Greatest Hits

this is not a review of this compilation, but please note, CSNY fans, that while their version of "Woodstock" may be the more familiar one, the song was written by Joni Mitchell. Listen to her own (comletely different) performance of it on her "Ladies of the Canyon" (1970) album.

My husband and I are very disappointed in this CD. It sounds like it was recorded from someone's old scratched LP. My old CSN LPs sound better than this.

As though from some cobwebbed corner of your memory, these Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young tunes emerge as an instantly recognizable memory. The harmonies could belong to no other than this inimitable sixties and seventies band, acoustical as it gets, tightly harmonic as any folk or Rock & Roll voices could possibly become intertwined.

This compilation is a bit of a disordered mosaic, but who cares? CSN&Y are at their best with the haunting sounds of 'Helplessly Hoping':

'Wordlessly watching he waits by the window
And wonders
At the empty place inside

Heartlessly helping himself to her bad dreams he worries
Did he hear a good-bye, or even
Hello'

Assonance helps itself to tonalities that no other quartet of male human beings could replicate.

It is the spareness of this music that strikes one in retrospect. Ornamentation is absent. They don't do all that they could with their voices. They simply do enough to engage the soul and, of course, the memory.

'Love isn't lying, it's
Loose in a lady who lingers
Saying she is lost
And choking on
Hello'


One of CSN&Y's most winsome tunes is the odd tale of happiness that makes it into the canonical memory, an instrument much more receptive to angst, loss, and woe. But who can forget:

'I'll light the fire
You place the flowers in the vase
That you bought today

Staring at the fire
For hours and hours
While I listen to you
Play your love songs
All night long for me
Only for me ...

Our house is a very, very fine house
With two cats in the yard
Life used to be so hard
Now everything is easy
'Cause of you'


These guys must have known a tune like this couldn't possibly sell, would instantly be dismissed as musical cotton candy, and would leave their reputation as a thoughtful band besmirched.

Yet they released it anyway, and it went and became permanently hummable.

Quite the contrary the enigmatic fight-or-flight story sketched out in 'Southern Cross'. It was standing in South Africa's Krüger Park, looking up at the Southern Cross (for the first time) that brought me back 'round to the iTunes Music Store, to downloading this album, and now to the re-hearing of these almost-eschatological, almost dissolute words:

'... But on a midnight watch I realized why twice you ran away.

Think about how many times I have fallen.
Spirits are using me; larger voices callin'.
What heaven brought you and me cannot be forgotten.
I have been around the world,
looking' for that woman-girl
Who knows love can endure.
And you know it will ...

So we cheated and we lied and we tested.
And we never faijled to fail; it was the easiest thing to do.
You will survive being bested.
Somebody fine will come along
Make me forget about loving you
In the Southern Cross.'


Is this prediction or wish, certainty or the desperation of a jilted lover hoping he won't forever live with this ache? CSN&Y aren't telling.

If the band was willing to risk whimsiness, they also took a chance on the side of sentimentalism, with equally good results. Witness the quintessentially benign 'Teach Your Children':

'Don't you ever ask them why, if they told you, you would cry,
So just look at them and sigh and know they love you.

And you, of tender years,
Can't know
The fears your elders grew by,
And so please help them
With your youth,
They seek the truth before they can die.

Teach your parents well
Their children's hell will slowly go by
And feed them on your dreams
The one they picked
The one you'll know by.'

One of the greatest uses of the tenor range by CSN&Y is undoubtedly 'Just a Song Before I Go', arguably their best song:

'Just a song before I go,
To whom it may concern ...

She helped me with my suitcase,
She stands before my eyes.

Driving me to the airport
And to the friendly skies.

Going through security
I held her for so long.
She finally looked at me in love,
And she was gone.'

Who knew where this song was going? Tragedy or triumphant? Love or irreversible separation?

Once again, CSN&Y are at their best when at their most enigmatic. The song ends:

'Just a song before I go,
A lesson to be learned.
Travelling twice the speed of sound
It's easy to get burned.'

What happened? Silence, then a new track.

Crosby, Still, Nash, and Young were that rare phenomenon: an assemblage of great voices that together created a unique sound. I don't mean 'unique' as in 'cool', but in its proper sense : 'one of a kind'. One can venture influences upon CSN&Y from their foreground and one can, in retrospect, point to a number of artists who have picked up one or two of their characteristics. But there has been no CSN&Y tradition and - heaven be thanked - no recorded CSN&Y Impersonator conventions.

One has to look far afield to find a band that has imbibed their spirit: to Matchbox Twenty, for example. Admittedly, the sound is altogether different. How could it be otherwise, given the musical water that has passed under the bridge between these two fine acts?

Yet the poignance, the memory, the longing, and the predilection for harmony over, say, an imitable voice like the Stone's Jagger is a thin line that might run from CSN&Y to MT without doing violence to the integrity of either one.

Listen to them back-to-back and see whether you agree. For that, you'll need to pick up CSN (and Young's) Greatest Hits. That'll be a smart decision on its own.

although i thought i was a fan of this group, and i do like their work, i have to say that this album is poorly edited. you must admit that all their hits have a simalar sound what with the accoustic guitars and the effete voices and sound. each song is sung with the same or similar tempo. after a while they sound the same and got on my nerves. it is unlistenable in a single playing

Crosby, Stills, and Nash sound like angels when they sing together. Theur harmonies are almost unsurpassed, rivaled only by the Everly Brothers or the Beach Boys or the Eagles. This new cd brings out their biggest hits, emphasizing their 1960s-1970s songs, with a couple of big smashes from 1982 (Wasted on the Way, Southern Cross) added to the mix.

The one quibble some will have with this project is that it doesn't include the songs that were done with Neil Young. Great songs are missing, like "Ohio" and "Helpless." In my opinion, "Ohio" is one of the most stirring songs the band ever recorded.

You can find "Ohio" and "Helpless" on Neil Young's recent Greatest hits collection, but it is unfortunate that they are not here.

Not only that, where's "Woodstock?" That to me is another quintessential CSN tune that is missing. Also, where is "Find the Cost of Freedom?"

Obviously, one cd is not going to have everything you love about a band. But this collection has most of the classic stuff, like Suite: Judy Blue Eyes, Teach Your Children, Our House, Just a Song Before I Go, and more. CSN has a mellow, folk rock sound that will bring a rush of good feeling to those who are nostalgic for the 1970s. But you are going to want to get the other songs I was telling you about as well.