Crosby, Stills and Nash - Unplugged in Saratoga (Paul Mason Winery, Saratoga, CA, 6-26-1991)

In the early 1990s, "MTV Unplugged" acoustic concerts were all the rage. Some artists who got started in the 1960s and had lost much of their commercial appeal sold millions upon millions of their "unplugged" albums. For instance, Eric Clapton's "Unplugged" album sold no less than 26 million copies! Crosby, Stills and Nash (CSN) have made many, many boneheaded decisions on what to release or not release. In my opinion, one of their biggest mistakes was to not release an acoustic live album at the peak of the "unplugged" trend. They excelled at the acoustic format, so you'd think they would have been all over that. The only thing they did was release a DVD called "The Acoustic Concert," but it was short and stripped of most of their banter.

So, still in keeping with my mental "alternate universe" in which CSN(Y) released many more albums than they actually did, I've crafted an unplugged album for them that probably would have come out in 1992, which was the same year as many other huge sellers. Nearly all of it comes from a soundboard bootleg of a concert in Saratoga, California. The sound quality of it is stellar, and there's lots of entertaining banter between songs.

I made a few changes or additions. I added "Wasted on the Way" to the start of the concert, because that was their typical first song on all their concerts that year, but it wasn't on the bootleg. Similarly, they typically ended with "Teach Your Children," and that wasn't there either, so I added that too. Also, in the middle, the song "Soldiers of Peace" was played. I really don't like that song. I'm all in favor of peace, but it's just not a good song despite the message of it. Since that was during Graham Nash's solo spot, I replaced it with another Nash song, "These Empty Days."

Luckily, there are a few other soundboard bootlegs from that year, so I was able to take the songs from those. I found a couple more that didn't get played at this particular concert but I thought would improve the concert: "4+20" and "Daylight Again - Find the Cost of Freedom." So I added those to the very end.

I made some minor adjustments, generally boosting the volume of the banter and removing some dead air moments, like guitar tuning. But there wasn't much of that. Also, I generally boosted the volume of the audience applause after each song. One trickier thing was that there were a few singalong moments during a couple of songs, where the audience was supposed to take over the singing for a little while. In those cases, I boosted the audience noise a lot so there wouldn't be a strange mostly silent gap there.

All in all, this is a long concert, at two hours and 32 minutes. Nearly all their classic songs got played, plus some new ones for the time that in my opinion kept up their high standards. I imagine had CSN actually released a live album at this time it wouldn't have been that long, but I don't need to be limited by album lengths.

01 talk (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
02 Wasted on the Way (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
04 talk (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
05 Blackbird (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
06 talk (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
07 The Lee Shore (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
08 You Don't Have to Cry (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
09 talk (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
10 Just a Song Before I Go (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
11 talk (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
12 Helplessly Hoping (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
13 talk (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
14 Marrakesh Express (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
15 talk (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
16 Long Time Gone (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
17 talk (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
18 Suite- Judy Blue Eyes (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
19 talk (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
20 Wind on the Water (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
21 talk (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
22 On the Other Side of Town (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
23 talk (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
24 These Empty Days (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
25 talk (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
26 Thousand Roads (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
27 talk (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
28 Almost Cut My Hair (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
29 talk (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
30 Guinnevere (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
31 talk (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
32 Love the One You're With (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
33 talk (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
34 For What It's Worth (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
35 talk (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
36 Southern Cross (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
39 talk (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
40 Wooden Ships (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
41 talk (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
42 Our House (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
43 Teach Your Children (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
44 4+20 (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
45 Daylight Again - Find the Cost of Freedom (Crosby, Stills & Nash)

https://www.imagenetz.de/cUvsa

The cover photo comes from a concert in Portland in 1991. I moved Crosby so he'd be closer to the other two.