Saturday, October 23, 2021

Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young - The 1969 Big Sur Folk Festival and More (1969)

Here's something I'm especially proud of making. In my opinion, Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young (CSNY) peaked early. They formed in 1969, and 1969 and 1970 were arguably their best years. However, when it comes to live material, there isn't that much that was recorded with great sound quality. 

I've already posted the CSNY set at Woodstock, which is a complete, great performance that sounds fantastic. But other than that, there's only parts of shows that have soundboard quality. I've collected all the best bits (not counting the Woodstock stuff) to make a kind of ultimate CSNY 1969 concert recording. It's two hours and 24 minutes long, and it's killer all the way through.

Virtually no live CSNY performances from 1969 are officially released, other than the Woodstock show (which can only be had as part of a massive box set), and a few songs here and there. I ended up only using a single such song, "I've Loved Her So Long," from Neil Young's "Archives, Volume 1." For the rest, I had to rely on bootlegs. Strangely, there are five CSNY boots from 1969 that are soundboards, but all of them are partial shows. 

The closest to a complete show comes from the Big Sur Folk Festival. At first glance it looks like a complete show, but this is an illusion, because CSNY actually played twice at that festival, on September 13th, and then again on September 14th, and the popular bootleg from this festival combines the two into one. Even then, it's incomplete. For instance, at one point, there's a spoken introduction to the song "I've Long Her So Long," but the song isn't there. To make matters worse, some parts of the shows sound great and seem to be from a soundboard, and others not so much, and seem to be from a high quality audience recording.

In addition to Big Sur, there are portions of three other soundboard bootlegs. There are six songs from Chicago on December 13th, six songs from Detroit on December 14th, and six songs from Houston on December 18th. Weird, huh? And they're all different songs, though some are incomplete. After those, the sound quality drops dramatically, to just average or poor sounding audience bootlegs.

So I used the Big Sur shows as the basis, and then added in as many songs as I could from the other soundboard concerts to create one big concert containing everything really worth hearing (not counting Woodstock), without ever using the same song multiple times. CSNY was pretty consistent in how they did their concerts, dividing their shows in a first acoustic set and then a second electric, full band set. And within those, there was a natural order. For instance, the acoustic set had them doing some songs together to start the show, then breaking off into individual mini-sets featuring just one member, then getting back them all together again for a song or two before ending the set. Because of this, I was able easily add in the extra songs where they more or less belonged.

Where things got more complicated is with the banter between songs. CSNY was very chatty in this time period. They talked before virtually every song, and sometimes talked for a few minutes. I wanted to replicate this aspect of their concerts too, because it showed their personality and camaraderie. Most of the time, the version of the songs I used had banter that went with the songs, so I used those. But in some cases the banter was missing, or it had sound quality issues. In many of those cases, I was able to find banter from some other show. For instance, the version of "Wooden Ships" here comes from one of the Big Sur shows. But banter before it had lots of hiss and crowd noise. I found different banter from the Chicago show where he explained the meaning of the song in depth, with much better sound quality, so I used that.

I put a lot of time and effort into making the best cohesive sounding concert with the limited raw material I had. Because I was mixing sources, I had to work to make sure the end of one track fit with the start of the next one. I did a lot of editing to make sure a song wouldn't end in the middle of audience applause or something like that. I also worked to improve the sound quality as much as possible. 

I discovered a new trick with Spleeter, which is that for banter tracks only, the vocals are usually put on one channel and the hiss on another channel. So I can just delete the hiss channel, and I can get rid of hiss better than any other noise reduction type tool. (It only works for banter tracks, because if there's music, the hiss ends up on the same channel as some of the music.) One thing I couldn't fix though is that some of the banter tracks have a lot of echo and/or reverb, and other such tracks don't. That can vary from time to time, so just try to ignore that.

I'm happy to say that I managed to find nearly all the important songs CSNY played in 1969. If one looks at the setlist.fm list of songs they played that year, and how many times they played them, there are only a few I missed that they played more than once: "49 Bye-Byes - America's Children," "Find the Cost of Freedom," "Broken Arrow," and "How Have You Been." I got really lucky! (One of the soundboard sources did have "49 Bye- Byes - America's Children," but half or more of it was missing, so I skipped it.)

The Big Sur shows were unusual in a couple of aspects. One oddity is that, during the CSNY set, they brought up Dave Mason, who recently left Traffic, and let him perform two of his songs. They even backed him up on the second one. I'm pretty sure that was the one and only time CSNY ever did that, at least in the 1969 and 1970 time frame. I chose to keep those songs in, since I like Mason and they're good songs.

Also, the Big Sur shows were filmed for a documentary movie and soundtrack, which was eventually released with the name "Celebration at Big Sur." In the movie, you can watch a scene in which CSNY gets heckled by an audience member. Stills left the stage to talk up close to the guy, and ended up getting in a tussle with him. The bootleg included all of this scene, which lasted several minutes. However, I cut the whole thing out. The main reason is that the audio quality of that second was particularly poor, and it mostly was just lots of crowd noise. But later on in the show, when Stills had his solo spot, right before the song "4+20," he spent about a minute talking about the heckler and his response. I left that in, because the sound quality was much better, and his commentary was interesting.

In 1969, CSNY varied the songs they played during their acoustic sets quite a lot, but they played pretty much the exact same songs in the same order during their electric sets. The result of that is the acoustic set is super sized with all the songs I gathered from here and there. Whereas I only added two extra songs to the electric set over what they played at Big Sur.

A few tracks have "[Edit]" in the title. The only actual song I edited is the Dave Mason song "Only You Know and I Know." There was a missing section near the end. It was during an instrumental section, so I managed to patch it using another part of the song where the same section was repeated. I also did a lot editing of the banter between songs. Sometimes I cut out portions that were boring, such as lots of guitar tuning or prolonged silences. Occasionally, I moved things around to have the flow from song to song make more sense. I added "[Edit]" to the ones where I made the biggest changes.

In addition to all the soundboard sourced songs I mentioned above, there are two songs where I used audience boots as the source. These are two songs that I simply thought were really cool, and I decided the sound quality was good enough for them to fit, even though they do sound slightly worse than the rest. Those two are "Mr. Soul" and "Go Back Home." They're interesting rarities. If setlist.fm is correct, CSNY only ever played them twice. (However, there's a better sounding version of "Mr. Soul" in the Woodstock concert.)

Anyway, I hope you enjoy this. The sound does vary from time to time. But considering the poor quality of most 1969 CSNY bootlegs, this is the cream of the crop, all in one plus (minus Woodstock, of course).

Finally, I was so pleased with the result I made here that I decided to do the same thing for CSNY's 1970 concerts. I've taken the best of the best recordings, mostly from the Fillmore East, to make one ultimate concert for that year too. Look for that to be posted soon.

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 Helplessly Hoping (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
11 talk (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
12 Mr. Soul (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
13 talk (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
14 Guinnevere (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
15 talk (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
16 Triad (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
17 talk [Edit] (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
18 Lady of the Island (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
19 talk (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
20 Our House (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
21 talk (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
22 Country Girl (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
23 talk (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
24 Birds (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
25 talk [Edit] (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
26 I've Loved Her So Long (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
27 talk (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
28 Helpless (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
29 talk (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
30 Black Queen (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
31 talk (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
32 4+20 (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
33 Go Back Home (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
34 talk (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
35 You Don't Have to Cry (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
36 talk (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
37 World in Changes (Dave Mason & Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
38 talk (Dave Mason & Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
39 Only You Know and I Know [Edit] (Dave Mason & Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
40 Pre-Road Downs (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
41 talk (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
42 So Begins the Task (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
43 talk (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
44 Long Time Gone (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
45 talk (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
46 Woodstock (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
47 talk (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
48 Bluebird Revisited (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
49 talk (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
50 Sea of Madness (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
51 talk (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
52 Wooden Ships (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
53 talk (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
54 Down by the River (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)

https://www.imagenetz.de/e5ppY

As I mentioned above, the Big Sur Folk Festival was the subject of a documentary movie. I could have used some still shots from that for the album cover. However, the film quality was rather low-res and blurry. Instead, I found a few excellent photos of CSNY in concert in San Diego in 1969. 

But the problem there was I couldn't find a single good photo showing all four of them. So I used one with Crosby, Stills and Young as the basis. Then I used another one of the San Diego photos to crop out Nash and stick him in the middle of the photo. So yeah, it's kind of a fake, but consider that Nash was right there wearing those clothes with that lighting, just out of frame. I probably combined two photos that were taken at the same spot only minutes apart.

In case you're curious, here are how the two raw pics look separately. I didn't use the bottom one, even though it has all four of them, because Stills' head is turned away from the camera, and Crosby's head is partially blocked.

20 comments:

  1. May I be the first to thank and congratulate you on this rather spectacular edition of musical curation. Thank you for your generosity in sharing these works.

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    1. Thanks for the thanks. I'd love to hear your feedback after you get a chance to listen to it. I'm curious to see if it hangs together, more or less.

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    2. Hi Paul. After my initial and many listens, I think it flows very well. I don't listen to the 'talk' tracks after the first hearing and only the music from then on. Still sounds creatively cohesive to me.

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    3. That's good to hear, thanks. And if you don't listen to the talking tracks, then I suppose it's a good thing I always separate those from the music.

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  2. Looking forward to listening to this. I think the cover easily passes muster. We're not CSI, we're just enjoying music and images from the time.

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    1. Thanks. Glad it passes muster, cos sometimes it doesn't in cases like this. I'll post the two raw pics, in case you're curious how they look separately.

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  3. Hey Paul, really looking forward to this. I'm not usually that big a live fan, but your write-up has me intrigued. I think your cover edit looks great. Thanks for all the work you have put into this.

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    1. Thanks. And I'm glad you like the cover. Sometimes with edits like that, it's hard for me to get the perspective to tell if it looks good or looks like crap.

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  4. Thanks for putting together this set. Any chance you could indicate which songs came from which shows.

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    1. I always put that sort of info in the mp3 tags. But if you don't know how to look at those, here it is:

      01 talk - Unreleased, Big Sur Folk Festival, Esalen Institute, Big Sur, CA, 9-13-1969
      02 Suite- Judy Blue Eyes - Unreleased, Big Sur Folk Festival, Esalen Institute, Big Sur, CA, 9-14-1969
      03 talk - Unreleased, Big Sur Folk Festival, Esalen Institute, Big Sur, CA, 9-13-1969
      04 Blackbird - Unreleased, Masonic Temple, Detroit, MI, 12-14-1969
      05 talk - Unreleased, Masonic Temple, Detroit, MI, 12-14-1969
      06 On the Way Home - Unreleased, Masonic Temple, Detroit, MI, 12-14-1969
      07 talk - Unreleased, Masonic Temple, Detroit, MI, 12-14-1969
      08 Teach Your Children - Unreleased, Masonic Temple, Detroit, MI, 12-14-1969
      09 talk - Unreleased, Masonic Temple, Detroit, MI, 12-14-1969
      10 Helplessly Hoping - Unreleased, Big Sur Folk Festival, Esalen Institute, Big Sur, CA, 9-13-1969
      11 talk - Unreleased, Greek Theatre, Los Angeles, CA, 8-31-1969
      12 Mr. Soul - Unreleased, Fillmore East, New York City, 9-20-1969
      13 talk - Unreleased, Masonic Temple, Detroit, MI, 12-14-1969
      14 Guinnevere - Unreleased, Masonic Temple, Detroit, MI, 12-14-1969
      15 talk - Unreleased, Masonic Temple, Detroit, MI, 12-14-1969
      16 Triad - Unreleased, Masonic Temple, Detroit, MI, 12-14-1969
      17 talk [Edit] - Unreleased, Masonic Temple, Detroit, MI, 12-14-1969
      18 Lady of the Island - Unreleased, Big Sur Folk Festival, Esalen Institute, Big Sur, CA, 9-13-1969
      19 talk - Unreleased, Masonic Temple, Detroit, MI, 12-14-1969
      20 Our House - Unreleased, Hofheinz Pavillion, Houston, TX, 12-18-1969

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    2. 21 talk - Unreleased, Hofheinz Pavillion, Houston, TX, 12-18-1969
      22 Country Girl - Unreleased, Hofheinz Pavillion, Houston, TX, 12-18-1969
      23 talk - Unreleased, Big Sur Folk Festival, Esalen Institute, Big Sur, CA, 9-13-1969
      24 Birds - Unreleased, Big Sur Folk Festival, Esalen Institute, Big Sur, CA, 9-13-1969
      25 talk [Edit] - Unreleased, Big Sur Folk Festival, Esalen Institute, Big Sur, CA, 9-13-1969
      26 I've Loved Her So Long - Archives Volume 1 (Greek Theatre, Los Angeles, CA, 8-26-1969)
      27 talk - Unreleased, Hofheinz Pavillion, Houston, TX, 12-18-1969
      28 Helpless - Unreleased, Hofheinz Pavillion, Houston, TX, 12-18-1969
      29 talk - Unreleased, Hofheinz Pavillion, Houston, TX, 12-18-1969
      30 Black Queen - Unreleased, Hofheinz Pavillion, Houston, TX, 12-18-1969
      31 talk - Unreleased, Big Sur Folk Festival, Esalen Institute, Big Sur, CA, 9-13-1969
      32 4+20 - Unreleased, Big Sur Folk Festival, Esalen Institute, Big Sur, CA, 9-13-1969
      33 Go Back Home - Unreleased, Fillmore East, New York City, 9-20-1969
      34 talk - Unreleased, Big Sur Folk Festival, Esalen Institute, Big Sur, CA, 9-13-1969
      35 You Don't Have to Cry - Unreleased, Big Sur Folk Festival, Esalen Institute, Big Sur, CA, 9-13-1969
      36 talk - Unreleased, Big Sur Folk Festival, Esalen Institute, Big Sur, CA, 9-13-1969
      37 World in Changes - Unreleased, Big Sur Folk Festival, Esalen Institute, Big Sur, CA, 9-13-1969
      38 talk - Unreleased, Big Sur Folk Festival, Esalen Institute, Big Sur, CA, 9-13-1969
      39 Only You Know and I Know [Edit] - Unreleased, Big Sur Folk Festival, Esalen Institute, Big Sur, CA, 9-13-1969
      40 Pre-Road Downs - Unreleased, Big Sur Folk Festival, Esalen Institute, Big Sur, CA, 9-14-1969
      41 talk - Unreleased, Auditorium Theatre, Chicago, IL, 12-13-1969
      42 So Begins the Task - Unreleased, Auditorium Theatre, Chicago, IL, 12-13-1969
      43 talk - Unreleased, Big Sur Folk Festival, Esalen Institute, Big Sur, CA, 9-14-1969
      44 Long Time Gone - Unreleased, Big Sur Folk Festival, Esalen Institute, Big Sur, CA, 9-14-1969
      45 talk - Unreleased, Auditorium Theatre, Chicago, IL, 12-14-1969
      46 Woodstock - Unreleased, Auditorium Theatre, Chicago, IL, 12-13-1969
      47 talk - Unreleased, Big Sur Folk Festival, Esalen Institute, Big Sur, CA, 9-14-1969
      48 Bluebird Revisited - Unreleased, Big Sur Folk Festival, Esalen Institute, Big Sur, CA, 9-14-1969
      49 talk - Unreleased, Big Sur Folk Festival, Esalen Institute, Big Sur, CA, 9-14-1969
      50 Sea of Madness - Unreleased, Big Sur Folk Festival, Esalen Institute, Big Sur, CA, 9-14-1969
      51 talk - Unreleased, Auditorium Theatre, Chicago, IL, 12-13-1969
      52 Wooden Ships - Unreleased, Big Sur Folk Festival, Esalen Institute, Big Sur, CA, 9-13-1969
      53 talk - Unreleased, Big Sur Folk Festival, Esalen Institute, Big Sur, CA, 9-13-1969
      54 Down by the River - Unreleased, Big Sur Folk Festival, Esalen Institute, Big Sur, CA, 9-13-1969

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  5. Thanks as ever for all your hard work.

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  6. Looks a great set but having trouble with Soulseek,.
    Tracks 3 5 11 13 29 34 are aborting, and a lot of the others up to track 39 are just queuing.
    1 7 9 19 21 27 40 upwards are all okay.
    Any Ideas?

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    1. I think I know what happened. A few hours after I posted this, I changed the song order slightly. Suite: Judy Blue Eyes had been in the middle, as it went on the bootleg, but I realized it was supposed to be the first song. The songs you downloaded are the ones that didn't get reordered. I just unshared the folder at Soulseek, and then reshared it, so hopefully it'll reset all the songs. But it might take a few hours to do the change.

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    2. Great, thats working fine now.

      Many thanks for this.

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  7. Thanks so much, this looks epic!

    Great concept for an album, looking forward to listening to it!

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  8. Beautiful job Paul!! Right down to the cover!

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  9. Thanks Paul for all your time & effort. Sounds great!

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  10. Nice job, Paul: my favorite CSNY period.

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