Buffalo Springfield

[pilsner]

It's come to my attention that until this post, Buffalo Springfield has only been mentioned 8 times on these forums.  That ain't right.  We've got to do something.

[Ptommydski]

A band with a lot of potential that was never fully realised or recorded. By all accounts a truly great band on their night but let down by a series of incredibly poor business decisions, inter-personnel strife and unfortunate timing. None of the surviving records capture the band particularly well so for me they will never really be considered essential listening, aside from if you already have literally every Neil Young record up the the 80s. Plus the truly incredible debut record by their North Californian brethren Moby Grape, which essentially blows everything the Springfield ever put to tape out of the water.

I dig some of the early Neil songs but the production choices were nearly always wrong. 'Mr Soul' is a good number but it's somewhat ruined by the co-opting of probably the most famous riff of all time unnecessarily by Stephen Stills ('Satisfaction' by The Rolling Stones). Never really been a big fan of Stephen Stills, frankly. The band were young men at this point and I think they did borderline everything to shoot themselves in the foot as much as humanly possible and then some. Drug addictions, arrests, fist-fights, girl squabbles etc. It's all in there but the music obviously suffered as a result.

Pretty much the whole story is told brilliantly in what is easily the best rock bio ever - Shakey by James McDonough. Recommended even if you're not particularly into Neil Young. Terrific read.

[pilsner]

So you are taking the position that For What It's Worth is not one of the best tunes from the last 100 years?  Ballsy.

[Ptommydski]

Stills rather infamously stole the verses from one Moby Grape song and the chorus, near enough verbatim, from another. It's a good song, more than the sum of its parts. Neil's sparse guitar licks are nice.

I don't like CSNY a whole lot but I love 'Ohio'. As a reactionary song to a specific event, it stands as one of the finest.

[nufan]

I've always preferred "Nowadays Clancy Can't Even Sing" to "For What It's Worth", for what it's worth.

[aflowerchild]

I gotta say I agree with them never reaching full potential, HOWEVER, I will argue that For What It's Worth is a truly spectacular song.

[Aegir]

If you like Neil's Buffalo Springfield stuff, get some recordings of his early solo acoustic concerts. "Mr. Soul", "Flying on the Ground is Wrong", "Nowadays Clancy Can't Even Sing", et cetera sound so much better stripped down.

[Ptommydski]

Since this thread is about a band which featured Neil "Fucking" Young, here are some records everybody needs -





Delete your iTunes, this is all you need.

[Jeans]

I have exactly zero of those records.

I do have Harvest, though.

[Christophe]

Since this thread is about a band which featured Neil "Fucking" Young, here are some records everybody needs -

Tommy, I fixed your post.

(seriously though, the ones I've heard from that list (On The Beach, Everybody Knows, Tonight's The Night)--all awesome. No Zuma? I think that's my favorite of Neil's.)

[Ptommydski]

Oh man, I forgot Zuma. That's either my second or third favourite Neil album.



Trans was a brave record but I am seriously done defending anything beyond 1980. There's a lot of brave records after then if you see what I mean.

[David_Dovey]

Oh Chris I was about to be so angry at you.

Tommy, thanks! I absolutely love the fuck out of Neil but I really haven't got that much of his stuff (Harvest, On The Beach, Rust Never Sleeps, a few stray songs) and of course the dude is so stupid prolific it is kind of intimidating to just walk into a record store and look for something to get. Now I Know *rainbow*

Trans was a brave record but I am seriously done defending anything beyond 1980. There's a lot of brave records after then if you see what I mean.

What do you think about Fork in the Road?

[Christophe]

Dovey, listen to "Transformer Man" from Trans and tell me that song isn't a jam.

[David_Dovey]

It is the soundtrack to a sidescrolling platformer game made to sell cola products.

If that's your kind of thing I will not hold it against you (yes I will)

[Retrospectre]

A while back I heard a live version of a track from Trans and it kicked ass.

[michaelicious]

Crazy Horse Live at the Fillmore East and Neil Young solo Live At Massey Hall are also excellent things to have.

[Bearer]

Phish+Neil Young at Farm Aid: Down by the River
19 minutes of awesome.  Goes to show you only ever need 2 chords.  Ever.

[Ptommydski]

What do you think about Fork in the Road?

I think that all of his records since 1980 have moved erratically between bland and god awful.

It doesn't really matter when from his debut record in 1968 to Rust Never Sleeps in 1979 he made ten great records, six of which are strong candidates for being in the top ten rock records ever made.

[Joseph]

I can excuse Re-ac-tor purely for its inclusion of 'Shots'.

[BlahBlah]

Is this ever going to be rereleased? I only have my Dad's old tape bootleg of it which is beginning to sound really worn. It's a brilliant album.

Tommy, do you have Journey Through the Past? It has some crap on it but the version of Words makes up for everything else.

[Ptommydski]

I have it but I never listen to it. I don't actually like the song 'Words'.

Time Fades Away is terrific but it'll never get reissued while he's alive. If you read about that tour, you can understand why he wants to forget it.