Crosby, Stills & Nash - Melody - Non-Album Tracks (1980)

The alternate history in which Crosby, Stills, Nash and/or Young stayed together more often to make albums continues.

At this point, I'm going to change my rules on what I put on these albums somewhat. Previously, I hadn't used any versions of songs taken directly from solo albums unless there was an unusual reason to do so. But, unfortunately, by about 1980, the commercial fortunes of Crosby, Stills and Nash sagged, in part due to shifting tastes but also due to them putting out work that was less impressive than before. So while many people today have early solo albums like Nash's "Songs for Beginners," I think only die hard fans have Nash's 1980 album "Earth and Sky." Thus, from now on, I may use songs from solo albums like that to make these alternate albums stronger.

By 1980, CSN was in a bad state. Both Stills and Crosby tried to put out solo albums that year, but their record companies wouldn't let them, for fear of poor record sales. It was surprising Crosby tried to put out any music at all, because he was getting deep into a crack cocaine addiction that would nearly kill him before he finally went straight after going to prison in the mid-1980s. All the songs on his proposed solo album had been written a couple of years earlier, or before. Nash did put out his "Earth and Sky" album, but hardly anybody noticed. It originally was going to be a Crosby-Nash album, but Nash found Crosby too tough to deal with, due to the drug problem.

To make matters worse, CSN was on the outs with Neil Young. Young put out a song called "Thrasher" on his acclaimed 1979 album "Rust Never Sleeps" that pretty directly called out CSN for being "lost in crystal canyons," probably a reference to Crosby's drug use. Young concluded, "So I got bored and left them there, they were just dead weight to me." As a result, aside from one appearance at a Crosby-Nash concert in 1978, Young wouldn't do anything with CSN until Live Aid in 1985.

As a result, it would be way too much of a stretch for me to try to make this a CSNY album. In fact, there isn't even much of the three of them working together on this album, since they were going their own ways most of the time in this era.

That said, the three of them still made some good music from time to time. Already by 1980, there were some tentative attempts at recording another CSN album. I've only taken two songs from that though, because most of what's available are the same songs that would appear on their 1982 album "Daylight Again." (And one of the songs here is a bonus track from that which was actually done in 1980.) Stills in particular seems to have be active and writing lots of songs, but most of his studio efforts around this time for his unreleased album have never been officially released or even bootlegged. Still, his "Spanish Suite" which closes out this album is one of his career highlights, in my opinion.

Although 1980 was a dark time for CSN, and things would stay dark for much of the 1980s, there's still enough good music from their faltering efforts to make solo albums, a C-N album, or a CSN album to put together an album with solid songs all the way through it, even if most of them don't have much of a group feeling.

Note that I put a version of "As I Come of Age' on an earlier album in this series, but I'm putting it on again here because CSN did a remake of it despite having a CSN version released on a 1975 Stills solo album already, and this version is somewhat different. Plus, it's one of the few songs they did around this time with all three of them singing impressively together.

Also note that two of the Crosby songs would later appear in different versions on his 1988 solo album "Oh Yes I Can." A lot of the songs on that album actually date from the 1970s, before he lost the better part of a decade to his crack addiction.

01 As I Come of Age (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
02 Drive My Car (David Crosby with Stephen Stills)
03 Barrel of Pain [Half-Life] (Graham Nash)
04 Feel Your Love (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
05 Earth and Sky (Graham Nash)
06 Dear Mr. Fantasy (Stephen Stills & Graham Nash)
07 Magical Child (Graham Nash)
08 Melody (David Crosby)
09 Out of the Island (Crosby & Nash)
10 Spanish Suite (Stephen Stills with Herbie Hancock)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16383332/CROSBSTLLSNSH1980Meldy_atse.zip.html

For the album cover, I used the cover of a CSN bootleg that had a style reminiscent of the 1970 CSNY album "Deja Vu" that I thought looked pretty good. But I made some changes, including changing the picture in the middle.