Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young - Live at Woodstock - Max Yasgur's Farm, Bethel, NY, 8-18-1969

This album is a strange case. I had posted a version of Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young (CSNY) playing at the famous 1969 Woodstock festival. In 2019, their performance was officially released, so I took the album down. But now I'm thinking I was hasty. Although it has been officially released, it's only been as part of a massive box set, containing 35 CDs, and even then it was a limited release that has already run out. So I've changed my mind and I'm posting it here again.

One reason I'm posting it is because it's such a great performance, and there aren't a lot of good alternatives. I'm a very big CSN(Y) fan. I like all their stuff, even from their later years. But I also think that they were at their very best right at the beginning, in late 1969, just after Neil Young joined up. At that point, they were thrilled to be playing with each other, and it showed. (CSNY only played  in Chicago two nights earlier, and CSN never played in public before Young joined, so this was about as brand news as it could get.) It wasn't long before drugs and ego got in the way. Even by 1970, the situation changed dramatically and they were torn apart for the first time (though definitely not the last!).

The problem is, if you look at CSNY's live recordings in 1969, there isn't much with excellent sound quality. There's one bootleg floating around that had to stitch together parts of three different concerts to try to make up one good concert. CSNY's Woodstock performance not only is historic and justifiably famous, but it's the only full concert recording of them at their peak with top sound quality.

Since I'm using the version released in 2019, the recording is flawless. It has some performances from the concert never available before, even on bootleg, such as the rare Neil Young song "Wonderin'" and the "49 Bye-Byes" finale. All I did was break the between song banter into their own tracks, and boost the volume on some of the quieter comments.

The concert is split in two in two different ways. The first half is without Neil Young, since CSN mostly play songs from their 1969 album that Young wasn't a part of. The first half is also acoustic, while the second half is electric. But the Young-less and acoustic portions aren't exactly the same, because Young did play on the last three songs of the acoustic set.

This recording is an hour and ten minutes long. That's not as long as their typical concerts of the time, which were an hour and a half or longer. But it's not far off. And, as I said, in terms of sound quality, it towers over all their other publicly available 1969 recordings.

01 talk (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
02 Suite- Judy Blue Eyes (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
03 talk (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
04 Blackbird (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
05 talk (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
06 Helplessly Hoping (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
07 talk (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
08 Guinnevere (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
09 talk (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
10 Marrakesh Express (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
11 talk (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
12 4 + 20 (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
13 talk (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
14 Mr. Soul (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
15 talk (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
16 Wonderin' (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
17 talk (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
18 You Don't Have to Cry (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
19 talk (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
20 Pre-Road Downs (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
21 talk (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
22 Long Time Gone (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
23 talk (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
24 Bluebird Revisited (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
25 talk (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
26 Sea of Madness (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
27 talk (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
28 Wooden Ships (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
29 talk (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
30 Find the Cost of Freedom (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
31 talk (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
32 49 Bye-Byes (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15100799/CrosbSNY_1969_LivatWoodstck__8-18-1969_atse.zip.html

There are lots of photos of CSN playing at Woodstock, but almost none of CSNY at Woodstock. This is because Young didn't want to be filmed at the concert, for whatever reason. I've only been able to find one good photo of the four of them at the concert, which is the one I've used. Using Photoshop, I moved Stills a few feet closer to the three others, so I could zoom in more on all four.