Posts
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| Gary's Copy |
Gary, 9 July:
Interesting article on the BBC News site about one of the leading supermarkets in the UK stopping selling CDs and DVDs…. Note the quote "Vinyl is incredibly fashionable and the CD has gone out of fashion. A lot of indies [independent shops] may be stocking less CDs than they used to, but they're still selling. There's this myth that the CD is completely dead.”
Mark, 11 July:
Thanks - yes I saw this. Not surprised. Sainsbury's decision is the tail end of a depressing trend to cut the availability of music on the high street that goes back 10 years or more. The supermarkets have only been selling a desultory list of top ten albums so it is not a huge loss to culture. Different story 50 years ago in my teenage years in north Wales when I started buying records. I would be able to get my Beatles, Stones, ELP, Yes, Rory Gallagher albums in local shops like Boots the Chemists, WH Smiths and Woollies (as in Woolworths, not sheep). There was also a department store across the border in Chester called Browns which had an impressive range of vinyl racks slotted in between haberdashery and the menswear department. I would pop in there to get the new Wings album before getting my bus back home from school, hiding it amongst the text books in my bag so my father wouldn't spot it. There was also the occasional foray to Liverpool to save up for. This required a bus, a train and a metro to get to so required some intricate logistics. I used to head straight to one of Richard Branson's first Virgin Records shops which was above a shoe shop in Bold Street. There a dazzling and diverse musical vista opened up before my eyes and ears featuring weird independent labels, rarities, imports......
There is a similar thrill still to be enjoyed when I head now to the last surviving record shops in London like Fopps and Rough Trade
They provide an increasingly rare opportunity to see the world of music
and its history in all its diverse genres and geographies laid out
physically all around you. It's an experience that I don't think can be
matched by the online retailers. So I hope that following the demise and
disappearance of Virgin megastores, HMV, Tower Records etc (except in
Japan....) these remaining shops can survive and thrive.
That's
why it's important to support Record Store Day! This year's Drop Day 2
coming up next Saturday (17th) so join the queue of socially distanced
diehard music fans - and tick the list ! The CSN&Y Deja Vu alternate takes is top of mine.
... the discussion moved to (the Record Store Day re-release of) Déjà Vu.
Gary, 11 July:
I agree Mark, but I would say that the vinyl market does seem to be healthy?
I still have my copy of Deja Vu I brought back in the 70s although somewhat a little worse for wear over the last 50 years!😊
Trying to avoid the bloody soccer at the moment… but will be interested
to see how Branson gets on in space later… I wonder if he is thinking
about an orbital record shop?😉
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| Mark's two copies* |
* Spot the big difference
It certainly looks a well-worn copy, Gary, which kind of works really
because the textured sleeve design with gothic lettering in gold was
intended to mimic the kind of old album of sepia photographs that falls
apart when retrieved from the loft. I hope the vinyl is not so battered
and you still find time to play it because I think the half century old
music it contains has lasted incredibly well. And the lyrics
still resonate:
"The sky is clearing and the night has cried enoughThe sun, he come, the world to soften upRejoice, rejoice, we have no choice but to carry on",
I got my limited edition alternate takes album on Record Store Day 2 on Saturday (a strong sense indeed of deja queue
outside Rough Trade just off Brick Lane) and I've been playing it over
and over since. The sound of the record is tremendous, like you're in
the studio: the edge of every note captured with crystal clarity.
Of the tracks, the extended take of Crosby's thunderous Almost Cut My Hair is a forerunner of the kind of extended jams that Neil Young can intoxicate you with. The take of Teach Your Children
is an early Graham Nash run-through done before Jerry Garcia dropped by
the studio to add his delicious countrified guitar licks which would
give the song such tremendous lift.
As for Neil Young's Helpless
- what can you say: a masterpiece of evocation of memory of his
Canadian roots with intriguing, slightly oblique poetry in the lyrics,
and a unique musical arrangement that almost stops but hangs on with
tantalising beauty. This take has some additional harmonica playing
which intrudes a little on the measured interplay of piano and guitar so
the released version stripped of the harmonica has the slight edge
maybe. It's great nonetheless to hear this alternate take of a song that
is a spine-tingling listening experience every time I put it on the
turntable.
Yellow moon on the rise over Coulsdon this evening during a beautiful sunset but the big birds have yet to reappear stacked up on their descent into Gatwick. No choice but to carry on.
*You got it: the disappearing dog!
Wout, 20 July:
I have to admit that I do not own a vinyl copy of Deja vu.
Only a cd. Because of your emails, I wondered why that could be. My
first thought was that when I started buying records seriously in the
late 70s, this band certainly was a thing of the past. Just like I have
no Led Zeppelin records except for the last one, 'In Through The Out
Door'. Until the last couple of years. The only old records I bought new
despite having the cds.
I
did get a second thought though. That in the end I do not like the solo
output of the original three members. On Woodstock e.g., an album that I
did get to know circa 1972 as a friend of mine had it and we played it
endlessly, I could not get through 'Suite': Judy Blue Eyes' and totally
raved after 'Sea Of Madness', a song never released anywhere else, I
think. Always the Neil Young fan, even then, before I knew any better.
I did start buying some albums second hand, circa 1990, so I have the first album without Neil, I have 'CSN', but not Deja Vu,
maybe because it wasn't for sale where I was looking? I have the first
two Stephen Stills solo albums. the first David Crosby, and already had
Graham Nash because I liked his two hit singles of 1971, 'Chicago' and
'Military Madness'. Even one Crosby & Nash album. They have one
thing in common, all are very little played albums.
I have Deja Vu
probably for over 20 years as cd, but it is also not often played. I'll
play it again soon. Perhaps 51 years down the line, gives me the
opportunity to reappraise it.
Now
the story. When my son was born, my, now ex, wife had to go into
surgery immediately and I was left behind with this little human being
lying in some sort of scale, blood everywhere around us. I was looking
into these big, dark brown eyes that were staring intently at me. I put
my little finger in his hand and we were just looking at each other.
A
cleaning nurse stepped into the room and without saying anything she
turned on the radio. The song that came on was the first single I owned.
My aunt gave me Ricky Nelson's 'Hello Mary Lou' because I always wanted
to hear it and my mother could play it at home for me as well. One year
old and already totally captured by music. It never left me. But this
story is about the second song that came on.
The
radio played Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young. It could have been any
song and it would never have made an impression on me. It was 'Teach
Your Children'. A more befitting song after being alone with your first
born right after childbirth is hard to imagine. Here I had been telling
him about the first song he heard being alive and what it meant to me.
Next I promised him to do my utmost in teaching him. Looking at how he's
turned out, it's safe to say that my ex-wife and I did alright.
Also,
he loves music as much as I do, with a major difference. I don't think
he even spent €100 in his life on music. Owning music is a thing of the
past for a lot of youths. They have You Tube and Spotify. This seems to
be enough and in a way it is of course. I still feel the romance of
holding an LP in my hand, looking at the sleeve, reading it for xth
time. Not our youth, but that's a different story.
Mark, 25 July:
CSNY: Sea of Madness is a curiosity in Neil Young's oeuvre
because there still hasn't been an official issue of a studio version. It
doesn't feature on the Deja Vu 50th anniversary 4-cd deluxe boxset so maybe none exists. The live version on the Woodstock soundtrack
turned up on the first Neil Young Archive box in 2009 with a curious
note explaining that that performance was actually recorded at the
Fillmore East in New York a month after Woodstock in September 1969, so
not at the festival itself.
Of the contemporary CSNY solo albums I recommend revisiting the first David Crosby album If I Could Only Remember My Name which despite its lousy title is now widely recognised as an impressive companion piece to Deja Vu.
Indeed S, N & Y all contribute to various tracks as do Jerry Garcia
and other members of the Dead and also several members of
Jefferson Airplane. So an impressive ensemble of San Francisco's finest
and for me the album sums up that sun-bleached era of west coast music
in a truly beautiful way with luscious harmonies and mesmerising
arrangements.The stand-out track for me is Laughing so play that
first and spot Joni Mictchell's beautiful background harmonies in the
crescendo (a rare album guest appearance for her - she was hanging out
with Crosby at the time). There is also a Beatles connection: I read
somewhere that this song (which Crosby recorded again with less flair
for the disappointing 1973 Byrds short-lived reunion album) was a
message to George Harrison about disillusionment with the Maharishi
(who had been derided by some sceptics as the "giggling guru" - hence
the title). I thought I met a man / Who said he knew a man / Who knew what was going on / I was mistaken..... A stunning song that always succeeds in sending symphonic psychedelic shimmers up my spine.
David
Crosby is still going strong as he approaches 80 and he is in
remarkably good voice too apparently. After an erratic career and a
personal history that matches only Marianne Faithfull's for steep
descents into near oblivion, he's now enjoying a late career resurgence
that started with the 2014 nick-eponymous album Croz. His new album For Free (named after a vintage Joni Mitchell song that he covers from her 1970 album Ladies of the Canyon),
earned a four-star review in yesterday's Financial Times (I haven't
sold out but the Guardian had in our local supermarket). This was one
more than that for the latest release (on the same day) by another west
coast veteran, Jackson Browne: the gloomily-titled Downhill from Everywhere. The "glowing vocal harmony redolent of the golden age of CSNY" suggests For Free is worth checking out too. And as you may have seen, Joni Mitchell's wondrous archives are at last now opening up.
Altogether now:
"All the leaves are brown (all the leaves are brown)
And the sky is gray...... "Lookin' out the window here in Coulsdon, I see the summer of love has indeed clouded.
California dreamin'.....
Wout, 26 July:
I'm listening to the new David Crosby right now. Jazzy, of course, but a quite potent sound and certainly so for an 80
year old.
Gary
Mark
Wout
