Best Box Set of CSN
4
By Adam MacDougall
4 1/2 stars Let me explain...
I think this box set does the best job (compared to the C and N box sets) of painting a picture of the artist (Stephen Stills) outside of what has already been officially released, and (I think) redeem himself in the eyes of some fans who may feel some of his/their work has been released in too many formats with much the same content. Thus, this is (in my mind) compiled well and a worthwhile purchase.
There are a few more gems that could have been included (if you have none of their bootlegs of live unreleased materials, this is not exhaustive, and like Neil Young's archives, could have been more thorough and could have been better for it), but even for a fan like me, I'd say at least half of this is really cool, rare, unreleased, live, or demo versions of songs, and the rest is pretty well chosen. It's also not redundant of the overall excellent CSN box set (which was VERY worth the purchase) which came out in the 90s. I do wonder why a few more live gems were not included, possibly from '68-74 (say live Buffalo Springfield? or CSN and/or CSNY like '74, though this is allegedly going to be released sometime this century, though Neil will probably wait until one of CSN dies as he waited until Bruce Palmer and Dewey Martin died before finally doing like 5 shows as Buffalo Springfield).
Again, in Croz and Nash's box set/compilations, we don't get the best and to a younger audience mostly unknown excellent sampling of their strong output with their early bands (Byrds and Hollies), but here we get most of (or at least a lot of) the really great songs Stills put out with Buffalo Springfield. And the demo vesion of Four Days Gone (which I'd heard before) is great. (yes, some may want the longer version of Bluebird). The early song Travelin' is really cool too.. Nash's and Crosby's should have (and could have) been this good in representing an unseen side to their music output and talents, but (according to me) for whatever reason did not.
Who Ran Away, Lee Shore (Still's version!?!?), Forty Nine Reasons, Little Miss Bright Eyes, The Treasure, are interesting and enjoyable unreleased demos or unreleased tracks to name but a few.The Hendrix track is of course another huge find. The CSNY version of Black Coral is another one CSNY fanatics have been waiting to hear. I'd never heard Welfare Blues, which is cool. The live versions of Know You Got to Run, Crossroads, and Find the Cost of Freedom are improvements on what's out there and are enjoyable as well. The Manassas tracks were probably obligatory to include, though any fan already has that album.
The set also does a good job of picking some of Stills' most interesting and accomplished post '77 material (Thoroughfare Gap, Lowdown, Cuba Al Fin, Spanish Suite) when quite a bit of his officially released material was of varying quality (also no Illegal Stills if memory serves me correclty, which is a good thing, except the lack of inclusion of the excellent Stateline Blues). Some of the live Bread and Roses tracks could have been a nice inclusion too, and a few of the redundant 80's tracks could have been shucked imo.
The 90's through the '10s tracks are also cool. A few more live tracks could have been cool to showcase Stills' excellent guitar playing skills (like say a duel with Young on any number of songs like from say the 2002/2003ish years which were on fire, or a live version of suite Judy Blue eys), but we do get some great tracks like Ol Man Trouble and a better version of No Tears Left. I also would've loved to have seen How Have You Been released, or a version of Everybody's Talkin' or The Dolphins as well. It's cool to hear a good recording (finally) of a live version of Girl from the North Country Fair though.
