's historic, because it included the very first public performance of "Mr. Soul," which was on the verge of being released as a single at the time. Even though the Buffalo Springfield set is only 16 minutes long, it's still a gem due to the rarity of live recordings by them with this quality.

The Fifth Dimension were just starting to get popular when this concert happened, which is why they only had a short set at the start of the concert. Their debut album, "Up, Up and Away," wouldn't be released until a couple of months after this concert. They had released a few singles already, but their first really big hit, also "Up, Up and Away," hadn't been released yet either. But they did play it here. I'm not aware of ANY Fifth Dimension bootlegs, and their one live album, simple called "Live," is from 1971, with a very different set list.

Brenda Holloway was a Motown act. She was often ignored by Motown. Consider how she released tons of singles in the 1960s, but was only allowed to release one album, in 1964. At the time of this concert, she hadn't had a hit in two years. But she was promoting her latest single, "Just Look What You've Done," which would prove to be a minor hit (in the Top Twenty of the Soul chart), and should have been a bigger hit. She never released a live album in the 1960s and I'm not aware of any bootlegs by her either.

The Seeds were a garage rock band was a very simple and primitive sound. Their most famous song, "Pushin' Too Hard," only uses two chords, and most of their other songs are just like that, and sound similar to each other. Yet somehow there's charm in their simplicity. The Seeds only had two national hits, "Pushin' Too Hard" and "Can't Seem to Make You Mine," both of them scraping around the bottom of the Top Forty. But they were based in Los Angeles and much more popular there, which explains why they got a more prominent billing and longer set time than some other acts here. The Seeds never released a live album in the 1960s (although there is one studio album with fake crowd noise added, bizarrely). I could only find one bootleg from the 1960s, an Anaheim concert in 1968, but the sound quality of that is a lot poorer than this.

Johnny Rivers was a big star in 1967. He'd had a bunch of big hits, including the self-composed "Poor Side of Town," which was Number One in 1966. His version of the Motown classic "Baby I Need Your Lovin'" was a Number Three hit around the time of this concert, an even bigger hit than the original by the Four Tops. But he was possibly even better known for his series of live albums, which were all good sellers. Between 1964 and 1967, he released no fewer than five live albums! That said, this is probably a better set list than any of those albums, because it contains all of his biggest hits by that point in his career. 

One interesting side note is that Rivers played with an orchestra, and it was conducted in person by none other than Jimmy Webb. Webb would go on to become a famous songwriter, with many classic hits written by him but performed by others. But at the time of this concert he was just starting to find success with his songs. He wrote seven songs on Rivers most recent album at the time, but none of them were hits. However, "Up, Up and Away," played by the Fifth Dimension earlier in the concert, would be the first big hit for him a couple of months later, reaching the Top Ten.

That takes us to the closing act, the Supremes. They were the jewel in the crown for Motown, having hit after hit after hit all through the 1960s. At the time of this concert, the Supremes were promoting their latest single, "The Happening." It would hit Number One a few weeks after this concert. The Supremes did release a few live albums, including one in 1965 and another in 1968. But I'm not aware of any bootlegs by them, so this is an interesting addition.

I believe that at the time of this concert, band member Florence Ballard was having trouble due to alcoholism and depression. As a result, she was missing many concerts. This led to her being replaced by Cindy Birdsong, a member of the Patti LaBelle and the Blue Belles. I believe that Birdsong was on stage here, not Ballard. Ballard returned to the Supremes in May, but performed badly. She was permanently replaced by Birdsong in July.

I'd be curious what people think of this concert, and especially if any of the lingering squeal sound is still bothersome.

By the way, I found a poster for the first KHJ appreciation concert, also at the Hollywood Bowl, on April 2, 1966. Here's the list of acts: Sonny and Cher (who were the main headliners), Donovan, Jan & Dean, Bob Lind, the Knickerbockers, the Mamas & the Papas, the Modern Folk Quartet, Otis Redding, and the Turtles. (Though I hear Jan & Dean didn't play.) That's quite a line-up! I hope a recording of that emerges someday.

This album is two hours and 24 minutes long.

01 talk by Gary Mack (Buffalo Springfield)
02 Pay the Price (Buffalo Springfield)
03 talk (Buffalo Springfield)
04 Nowadays Clancy Can't Even Sing (Buffalo Springfield)
05 For What It's Worth (Buffalo Springfield)
06 Mr. Soul (Buffalo Springfield)
07 talk by Gary Mack (Buffalo Springfield)
08 talk by Johnny Williams (Fifth Dimension)
09 It's Not Unusual (Fifth Dimension)
10 Go Where You Wanna Go (Fifth Dimension)
11 On Broadway (Fifth Dimension)
12 talk (Fifth Dimension)
13 Up, Up and Away (Fifth Dimension)
14 The Beat Goes On (Fifth Dimension)
15 talk by Bobby Tripp (Brenda Holloway)
16 Happy Together - Sunny (Brenda Holloway)
17 talk (Brenda Holloway)
18 Just Look What You've Done (Brenda Holloway)
19 Every Little Bit Hurts (Brenda Holloway)
20 talk by Humble Harve (Seeds)
21 talk (Seeds)
22 Tripmaker (Seeds)
23 talk (Seeds)
24 Pushin' Too Hard (Seeds)
25 talk (Seeds)
26 Mr. Farmer (Seeds)
27 talk (Seeds)
28 Up in Her Room (Seeds)
29 talk (Seeds)
30 Can't Seem to Make You Mine (Seeds)
31 talk by Humble Harve (Seeds)
32 talk by Johnny Mitchell (Johnny Rivers)
33 Seventh Son (Johnny Rivers)
34 California Dreamin' (Johnny Rivers)
35 Mountain of Love (Johnny Rivers)
36 Do What You Gotta Do (Johnny Rivers)
37 The Tracks of My Tears (Johnny Rivers)
38 talk (Johnny Rivers)
39 Baby, I Need Your Lovin' (Johnny Rivers)
40 Memphis, Tennessee (Johnny Rivers)
41 talk (Johnny Rivers)
42 Poor Side of Town (Johnny Rivers)
43 talk (Johnny Rivers)
44 Secret Agent Man (Johnny Rivers)
45 tallk by Don Steele (Supremes)
46 You Keep Me Hangin' On (Supremes)
47 Stop in the Name of Love - Come See about Me - My World Is Empty without You - Baby Love (Supremes)
48 Michelle (Supremes)
49 More [Theme from Mondo Cane] (Supremes)
50 talk (Supremes)
51 Back in My Arms Again (Supremes)
52 talk (Supremes)
53 Love Is Here and Now You're Gone (Supremes)
54 Yesterday (Supremes)
55 You Can't Hurry Love (Supremes)
56 talk (Supremes)
57 talk by Berry Gordy (Supremes)
58 talk (Supremes)
59 The Happening (Supremes)
60 Somewhere (Supremes)
61 I Hear a Symphony (Supremes)
62 talk (Supremes)
63 You Send Me - For Sentimental Reasons - Cupid - Chain Gang - Bring It on Home to Me - Shake (Supremes)
64 talk by Gary Mack (Supremes)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/haPnF512

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/SYOuJD5qrEslLqN/file

alternate:

https://www.imagenetz.de/bgXf3

I couldn't find any photos of the acts on stage at this concert. However, I did find a promotional poster for the concert, so I decided to use that as the basis of the cover. I made some edits to get everything to fit in the necessary square space and to look nice. I greatly enlarged the title in purple at the top, and I cut out some other text. But all the rest of the text is original and unchanged.

No Nukes Concerts, Madison Square Garden, New York City, 9-23-1979: Crosby, Stills and Nash

The fourteenth album I'm posting of the 1979 No Nukes concerts is a set by Crosby, Stills and Nash (CSN). I believe this is the longest of all the albums I'm posting for these concerts.

I previously posted a set by Graham Nash, from September 19, 1979. I'm not entirely sure, but I think what happened was that Nash performed solo sets for the first three nights, but then on the last night, he played as part of the CSN "supergroup" instead. This concert comes entirely from the Madison Square Garden show in New York City. CSN also played the Battery Park concert in New York City that day. But they seem to have only played four songs, and all of them were performed here as well, so I didn't see any reason to include them.

As a big CSN fan, I have long looked for a worthy concert recording from the 1977 tour, done in support of their 1977 album "CSN." However, I've only come across (very) partial soundboards. So this is probably the next best thing. Yes, it took place two years later, so the set list would have been pretty similar. Unfortunately though, they only played two songs from their "CSN" album ("Just a Song Before I Go" and "Cathedral"), leaning on earlier classics instead.

I ran into a problem with the song "Wooden Ships." By now, I must sound like a broken record, because the soundboard recording was missing a section. Something similar happened to probably a majority of the No Nukes albums I've posted. Anyway, like I usually did with these concerts, I patched in the missing bit with some of the audience bootleg. Luckily, in this case, the missing bit was just the first two minutes out of an eleven minute song, and all of that was before the lead vocals came in. The sound quality isn't terrible this time, probably helped by the fact that there were no vocals on that bit.

I'm pretty sure CSN's set was the last one of the night, based on the length as well as the fact that it ended with a cover of the John Hall song "Power." Like other final encores of this song in the concerts, they were joined by other stars who took turns singing some of the verses. 

This album is an hour and 21 minutes long.

01 talk (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
02 Helplessly Hoping (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
03 Change Partners (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
04 You Don't Have to Cry (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
05 4 + 20 (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
06 Suite- Judy Blue Eyes (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
07 Our House (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
08 Pre-Road Downs (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
09 talk (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
10 Love the One You're With (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
11 talk (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
12 Just a Song Before I Go (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
13 Long Time Gone (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
14 Cathedral (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
14 Wooden Ships [Edit] (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
16 Carry On (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
17 Chicago (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
18 talk (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
19 Teach Your Children (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
20 talk (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
21 Power (Crosby, Stills & Nash with John Hall. Michael McDonald, James Taylor & Jackson Browne)
22 talk (Crosby, Stills & Nash)

https://www.upload.ee/files/17318127/VA-NONUKS1979MdisnSqurGrdnNwYrkC__9-23-1979_CrsbyStllsnNshatse.zip.html

alternate:

https://pixeldrain.com/u/T16yqGh8

The cover photo comes from this exact concert. From right to left, that's David Crosby, Stephen Stills, and Graham Nash. I improved it some with the Krea AI program.

Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young (with Joni Mitchell) - Roosevelt Raceway, Westbury, NY, 9-8-1974

If you want just one full-length Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young (CSNY) concert recording, I would suggest this one. Although there was a lot of drug and ego trouble between band members backstage on their 1974 tour, the four of them were peaking in terms of songwriting and performance. And as a bonus, Joni Mitchell sang backing vocals on no less than nine of the songs.

This was the last night in the U.S. of CSNY's ill-fated 1974 concert tour. They only did one concert in 1974 after this, in London, Britain (which was their only appearance in Europe). Due to the troubles mentioned above, the four of them nicknamed this the "Doom Tour" amongst themselves, and they ran wild with 1970s superstar lifestyle excess. But despite all that, they had many good nights on stage, and this clearly was one such night. They played in front of 80,000 people as part of an all-day concert with Jesse Colin Young, the Beach Boys, and Joni Mitchell as opening acts.

The fact that Mitchell was an opening act helps explain why she joined in singing on a bunch of songs. I believe she did the same for the Wembley show, where she also was an opening act, but I don't think she did that on the other dates in the tour. By the way, the day of this concert, American stuntman Evel Knievel attempted to jump across Snake River Canyon in Idaho on a rocket-powered motorcycle. That happened to be broadcast on pay-per-view TV during Mitchell's set, and she actually took a break from her set to watch it for a few minutes, telling the audience that she was going to go watch some idiot commit suicide. (Knievel survived, but landed at the bottom of the canyon short of crossing the river.) Neil Young made a comment about the Knievel jump before one of the songs he played.

Unfortunately, I looked for the opening sets, but could only find this bootleg with worthy sound quality (or, in most cases, any versions at all).

This is a soundboard recording, and the sound quality is excellent. There were only a couple of snags. For one, a tiny section in the middle of "Deja Vu" was missing, but it seems it was only a few seconds long. It was during an instrumental passage, and I edited it so the missing bit won't be noticed. Also, the last part of "Black Queen" was missing, probably a minute or two. This was more difficult. But I used the version on the album "CSNY 1974" to bring it to a conclusion. That's why those two songs have "[Edit]" in their titles.

Speaking of the album "CSNY 1974," that's an official album released in 2014 that features highlights from this tour. It was a big triple album drawn from ten different concerts, but none of those concerts happen to be this one, so I'm pretty sure everything here is still officially unreleased. Personally, I usually prefer listening to entire concert recordings instead of live albums drawn from lots of different shows. If you feel the same, I'm pretty sure this is the best show from the tour, as the few other soundboards are incomplete or have other flaws. (For instance, there's a soundboard recording of the Wembley show too, but it was considered a disappointing performance.)

As with all the shows on this tour, the concert was broken into three sections. CSNY was backed by a full band for the first part and the last part, while there was a big acoustic section in the middle. The acoustic section is roughly from track 16 to 36. Each member got to do their own solo spot. Weirdly though, Crosby only did one song, while Nash, Stills, and Young each did three songs. But the solo songs weren't always really solo, others often joined vocals, including Mitchell on a few.

By the way, Mitchell's participation is a bit odd in that I didn't hear any banter between songs thanking her or even mentioning her. It's very possible that banter like that got cut out. (This also was the day that it was announced that President Ford pardoned former President Nixon for his Watergate crimes. Crosby told that to the crowd during the concert, and the crowd booed. But that's not on this recording, so at least some banter got cut.) But what also is a bit unusual is that she came and went from the stage at least seven different times. I figure that she only sang on the songs that she knew well and had something to contribute on vocal harmonies, and those were randomly scattered throughout the long concert. I find it particularly interesting that she helped sing "Our House," since that song was written by Nash about her when they had a romance around 1970.

This is quite a long concert. This album is three hours and nine minutes long.

01 Love the One You're With (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
02 Wooden Ships (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
03 talk (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
04 Immigration Man (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
05 talk (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
06 Helpless (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young with Joni Mitchell)
07 Military Madness (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
08 Johnny's Garden (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
09 talk (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
10 Walk On (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
11 Almost Cut My Hair (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
12 talk (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
13 Teach Your Children (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
14 Only Love Can Break Your Heart (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young with Joni Mitchell)
15 The Lee Shore (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
16 talk (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
17 Time After Time (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
18 talk (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
19 Southbound Train (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
20 talk (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
21 Another Sleep Song (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young with Joni Mitchell)
22 talk (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
23 Our House (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young with Joni Mitchell)
24 talk (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
25 Hawaiian Sunrise (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
26 talk (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
27 Long May You Run (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young with Joni Mitchell)
28 talk (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
29 Ambulance Blues (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
30 talk (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
31 Old Man (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young with Joni Mitchell)
32 talk (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
33 Change Partners (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young with Joni Mitchell)
34 talk (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
35 Myth of Sisyphus (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
36 Word Game (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
37 talk (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
38 Suite- Judy Blue Eyes (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young with Joni Mitchell)
39 talk (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
40 Deja Vu [Edit] (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
41 talk (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
42 First Things First (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
43 talk (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
44 Don't Be Denied (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
45 talk (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
46 Black Queen [Edit] (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
47 talk (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
48 Revolution Blues (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
49 talk (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
50 Pushed It Over the End (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
51 Pre-Road Downs (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
52 talk (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
53 Carry On (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
54 talk (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
55 Sugar Mountain (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young with Joni Mitchell)
56 talk (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
57 Ohio (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)

https://www.imagenetz.de/jeKeG

alternate:

https://pixeldrain.com/u/6rMMex7V

second alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/f9nB9iMAMIHIH8U/file 

The photo used on the cover is from the CSNY Wembley concert a few days later (September 14, 1974). I couldn't find any good color ones from this exact one. I used this particular photo because it has Mitchell there with CSNY, and I thought it was particularly neat to see all five of them together. Neil Young's face was blocked by two microphones, but I did some tweaking in Photoshop so one can now see his eyes.

Also note that I found a concert poster for this exact concert. I based some of the cover art on the poster. However, I inverted the bright and dark bits to better match with the black background of the photo. I'm including the poster here, in case you want to see it. Note that the sketch in the middle was drawn by Mitchell, and was also used for the cover of the band's best of collection "So Far."

Stephen Stills & Neil Young - Light Up the Blues Benefit, Pantages Theatre, Hollywood, CA, 4-25-2015

As I write this in April 2023, Stephen Stills has a new archival live album out, called "Live in Berkeley 1971." I'm glad because it fills a key gap in his musical history. His first solo tour was in 1971, when he was at a peak of his musical creativity, but there have been only one or two poor sounding audience bootlegs to document this tour. So the new album is a big step up. 

I'm not going to post that here, since it's an album that now exists instead of one that should exist. However, to celebrate its release, I can post something else from Stills. A short concert he did in 2015 with Neil Young came to mind, so here it is.

Of course, Stills has played with Young lots of times, first as part of Buffalo Springfield (including a 2011 reunion tour), and then as part of Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young (CSNY). But the only time they played just as a duo was in 1976. They put out an album together called "Long May You Run." They started a concert tour together, but Young got bored and quit halfway through. They're remained close friends, even though the ups and downs of CSNY, but surprisingly have almost never played as a duo since 1976. This concert is a nice exception to that rule. 

The only other cases I know of are this same "Light Up the Blues" annual benefit in 2016, and then again just a few days ago as a I write this. Looking for a cover photo for this album, I stumbled upon the fact that there was another benefit on April 22, 2023, with not only Stills and Young playing together, but Joe Walsh joining in on a couple of songs. I hope a good recording of that emerges that can be shared. But what makes this show particularly nice is that the sound quality is pretty good. I think it's an audience bootleg, not a soundboard, but it's close enough that I wasn't sure at first.

The concert starts with an introduction by actor Brad Pitt, of all people. There were some other artists performing, including Steve Earle, Shawn Colvin, and White Buffalo, so the set was relatively short. (All of the acts joined in on the "Rockin' in the Free World" encore.) I like that Stills and Young avoided some of the usual CSNY warhorses and played relatively new songs, like "If I Don't Know," "Virtual World," and "Don't Want Lies."

This album is 54 minutes long.

01 talk by Brad Pitt (Stephen Stills & Neil Young)
02 Long May You Run (Stephen Stills & Neil Young)
03 talk (Stephen Stills & Neil Young)
04 Human Highway (Stephen Stills & Neil Young)
05 talk (Stephen Stills & Neil Young)
06 If I Don't Know (Stephen Stills & Neil Young)
07 Virtual World (Stephen Stills & Neil Young)
08 Don't Want Lies (Stephen Stills & Neil Young)
09 talk (Stephen Stills & Neil Young)
10 For What It's Worth (Stephen Stills & Neil Young)
11 talk (Stephen Stills & Neil Young)
12 Bluebird (Stephen Stills & Neil Young)
13 talk (Stephen Stills & Neil Young)
14 Mr. Soul (Stephen Stills & Neil Young)
15 Rockin' in the Free World (Stephen Stills & Neil Young)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15175092/StllsYung_2015_LghtUpBluesBnefitPantgesTheatreHllywoodCA__4-25-2015_atse.zip.html

The cover photo comes from this exact concert.

Buffalo Springfield - Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival, Great Stage Park, Manchester, TN, 6-11-2011

Buffalo Springfield seems like "ancient" musical history to me, something that happened before I was born. So, in my opinion, it's pretty amazing that the band reunited for some concerts in 2010 and 2011. Nothing has ever been officially released from this reunion. There aren't even any great sounding soundboard bootlegs. But there is this one audience bootleg that sounds almost as good as a soundboard.

However, the sound still was a bit lacking to me. So I used the audio program X-Minus to improve it by boosting the lead vocals relative to the instruments for all the songs. I think it sounds noticeably better now. It's hard to tell this isn't a soundboard. I even went through each song and got rid of most of the "woo-hoo" shouts and clapping that took place during the songs.

Note that not all the original members were part of the reunion. Bassist Bruce Palmer died in 2004, and drummer Dewey Martin died in 2009. But the three key members were the singer-songwriters Stephen Stills, Neil Young, and Richie Furay, and they all took part in the reunion, so it was a legit one in my book. It's great they were able to recreate the magic of this band, if only for a short time.

By the way, all the songs are edited, as I explained above, but the song "Do I Have to Come Right Out and Say It" has "[Edit]" in the title because I did some extra work on that one. There was a chunk of the song missing, from the middle of the first verse until the middle of the first chorus. Luckily, the first verse was repeated later in the song, so I was able to patch in a fix.

This album is an hour and 29 minutes long.

01 On the Way Home (Buffalo Springfield)
02 Rock and Roll Woman (Buffalo Springfield)
03 Burned (Buffalo Springfield)
04 talk (Buffalo Springfield)
05 A Child's Claim to Fame (Buffalo Springfield)
06 talk (Buffalo Springfield)
07 Do I Have to Come Right Out and Say It [Edit] (Buffalo Springfield)
08 talk (Buffalo Springfield)
09 Go and Say Goodbye (Buffalo Springfield)
10 I Am a Child (Buffalo Springfield)
11 Hot Dusty Road (Buffalo Springfield)
12 talk (Buffalo Springfield)
13 Kind Woman (Buffalo Springfield)
14 Mr. Soul (Buffalo Springfield)
15 Nowadays Clancy Can't Even Sing (Buffalo Springfield)
16 Bluebird (Buffalo Springfield)
17 Sad Memory (Buffalo Springfield)
18 Broken Arrow (Buffalo Springfield)
19 talk (Buffalo Springfield)
20 For What It's Worth (Buffalo Springfield)
21 Rockin' in the Free World (Buffalo Springfield) 

https://www.upload.ee/files/16687669/BUFFLOSPRNGFLD2011_BnnroMsicnArtsFstivl__6-11-2011_atse.zip.html

The cover photo comes from the exact concert in question. The fancy band name font comes from a concert poster from the same year.

Stephen Stills - University of Florida, Gainsville, FL, 10-22-2003

Here's an interesting Stephen Stills concert. I happened to be listening to it the other day, and decided it was worthy of posting.

Usually, I'm much more interested in Stills (and/or Crosby, Stills, Nash and/or Young) material from the 1960s and 1970s, when he was at the peak of his career. But this is a good listen despite the late date for several reasons. 

For starters, the circumstances behind this solo concert was quite unusual. Based on his banter between songs, it seems he was supposed to give a talk about music to a university audience in his sort-of hometown. (I say "sort of" because he moved around a lot when he was young, but he did spend a bunch of years in Gainsville, Florida as a child.) But he never got around to writing a speech, so instead he mostly played a bunch of songs, often different from the usual ones he played in concert, and talked a lot between songs with banter that was also different from the usual, and told a loose story of his musical development.

Also, the sound quality is very good. It may not be a soundboard bootleg; it's probably just an audience one. But some audience recordings can sound nearly as good as soundboards, and this is one of those. It's helped by the fact that it was a solo acoustic concert. It's much easier to make a good recording of that than when there's a band and one has to have a balance between all the instruments. Plus, audiences are usually extra quiet and respectful in acoustic concerts, and that was the case here. 

Finally, as I mentioned above, many of the songs were different from the usual ones he played in concert. Or at least he played some that he regularly did with a band but almost never did solo acoustic. Many of these are more recent songs. In my opinion, his songwriting almost always stayed at a high level. It's just that as he got older, he wrote fewer and fewer, and they were often marred by bad production. These songs shine in the solo acoustic format.

On the downside, this concert is rather short. It's only 50 minutes long. I'm just speculating, but maybe he was playing to a class of students, and that was the time allotted. Also, the first song isn't actually from this exact concert. But it's another interesting rarity that he played in concert earlier that year, and it fit right in with the solo acoustic mode and the sound quality, so I added it in.

01 Heart's Gate (Stephen Stills)
02 talk (Stephen Stills)
03 Acadienne (Stephen Stills)
04 Helplessly Hoping (Stephen Stills)
05 talk (Stephen Stills)
06 Johnny's Garden (Stephen Stills)
07 talk (Stephen Stills)
08 For What It's Worth (Stephen Stills)
09 talk (Stephen Stills)
10 Ole Man Trouble (Stephen Stills)
11 Seen Enough (Stephen Stills)
12 talk (Stephen Stills)
13 Daylight Again - Find the Cost of Freedom (Stephen Stills)
14 talk (Stephen Stills)
15 Love the One You're With (Stephen Stills)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15288169/StephenS_2003_UnversityofFlridaGainsvlleFL__10-22-2003_atse.zip.html

The cover photo isn't from this concert. But it's from another one less than a month apart, at that year's Bridge Benefit in the Bay Area.

Stephen Stills and Manassas - BBC in Concert, London, Britain, 9-16-1972

I'm continuing to post some of the early 1970s BBC "In Concert" bootlegs I have. Here's a particularly good one, featuring Stephen Stills with his short-lived group Manassas.

I've posted another Manassas concert already, dating from March 1972. That one is much longer: two hours and 17 minutes, compared to 47 minutes for this one. But the sound quality of this one is probably even better, if only by a little, and there actually are a few songs here not on that other one. Although it was only six months later, the band was already turning their attention to the songs that would go on their 1973 album, and played a few here.

With BBC production standards high, as usual, there wasn't much for me to do. But I did make adjustments to three songs at the end of the concert (the ones with "[Edit]" in their names). There was a slight glitch in the middle of "Find the Cost of Freedom," probably from the way this was recorded, but I was able to fix it by patching in a different section of the song. And the lead vocals on the songs "Anyway" and "Daylight Again" were low, in my opinion, so I boosted them using the X-Minus audio editing program. 

"Daylight Again" was considered for the next Manassas album, but it wouldn't actually be released until the 1972 Crosby, Stills and Nash album, also called "Daylight Again." By then, the lyrics would change drastically, with only the first verse the same. My guess is that Stills wasn't happy with most of the words when he played this concert, because the first verse came through strongly but he sang the rest much quieter. Thanks to my edit, you can hear all of this interesting early version clearly.

01 Fallen Eagle (Stephen Stills & Manassas)
02 You're Still on My Mind (Stephen Stills & Manassas)
03 Sugar Babe (Stephen Stills & Manassas)
04 talk (Stephen Stills & Manassas)
05 Pensamiento (Stephen Stills & Manassas)
06 Change Partners (Stephen Stills & Manassas)
07 talk (Stephen Stills & Manassas)
08 Know You Got to Run (Stephen Stills & Manassas)
09 Word Game (Stephen Stills & Manassas)
10 Both of Us [Bound to Lose] (Stephen Stills & Manassas)
11 Love the One You're With (Stephen Stills & Manassas)
12 Right Now (Stephen Stills & Manassas)
13 Anyway [Edit] (Stephen Stills & Manassas)
14 Daylight Again [Edit] (Stephen Stills & Manassas)
15 Find the Cost of Freedom [Edit] (Stephen Stills & Manassas)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15285268/StephenS_1972c_ManassBBInConcertLondnBritain__9-16-1972_atse.zip.html

I wasn't able to find the video of this concert on YouTube. But I got lucky and found a nice color photo of this exact concert anyway, and used it here.

Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young - Live at the Fillmore East, June 1970

A few weeks back, I posted a concert that was meant to gather up all the Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young (CSNY) live material from 1969 (other than Woodstock) that's in excellent sound quality. Here's basically the same idea, except for 1970. This is a big concert album - two and a half hours - that took a lot of effort to put together, so I hope you enjoy it.

CSNY was a volatile combination, consisting of four stars who had big egos and tended to use a lot of drugs. They broke up briefly in early May 1970. You can hear them talk about it some in their between song banter here. Then they would break up again in early July 1970, after the end of their short tour. Luckily, while they were still together, they decided to film and record their shows at the Fillmore East in New York City, from June 2nd to June 7th. 

Apparently as I write this in November 2021, there are plans afoot to put out a new release based on these Fillmore shows. But with the way CSNY aren't talking to each other anymore, who knows when or if that'll happen. This can tide you over until such a release hopefully makes this obsolete.

The Fillmore shows were the main raw material used in making the live album "Four Way Street," released in 1971. However, a few other concerts were used: three from the Forum in Los Angeles (June 26th through 28th) and one from the Auditorium Theatre in Chicago (July 5th). Luckily for my purposes, several of the Fillmore shows have emerged on bootleg with excellent soundboard quality. These are from the June 4th, 5th, and 6th shows. There doesn't seem to be any bootleg from June 2nd. There are bootlegs from June 3rd and June 7th, but they're audience recordings of only middling quality.

Due to what's available, I decided to base this mainly on the June 6th concert, since it was a particularly good one with particularly good sound quality, to my ears. But I've added in songs not played that night from the June 4th and 5th shows. 

But since they're so much overlap between this album and the official "Four Way Street" album, I wanted to make sure all the songs from that are here too. It turns out though that four of the songs from that album (including the bonus tracks) weren't even played during the Fillmore East run. Those seem to come from the Chicago show on July 5th (though one or two might have been from one of the Forum shows). There's no good bootleg of that show, so I've used the versions of those four songs from the "Four Way Street" album.

As I explained with my 1969 CSNY live album "The 1969 Big Sur Folk Festival and More," they've had a certain pattern to their concerts. The first set of the concert would be all acoustic. That would start with CSN doing a song or two without Young. Then Young would join them for a couple more songs. Then each of them would get a solo spot for a song or two. The four of them would come together briefly at the end of the solo set. Then all four of them would be together for the entire electric second set. 

I maintained this format. So I had, say, a solo acoustic Neil Young song, I knew to stick it in part of his solo portion of the acoustic set. The electric set didn't vary much, but the acoustic set did. As it happens, all of the songs from the electric set are from the June 6th concert that is the basis of this album. But I've bulked up the acoustic set with a bunch of extra songs from other concerts.

My main goal here was to make something that would merit repeated listenings. In addition to sticking to excellent sound quality, I did my best to trim the fat. That meant editing down the silences and guitar tunings between songs. CSNY were particularly chatty during this time period. There's talk before pretty much every song, sometimes for a couple of minutes. I tried to leave that stuff in, as I think it's interesting. I also did my best to boost the volume sometimes, because they didn't always speak closely into their microphones when talking.

By the way, on the subject of talking, at one point between songs, there's a mention of "wooden nickel," and then they talked for a little while about bootlegs. This is because by the time of this concert, a CSNY bootleg called "Wooden Nickel" had emerged and had sold a lot of copies, since there was no other live CSNY recordings available at the time. But, as they pointed out, it wasn't very good, mainly due to sound quality issues. The recording of the Fillmore shows and the release of "Four Way Street" later was essentially an effort to beat the bootleggers.

Another little point of clarity I want to mention is that at one point, Young mentioned the name "Halverson." That's reference to the fact that someone named Bill Halverson was recording the concerts to make a live album. So Young brought up Halverson's name as kind of a surprise joke, knowing that person was listening.

I hope that if and when an official Fillmore East box set comes out, they'll use at least one version of each song played at those shows. There are a couple that I couldn't include, because they were only played on the shows where there isn't a good recording. For instance, "Birds" was played on June 2nd only, and "Another Sleep Song" was played on June 7th only (and not bootlegged).

That said, there were a few particularly interesting and unique songs that I wanted to include that didn't have excellent sound quality. I did a lot of editing to bring them up to snuff, but one can only do so much. So I've included them merely as bonus tracks: "Bluebird," "Everybody's Been Burned," and "We Are Not Helpless." Although they don't sound great, I was able to use the sound editing programs Spleeter and X-Minus to make them sound better than they ever have before, in my opinion. For instance, both "Bluebird" and "Everybody's Been Burned" had big surges of applause at their starts when the audience recognized the songs. I was able to almost entirely eliminate those applause surges, and other crowd noise through the songs. By the way, each of those songs were only ever played once in concert by CSNY during that time period. 

01 talk (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
02 Suite- Judy Blue Eyes (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
03 talk (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
04 Blackbird (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
05 talk (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
06 On the Way Home (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
07 talk (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
08 Teach Your Children (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
09 talk (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
10 Tell Me Why (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
11 talk (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
12 Triad (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
13 talk (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
14 Guinnevere (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
15 talk (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
16 Simple Man (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
17 talk (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
18 King Midas in Reverse (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
19 talk (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
20 talk (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
21 Laughing (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
22 talk (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
23 The Lee Shore (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
24 talk (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
25 Man in the Mirror (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
26 Chicago (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
27 talk (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
28 Right Between the Eyes (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
29 The Loner - Cinnamon Girl - Down by the River (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
30 talk (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
31 Don't Let It Bring You Down (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
32 Cowgirl in the Sand (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
33 talk (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
34 Black Queen (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
35 4+20 (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
36 49 Bye-Byes - For What It's Worth - America's Children (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
37 talk (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
38 Only Love Can Break Your Heart (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
39 talk (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
40 Love the One You're With [Edit] (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
41 Pre-Road Dawns (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
42 talk (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
43 Long Time Gone (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
44 talk (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
45 Helplessly Hoping (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
46 talk (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
47 Ohio (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
48 talk (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
49 As I Come of Age (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
50 talk (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
51 Southern Man (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
52 talk (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
53 Carry On (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
54 talk (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
55 Woodstock (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
56 talk (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
57 Find the Cost of Freedom (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)

Bluebird [Edit] (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
Everybody's Been Burned [Edit] (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
We Are Not Helpless [Edit] (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)

https://www.imagenetz.de/kEjru

alternate:

https://pixeldrain.com/u/hE3zhqzU

second alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/ugAyUCtCKob95aB/file 

The cover photo is actually taken from one of the June 1970 Fillmore shows, though I'm not sure which one. It looks a bit like a composite photo to me, as if the four of them were pasted in from different photos. For instance, Young is in blue lighting and the others are not. But that's the actual untouched photo.