Crosby, Stills & Nash - Studio Archives: 1969 (Reissue) (2006)

Though some unreleased Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young studio material from the late '60s and early '70s has come out in the CD era, it seems that more exists than was realized. It's not known for sure if everything on this 77-minute bootleg of studio outtakes was recorded in 1969. But at the least, most of it was, and whatever wasn't (with the exception of the Buffalo Springfield seven-minute psychedelic instrumental rarity "Raga III," recorded at the Hullabaloo Club in January 1967) must have been done close to 1969. More important than pinning down dates, however, is listening to the music, which proves to be always interesting, and often very worthwhile. There are a lot of goodies for CSNY fans to savor here, including four unreleased Stephen Stills songs, a couple of which ("Ivory Tower" and "Everyday We Live") have the hard rock/folk-rock blend of Stills at his best; an unreleased Neil Young song, "Everybody's Alone"; and Graham Nash, intriguingly, singing an acoustic cover of a David Crosby composition from the latter's days with the Byrds, "Everybody's Been Burned." It's true that much of the rest of the material on the disc consists of the sort of alternate versions with more hardcore collector appeal, and that the Stills-sung acoustic cover of Fred Neil's "Everybody's Talkin'" seems to be much the same version as the one that's on the 2006 expanded CD edition of Crosby, Stills & Nash. But even some of these are notably different than the familiar versions, à la acoustic takes of "Triad" and "Almost Cut My Hair"; a studio take of Young's "Sea of Madness"; and four takes of the Beatles' "Blackbird." The sound quality is superb, and fully of official release standard, though a few of the songs never released by CSNY in any form clearly seem unfinished (like Stills' "I'll Be There" and "30-Dollar Fire"). Certainly the caliber of the unissued ideas and songwriting is high enough to make one lament that the group didn't get it together to release more material before splitting in the early '70s, as the band clearly had more to offer than what surfaced on the official records. And there's some real interesting chatter in the track titled "Black Queen Riff," which Stills refers to as his song for the Grateful Dead. "We oughta help them make a record," says Crosby. "Oh, I'm gonna," responds Stills. Continues Crosby, "They're really dynamite musicians. They just don't know how to get it on tape." Admits Stills, "Hey, listen, I dug playing with them a shitload more than I dug playing with the [Jefferson] Airplane." "The Airplane's always playing weird changes and strange times and shit," adds Crosby. At which point the engineer interrupts and asks them whether he should stop the tape during this kind of chat...to which they agree.