Stephen Stills & Manassas - Winterland, San Francisco, CA, 10-7-1973

Back in 2018, I posted a Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young (CSNY) concert is very closely linked to this one, taking place just three days earlier at the same venue. I'll explain more about that shortly. I was certain that I had posted this album at the same time. However, recently I was updating broken links, and I noticed there was no link for this album. I looked closer, and realized I'd never posted it. So better late than ever.

Manassas was a band led by Stephen Stills of CSNY. But included many other great musicians, especially Chris Hillman, formerly of the Byrds, who wrote and sang lead vocals on some songs. The idea was this would be Stills' main band for many years. They released the cleverly titled "Manassas" in 1972 and "Down the Road" in 1973. CSNY had been apart since late 1970. But around the time of this concert, they began getting back together.

A concert taking place on October 4, 1973 was billed as a Manassas concert. But CSNY basically crashed the band's first set and played a bunch of songs acoustically, which meant they didn't need Manassas to back them up. That reunion a very big deal in the music world. CSNY had been called the "American Beatles" and had sold zillions of albums, way more than Manassas. Chris Hillman later commented that this was the night he realized the future of Manassas was done, due to Stills naturally wanting to rejoin the much more popular CSNY. It would turn out Hillman was right. Manassas would break up not long after this, after they played a few more concerts to finish their tour.

Here's the link to the CSNY set (mostly) from that concert:

https://albumsthatshouldexist.blogspot.com/2018/05/crosby-stills-nash-young-winterland.html

However, "the show must go on." Despite being upstaged by the CSNY reunion, Stills and the rest of Manassas still had their second set to perform. But it must have been frustrating and bittersweet for them (except for Stills). Their encore, "Daylight Again - Find the Cost of Freedom," was performed by Manassas and CSNY together. That may have been awkward. By the way, I've included that song on both album, since it was both a CSNY performance and a Manassas one.

Then, three days later, on this date, October 7, 1973, the whole process repeated itself. CSNY performed another set in the middle of another Manassas concert at this same venue. For whatever reason, I believe only the Manassas set from this date is available, so that's what I'm posting here. This apparently includes everything that was performed except for the songs with just CSNY. As for CSNY, the album I've posted from them consists mostly from their October 4, 1973 concert, with a few different songs from October 7th added in.

At least some of two concerts were professionally filmed for some reason, and I think this one was broadcast live on the radio as well. That's why we have a recording with soundboard-level sound quality. I don't believe the film footage has been officially released in any way, but you can find it on YouTube. 

This album is an hour and 18 minutes long.

01 Song of Love (Stephen Stills & Manassas)
02 Rock and Roll Crazies (Stephen Stills & Manassas)
03 Jet Set [Sigh] (Stephen Stills & Manassas)
04 Anyway (Stephen Stills & Manassas)
05 So You Want to Be a Rock 'N' Roll Star (Stephen Stills & Manassas)
06 talk (Stephen Stills & Manassas)
07 Johnny's Garden (Stephen Stills & Manassas)
08 talk (Stephen Stills & Manassas)
09 Go Back Home (Stephen Stills & Manassas)
10 talk (Stephen Stills & Manassas)
11 Six Days on the Road (Stephen Stills & Manassas)
12 talk (Stephen Stills & Manassas)
13 Safe at Home (Stephen Stills & Manassas)
14 Fallen Eagle (Stephen Stills & Manassas)
15 Hide It So Deep (Stephen Stills & Manassas)
16 You're Still on My Mind (Stephen Stills & Manassas)
17 talk (Stephen Stills & Manassas)
18 Pensamiento (Stephen Stills & Manassas)
19 talk (Stephen Stills & Manassas)
20 49 Bye-Byes - Drum Solo (Stephen Stills & Manassas)
21 For What It's Worth (Stephen Stills & Manassas)
22 talk (Stephen Stills & Manassas)
23 Lies (Stephen Stills & Manassas)
24 talk (Stephen Stills & Manassas)
25 The Treasure - Carry On (Stephen Stills & Manassas)
26 talk (Stephen Stills & Manassas)
27 Daylight Again - Find the Cost of Freedom (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young & Manassas)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/1zBra6Q8

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/bW21m9x5dzPVqrJ/file

The cover image is taken from a video of this exact concert. I used Ask Gemini to add to the detail level.

Stephen Stills & Manassas - BBC in Concert, London, Britain, 9-16-1972

I'm continuing to post some of the early 1970s BBC "In Concert" bootlegs I have. Here's a particularly good one, featuring Stephen Stills with his short-lived group Manassas.

I've posted another Manassas concert already, dating from March 1972. That one is much longer: two hours and 17 minutes, compared to 47 minutes for this one. But the sound quality of this one is probably even better, if only by a little, and there actually are a few songs here not on that other one. Although it was only six months later, the band was already turning their attention to the songs that would go on their 1973 album, and played a few here.

With BBC production standards high, as usual, there wasn't much for me to do. But I did make adjustments to three songs at the end of the concert (the ones with "[Edit]" in their names). There was a slight glitch in the middle of "Find the Cost of Freedom," probably from the way this was recorded, but I was able to fix it by patching in a different section of the song. And the lead vocals on the songs "Anyway" and "Daylight Again" were low, in my opinion, so I boosted them using the X-Minus audio editing program. 

"Daylight Again" was considered for the next Manassas album, but it wouldn't actually be released until the 1972 Crosby, Stills and Nash album, also called "Daylight Again." By then, the lyrics would change drastically, with only the first verse the same. My guess is that Stills wasn't happy with most of the words when he played this concert, because the first verse came through strongly but he sang the rest much quieter. Thanks to my edit, you can hear all of this interesting early version clearly.

01 Fallen Eagle (Stephen Stills & Manassas)
02 You're Still on My Mind (Stephen Stills & Manassas)
03 Sugar Babe (Stephen Stills & Manassas)
04 talk (Stephen Stills & Manassas)
05 Pensamiento (Stephen Stills & Manassas)
06 Change Partners (Stephen Stills & Manassas)
07 talk (Stephen Stills & Manassas)
08 Know You Got to Run (Stephen Stills & Manassas)
09 Word Game (Stephen Stills & Manassas)
10 Both of Us [Bound to Lose] (Stephen Stills & Manassas)
11 Love the One You're With (Stephen Stills & Manassas)
12 Right Now (Stephen Stills & Manassas)
13 Anyway [Edit] (Stephen Stills & Manassas)
14 Daylight Again [Edit] (Stephen Stills & Manassas)
15 Find the Cost of Freedom [Edit] (Stephen Stills & Manassas)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/uNrDbYNM

I wasn't able to find the video of this concert on YouTube. But I got lucky and found a nice color photo of this exact concert anyway, and used it here.

Stephen Stills & Manassas - Concertgebouw, Amsterdam, Netherlands, 3-22-1972

I spent many a month posting an alternate history of Crosby, Stills, Nash and/or Young, with 20 or so stray tracks albums in that series. Now that I've finished that, I feel free to post various additional music by them, in all their various solo and group configurations.

Here's one such post. In my opinion, Stephen Stills' two years with his band Manassas in 1972 and 1973 was the peak of his long solo career. It was a great group of musicians, but the main feature, in my opinion, was the collaboration between Stills and Chris Hillman, formerly of the Byrds and the Flying Burrito Brothers. It was Stills' band, but Hillman occasionally wrote and/or sang some of the songs.

If you listen to just one concert from Manassas, it should be this one. It's a bootleg of a long concert, over two hours, and it's in great soundboard sound quality. Manassas had just released their 1972 double album, simply called "Manassas." It's a great album that for some reason has usually gone underappreciated. Even Stills hardly played most of these songs after Manassas broke up in 1973. Naturally, lots of the songs here are from that, but there also are some from Stills' two earlier solo albums, plus his work with Crosby, Stills, Nash and/or Young and Buffalo Springfield, as well as a couple of Hillman's songs from the Byrds and the Flying Burrito Brothers.

There were only a couple of sound issues here. The bootlegger managed to capture the vast majority of the concert, including the talking between songs, but missed a few bits. The encore "Find the Cost of Freedom" was one such miss. It's included, but it comes from a different source, an audience bootleg. The lesser sound quality is obvious, but luckily it's just one short song.

The bootlegger also missed the tail end of "He Was a Friend of Mine," all of "49 Bye-Byes," and the first half of "Song of Love." Since the vast majority of "He Was a Friend of Mine" was included, I just found a good ending point and then added in some applause from the end of a different song to make it sound complete. For "49 Bye-Byes," I found a version from a different show at a similarly high sound quality (recorded at Dania, Florida), matched the song pitch to the next song (since it's kind of a medley), and added it in. For "Song of Love," I found a high sound quality version recorded for the TV show "Beat Club" in Germany. Again, I matched the pitch, then I spliced the two versions together in the middle of the second verse. The additions fit so well that I really don't think you'll notice.

I'm kind of weird in that I've labeled these as "Stephen Stills & Manassas" songs instead of "Manassas" songs. That's because Manassas didn't last long, and I file these in with the rest of the Stills section of my music collection. But whenever Hillman takes a lead vocal, or co-lead vocal, I've added his name to the song info as well. It's also strange that I'm titling this album as being by "Stephen Stills and Manassas," since he was a part of Manassas, but I couldn't think of a better way to do it.

By the way, a big middle chunk of the concert, from about tracks 9 to 25, is in an acoustic format. It's mostly just Stills, but Hillman and/or a couple other band members back him up on some of those songs.

Anyway, this is a great performance with flawless sound, so if you're a fan of Stills' music at all, you should give it a listen.

01 Rock and Roll Woman (Stephen Stills & Manassas)
02 Bound to Fall (Stephen Stills & Manassas)
03 talk (Stephen Stills & Manassas)
04 Hot Burrito No. 2 (Stephen Stills & Manassas)
05 talk (Stephen Stills & Manassas)
06 It Doesn't Matter (Stephen Stills & Manassas)
07 Go Back Home (Stephen Stills & Manassas)
08 talk (Stephen Stills & Manassas)
09 Change Partners (Stephen Stills & Manassas)
10 talk (Stephen Stills & Manassas)
11 Know You Got to Run (Stephen Stills & Manassas)
12 talk (Stephen Stills & Manassas)
13 4 + 20 (Stephen Stills & Manassas)
14 talk (Stephen Stills & Manassas)
15 Blues Man (Stephen Stills & Manassas)
16 talk (Stephen Stills & Manassas)
17 Word Game (Stephen Stills & Manassas)
18 talk (Stephen Stills & Manassas)
19 Do for the Others (Stephen Stills & Manassas)
20 talk (Stephen Stills & Manassas)
21 Move Around (Stephen Stills & Manassas)
22 talk (Stephen Stills & Manassas)
23 Both of Us [Bound to Lose] (Stephen Stills & Manassas)
24 Love the One You're With (Stephen Stills & Manassas)
25 He Was a Friend of Mine (Stephen Stills & Manassas)
26 Fallen Eagle (Stephen Stills & Manassas)
27 Hide It So Deep (Stephen Stills & Manassas)
28 talk (Stephen Stills & Manassas)
29 Johnny's Garden (Stephen Stills & Manassas)
30 Don't Look at My Shadow (Stephen Stills & Manassas)
31 Sugar Babe (Stephen Stills & Manassas)
32 Four Days Gone (Stephen Stills & Manassas)
33 49 Bye-Byes (Stephen Stills & Manassas)
34 For What It's Worth (Stephen Stills & Manassas)
35 Song of Love [Edit] (Stephen Stills & Manassas)
36 Rock and Roll Crazies (Stephen Stills & Manassas)
37 Cuban Bluegrass (Stephen Stills & Manassas)
38 Jet Set [Sigh] (Stephen Stills & Manassas)
39 Anyway (Stephen Stills & Manassas)
40 The Treasure (Stephen Stills & Manassas)
41 talk (Stephen Stills & Manassas)
42 Find the Cost of Freedom (Stephen Stills & Manassas)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/ZRVxtJDM

For the cover art, I'm glad to say I was able to find a photo of the concert in question. I had several color photos to choose from. I picked one that shows Stills and Hillman (Stills is at the bottom), since the band was a collaboration between the two of them.