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.