Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young - CSN&Y - 1973

In 1973 CSN&Y released a best of LP, presumably to have something to promote on their upcoming tour. This seemed odd due to the fact that they only had two albums and one non-LP single to choose from. What if instead they dipped into their archives to flesh out the album. They had more than enough unreleased material to utilize. I took from this pool of unreleased songs what I thought was the best material. There is still a lot of songs that are still unused.

Side One
1 Ohio
2 Horses Through A Rainstorm
3 How Have You Been
4 Triad
5 Everybody's Talkin'

Side Two
1 Urge For Going
2 The Lee Shore
3 Sea Of Madness
4 Blackbird
5 Everyday We Live
6 Find the Cost of Freedom

Reality Notes

1973-1974 seems like a good time for the group. They seemed to be enjoying each others company and getting along. They had some writing sessions in May '73 at Neil's Maui beach house. Then in October '73 David, Graham and Neil joined Stephen onstage after a Manassas concert. 1974 saw rehearsals, a summer tour and some recording sessions. All of this was leading up to the recording of a new album that never happened called Human Highway. We will return to that album in the future.

I kept the first and last songs from the original LP. They were released as a single only so this would be the first time these songs were available on an LP. The rest of the songs are all from the periods that produced the first and second LPs. I utilized two sources for the unreleased material. The CSN box set and the bootleg Studio Archives 1969. Editing was limited to removing excess studio chatter, count ins and false starts.

• Ohio - Single
• Horses Through A Rainstorm - CSN Box Set
• How Have You Been - Studio Archives boot
• Triad - Studio Archives boot
• Everybody's Talkin' - Studio Archives boot
• Urge For Going - CSN Box Set
• The Lee Shore - CSN Box Set
• Sea Of Madness - Studio Archives boot
• Blackbird - CSN Box Set
• Everyday We Live - Studio Archives boot
• Find the Cost of Freedom - Single

Hindsight

I still enjoy this comp and I don't think I would change anything. The main push for constructing it was to have a place for Crosby's Lee Shore and Triad, still among my favorite Crosby songs. I still feel this is the way the label should have gone rather than the best of collection officially released.

Is it on my iPod? No. If my 160GB iPod still lived then yes but on my 30GB, with more limited space, I took a different route with CSNY. Listening to CSNY in the digital world has presented some challenges. Sometimes you want to listen to everything and others one of the many different configurations they have recorded under over the years or some combination of the two. What I've done is create my own "box set" for the iPod. Six discs each focused on each individual or group. One for each solo. one for Crosby-Nash and one that covers CSN, CSNY and Stills and Young. Works out nice.