It’s Turntable Tuesday because life is too short not to listen to great music! Turn that TV off! It is summertime and the living is easy. Crank up your local speaker and enjoy the day. This week it is time for some 50 year old stellar tracks to take the edge off your day!
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March, 1970. I was 11 years old. By now I was listening to music of many genres and I remember the vibe from that time as it was delivered to me from either an AM/FM radio or a television set with “country cable” which I smile about as I think back to the days when we had mostly three network TV channels that gave us the news and sitcoms. CBS, NBC, and ABC. At some point PBS came along with some cool series that taught you how to do something. I seem to remember a time there was a “UHF” channel which required a special weird looking antenna mounted high on your rooftop. This TV channel was really off the wall and not affiliated with a network but they had some programming that featured things like Boris Karloff black and white movie marathons on the weekend. This was nothing like 2021 where you have digital everything and literally the ability to shape reality with a digital broadcast perspective on some topic.
With all of that said there would have not been much way I could have experienced the album “Deja Vu” when it was totally new. The thing I appreciate about my passionate musical journey is the fact that I was able to see this band play live twice during the decade of the 1990’s. I have few photos of that experience but the memories are vivid and I was only a few feet from the stage. I have already written about Stephen Stills walking across the stage at the end of the show and tossing a guitar pick to me. I still have that gold Herco pick. What a night that was. I only regret I didn’t go see him perform solo at some point but I can’t do it all even thought I sometimes try. On the podcast I am going to dig into the new 50th anniversary box set a bit and attempt to give you some perspective that is a bit different from what you might get from the liner notes.
My story starts when I was visiting my relatives in my native state of North Carolina. I can remember visual images of the day as my cousin who was two years older than me was hanging out with these guys who had long hair and listened to the latest cool music. I can totally remember Neil Young’s “After the Gold Rush” album being played and not far after that a recent copy of the Beatles’ “Let it Be” following it. I liked the sound of Neil Young and I remember going back home in Mississippi and starting to listen to his music. As the years flew by I followed all of the music of Neil Young as well as Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young. It was a while before I bought my copy of the album “Deja Vu.” I remember very vividly driving through Atlanta on I-85 in my hand me down Mustang that had been my Mother’s car except now I had the Pioneer Supertuner cassette deck in it with AM/FM radio and two 6 by 9 co-axial speakers in the rear deck. The year was 1978 and I was driving from Mississippi to North Carolina with no air conditioning in the Summer humidity and heat listening to the local Atlanta rock station as they were playing the awesome new song ‘Dark Star” from Crosby, Stills, and Nash. By the time I arrived in North Carolina I had heard songs from the new album on several stations as I passed the hours of driving alone up the highway. At this point the album “Deja Vu” was already 6 years old. It wasn’t very long before I had a copy of not only the latest album “CSN” but also I picked up the classic CSNY “Deja Vu.” The exploration of this album took on a period of months. I played the tracks pretty endlessly on my cassette deck as I had copied the album over to tape to preserve the vinyl for the long haul. This album is a great one and has so many stories from the time in which it was created. It is the best selling product of anything any of these artists have done to date and there is a reason for that. It is good music.
I ordered this 50th anniversary package from Music Direct up in Chicago recently as all the buzz started about this new release of “Deja Vu.” The neat thing about this package is the four cds that are packed full of so many outtakes and alternative versions of the songs that were recorded on the original record. For anyone who enjoys this music this package is one that you should go purchase to really dive into the history and the tracks that led to the final album release. There is so much history that backs this project and it was a special time in music history when all of this work came together. I am not going to fill this page with details on the album as you can get that in many places online. I will just say that I will offer some perspective and references on my companion podcast to illustrate what a great piece of musical history these tracks represent. This is one to add to any collection if you like the original album. There is a ton of music to listen to in this box. I am still listening even now.
I will take you through the tracks on this original record on my companion podcast and talk about some related stories as well. Be sure to tune into the podcast and subscribe!
Until next time I’ll see you, down the road.