Crosby, Stills, and Nash: Daylight Again

I think I have an old Laserdisc of this concert, which opened the new Universal Amphitheater, in a box somewhere. (Remember Laserdiscs? How are we going to watch them in 20 years when all the players are broken down and no one knows how to fix them? I still have a player in storage, but I have no idea if it still works.)

We had the great good fortune to get to know David Crosby last year, and to go to the CSN concert at the Greek Theater in September. Comparing that performance to this one, 22 years later, is fascinating. Croz and Stills are fatter (and so I am), balder (I missed the baldness gene), and grayer, but Graham Nash might have popped right out of a time machine from 1983. Hell, from 1975. I guess he was always the clean-living one, and it shows.

But aside from that, and noting that Stills has lost a few notes in the upper registers, these guys are as great as they ever were, and in 1983 they were great indeed. No sense commenting on a concert tape number by number, but near the end they segued into several of their biggest hits and it was the high point of the night for me. First it was “For What It’s Worth” (which, technically, was a Buffalo Springfield hit, but Stills wrote it), and they slowed it down. It worked very well. They followed it with “Love the One You’re With,” and gave it a little twist, you’d hardly notice it, but it now had a bit of a reggae flavor. See this one.