Concert Review : Crosby, Stills And Nash Regal At The Castle

CSN were excellent at Edinburgh Castle and successfully kept the predicted heavy rain at bay during their performance. Stills was in excellent form throughout and made this a much more satisfying show from them than my previous gigs where he was largely along for the ride.



Have to say that, despite the scenic advantages, that Edinburgh Castle is a terrible venue for a rock gig. Even for the slimmer amongst us the seats would be a challenge with no room to move, and which consequently make turning towards the stage (for those at the sides) somewhat difficult. Luckily, there were some spare seats last night and others in the row moved elsewhere which allowed more room for manoeuvre.

Stewarding was also poor with next to no assistance showing people to their seats and queuing for the toilets was somewhat haphazard and relying entirely on the good sense of those in the queue.

The toilets themselves were portakabins which appeared to be sizable but were taken up internally by the latrine itself leaving very little room to stand in.

Back to the music though - highlights were Southern Cross, Cathedral, Guinevere and the "new" songs from the forthcoming Covers album sounded super. Perhaps best of the night was Crosbys’ rendition of Long Time Gone.


Stills played with a winning combination of flash and economy and never outstayed his welcome when soloing, thus adding considerably to the impact of the songs.

Crosby sounded a little weak in places (perhaps related to his finding the weather somewhat un-Southern Californian!) but came through for his solo set pieces.

Nash was as solid and reliable as ever. That's not meant to sound in any way demeaning - Nash is the rock of stability that's kept these guys at it all the years and is a fine role model for any aspiring musician to follow. Perhaps regarded as the lightweight at the outset, it's amazing how many of his songs resonate down the years. More power to his elbow.

Music Review : It's been so long since I've added to this blog that Neil's actually issued Archives!!!!.......

Strange but true!

After an interminable period of teasers and delays the first volume of Neil Young's Archives have now been released to the wider world.

There's been much debate about the format in which this is going to appear but ultimately fans were given three choices:-

• the music on an 8-CD set
  
• music and video on a 10-DVD set along with the first official release of Journey Through The Past, or
  
• in Blu-Ray format with the same content as the DVD but with the promise of extra content along the way via links to the internet. (There is also wider options when it comes to listening whilst browsing other content than on a DVD)

Not wanting to miss the opportunity of the extra content I decided ultimately to go for the Blu-Ray version. This presented me with a couple of issues:-

• firstly, I didn't own a Blu-Ray player! Well, that was easily resolved with a visit to Richer Sounds -I have to say that, Neil apart, it's been a worthwhile investment as the couple of films that I've seen in this format have been stunning. In addition, the upscaling feature does mean that your DVD's do look better as well
  
• secondly, being hooked up to my telly (and no, I'm not getting a surround system!) I wasn't going to get the best out of the sound. Only one option then, get the CD version as well!!

So was it all worth it? To be honest, I'm not entirely convinced.

Young promised early in the project's gestation that "it was all going to be on there". Sounds great, except that it isn't. The first major disappointment is that not everything from the originally released album is on there. I understand that Neil intends to now issue these in remastered form, and owning just the first generation CD's I'll feel somewhat tempted, if not obliged, to purchase these. Poor show on this count, Neil, because as far as I can see there's still loads of capacity to have done this.

Next up is the fact that the albums issued over the past couple of years as the Neil Young Performance Series are also included. This means that the additional material on the Archives is considerably less attractive as a result. Another poor show.

And there's more! All Neil Young fans know that there's load of other material out there from this era that could have been included but hasn't been. Indeed, the set could possibly have been made up of material leaving the official releases off entirely. Young has built a reputation as a rewriter of history (for example, his shameful exclusion of some tracks from the Buffalo Springfield box set) and he appears to be continuing in this vein. It's not all there, Neil - only that which you want us to hear. Not good enough.

As for the other material, the documents and memorabilia are interesting but having had a peek there's not much that I'll be searching out quickly. The video material is good but, so far at least, it falls into the category where we know that there's more available.

The packaging is good but more bulky for the DVD/BluRay sets than was strictly necessary.

Having said all that, the music is uniformly superb. However, this isn't a set that the casual fan is going to buy but neither is it a set to get the already committed fan too excited by.

Raise the bar higher next time, Neil

Concert Review : Stephen Stills - A Man Alive!

Short of being able to see Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young (which I'm not holding my breath to happen anytime soon near enough to where I stay) I completed the set last night by seeing Stephen Stills perform a solo performance at the Clyde Auditorium in Glasgow.

This was the final performance in a short British tour and it would be fair to say that I, along with many other members of the audience, approached this with a degree of trepidation. Stills' contributions to CSN (and occasionally Y) over the past twenty years have been more than patchy. His guitar playing remained more than fine, but his vocals were largely shot and his songwriting contributions often no more than perfunctory.



Indeed, when it was announced last year that Stills was suffering from prostate cancer it must have seemed that this would draw a conclusion to a long career but where his significant contribution (and it was extremely significant) was largely restricted to the decade from 1966 through to 1975.

However, he successfully came through surgery and, whether directly or indirectly, this has resulted in something of a transformation in Stills. He's lost a lot of weight - no longer the bloated musician that appears in the recent CSNY Deja Vu movie - and has started wearing hearing aids which has resulted in the return of his voice to something much more functional than has been in evidence in the past twenty years even if it is still not quite the voice that you might remember from the classic tracks. Nevertheless it's a voice ingrained with experiences both good and bad and, whilst sometimes struggling to hit some notes, it's gratifying to hear some of the notes that he goes for and hits with some aplomb.

The show was played to a reasonably full house although clearly not sold out. The audience was fairly restrained - almost as if they had turned up to see someone perform on a tightrope and weren't looking to make too much noise in case it interrupted the concentration of the man hovering above the abyss below.


The first half kicked off with the band present for the opener which was Helplessly Hoping from the debut CSN album. Stills was then left alone and played a number of fine songs on his acoustic guitar including such classics as 4 + 20, Treetop Flyer, Daylight Again, Change Partners and closing with Suite : Judy Blue Eyes with the band returning for the climax of the song.

There was a twenty minute interval after which returned with the band to perform an electric set - no more wooden music here!! Starting with Isn't It About Time from the underrated second Manassas album Down The Road it was clear that Stills meant business. His guitar was loud - it's no wonder he's as deaf as a post - but this was a man in full control of his destiny. A hard rocking Rock And Roll Woman from Buffalo Springfield days followed, and then a Tom Petty cover from the recent Mudcrutch album.

All evening Stills' soloing was sharp and inventive from slow blues through to the fiercest of rockers. What I wasn't expecting though was for him to play a song from the largely unloved Stills-Young Band album but we were treated to Make Love To You.

Encoring with Love The One You're With and returning one more time for Dark Star the audience were finally roused from their torpor and gave a hearty cheer to the departing musicians.

Hopefully, Stills can take this forward and turn this experience into some new songs whether these appear as a solo effort or as a contribution to a future CSN album. I, for one, will be looking forward to his songs in a way that I haven't truly been doing for some time