Crosby, Stills and Nash - The Forum, Los Angeles, CA, 6-29-1977

The short version is that there has never been a good sounding concert recording of Crosby, Stills and Nash (CSN) from their pivotal 1977 tour. But now there is. That's not due to a newly revealed recording. I took a pre-existing one and upgraded it with lots of audio editing. In my opinion, this now sounds as good as a typical soundboard from that era, or at least close to it.

I've been a big CSN (and sometimes Y) fan for many years. In my opinion, there are worthy concert recordings from all of their important years except for 1977. In terms of soundboards, two songs, "(He Play Real Good for Free)" and "Shadow Captain" were released on the 1973 official live album "Allies." That was because around 1983 Crosby was in a bad way due to drug addiction, so they had to go back to an earlier time to get some really good live recordings with him singing lead vocals. Those two songs are from a concert in Houston. There are live versions of some other songs from that same 1977 Houston concert on YouTube, but only part of a show. I wanted an entire show, with all the songs in the correct order. I kept an eye out for a worthy one for many years, but to no avail. There was one audience bootleg that was pretty decent, but it only included about 2/3rds of the concert.

I was aware of another audience bootleg from 1977 that was a full concert. It was Mike Millard, who was a reknowned bootleg taper. But, like most audience boots, it had many issues: too much echo/reverb, lots of hiss, crowd noise during songs, and so on. However, it occurred to me that, due to the advances in audio editing technology in recent years, I could probably get this one to sound good if I worked on it enough. 

So that's what I did, because I really, really wanted a good recording from this tour. I worked more on editing this than nearly anything else I've posted here. I ran every song through the MVSEP program at least three times, sometimes more. I also used Adobe's speech enhancer on all the talking tracks. But in the end, I got the result I was looking for.

I was particularly interested to hear songs from the band's 1977 album "CSN." It was the first CSN album since their debut "Crosby, Stills and Nash" in 1969. After "Deja Vu" as CSNY in 1970, CSN just couldn't get their act together enough to put out another album as a group, either with or without Y - Neil Young. But in 1976, Stills got divorced. After grieving, he quit drinking and focused on music with a passion he hadn't shown for years. he was the driving force behind the "CSN" album, which I think is excellent. It's actually their best selling album as a trio, even narrowly outselling their debut one. 

I was hoping for a lot of songs from their "CSN" album. Unfortunately, not that many, just four: "Just a Song Before I Go," "Cathedral," "Shadow Captain," and "I Give You Give Blind." The album was released only a few weeks earlier, so they may have figured the audience didn't know the songs that well. I was especially hoping for versions of "See the Changes" and "Dark Star," but I checked at setlist.com and there were many concerts this year where those weren't played. Oh well. At least there were a couple of nice rarities, especially "King of the Mountain," which never made it onto an album in the 1970s, and "As I Come of Age."

The three of them were firing on all cylinders for this album and tour. Unfortunately, that wouldn't last. Soon thereafter, Crosby's drug addictions got worse and worse, so they didn't tour much until they put out a new album in 1982. Even then, Crosby's participation was the bare minimum. He wouldn't get cleaned up until he was forced to spend a year in prison in the mid-1980s. That's a big reason why I wanted a live recording from 1977, because they wouldn't be really good again as a trio until about a decade later.

There's only one song with "[Edit]" in its title, even though I made a zillion edits overall. That one is singled out because the beginning of the song, including the first line of vocals, was missing. I filled it in using another recording from that year (from Lakeland, Florida).

Here's a great article about the 1977 CSN reunion, published earlier the same month as this concert:

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/the-actual-honest-to-god-reunion-of-crosby-stills-and-nash-63934/

This album is two hours and 18 minutes long.

01 Pre-Road Downs [Edit] (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
02 The Lee Shore (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
03 Love the One You're With (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
04 talk (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
05 I Used to Be a King (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
06 talk (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
07 Just a Song Before I Go (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
08 talk (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
09 Shadow Captain (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
10 talk (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
11 Turn Back the Pages (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
12 Long Time Gone (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
13 talk (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
14 Suite- Judy Blue Eyes (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
15 You Don't Have to Cry (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
16 talk (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
17 Guinnevere (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
18 talk (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
19 Our House (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
20 talk (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
21 Cathedral (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
22 talk (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
23 King of the Mountain (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
24 talk (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
25 Crossroads - You Can't Catch Me (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
26 4 + 20 (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
27 As I Come of Age (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
28 talk (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
29 Helplessly Hoping (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
30 talk (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
31 Blackbird (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
32 talk (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
33 Critical Mass - Wind on the Water (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
34 Deja Vu (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
35 I Give You Give Blind (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
36 talk (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
37 Military Madness (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
38 Carry On (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
39 Wooden Ships (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
40 talk (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
41 Teach Your Children (Crosby, Stills & Nash)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/2Ce6Vs9i

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/vQ6zcy4Dc1PPOTg/file

The cover image comes from a concert at the Oakland Coliseum in Oakland, California, on October 22, 1977. It was in color already, but just barely. I used the AI program Ask Gemini to improve the color and the details.