Are Crosby & Nash "Light Pop"?

The thing with this is that this look is the "David Crosby look". People know him by that hair and mustache. They wouldn't recognize him any other way.

 

The only thing that made those songs anything but light pop music is that Mr Stills did most of the work on most of the songs, and he is the epitome of a kickass rock musician.
Crosby is a male version of Melanie Safka. Nash played with the Hollies which was a vocal heavy rock n roll band in the 60s.
You take away all the musicians from anything either has done aside from the Hollies and you got light pop music. Having access to a fantastic who's who of rock music as studio musicians is the only thing that makes the music scoot outside the boundaries of what is light pop.

 

Indeed. And without the look and image, whatayagot?

 

Its sure gotten lighter since they took up with Crosby's son and the CPR guys. Still love those guys but the last double album had way too much New Age flavor for me.

 

I like Steven Stills, too - but he is not on David Crosby´s great album If I Could Only Remember My Name.

To call the pop group Hollies "a vocal heavy rock n roll band" makes no sense to me...

 

Rocky's disdain for Crosby is so deeply ingrained and biased that he can't be bothered with mere facts. He'll bend over backwards to hand all of the positive credit over to Stills and Nash (who was obviously brought the "light pop" component to CSNY in the form of songs like "Our House" and "Marrakesh Express") while completely ignoring the more esoteric experimentation that Crosby brought to the table with tracks like "Deja Vu". Virtually everyone in this thread disagrees with his bizarre, dismissive arguments regarding DC, but he'll just keep on singing the same old tune ad nauseum, so it's pointless trying to argue with such a hard headed individual.

 

Sometimes they are and sometimes they are not. When they are, it can be pretty lame.

 

Stills didn't need to be on that album, it was loaded with some of the biggest names in rock at the time. There were plenty of ringers on it to try to give it a rock edge.
Considering the amount of people it took to make the album, it really should have been released under a band name of some kind rather than under the name of one participant.

I can't imagine any other description for the Hollies. the Hollies was a rock n roll band that had some of the best vocals in rock n roll at that time and focused very much on that attribute.

 

Stills was the most technically proficient guitarist in the band, but the intricate and impressionistic melody and chord progressions in "Guinnevere" and "The Lee Shore" (written by Crosby) are musically beyond anything that can be called light pop. The melodies, progressions, and lyrics of those songs are on a higher level than some of Stills' compositions. Just because a song has a mellow vibe and doesn't rock out with heavy drum beats and loud guitars, that doesn't make it light pop (not there's anything wrong with light pop).

 

I think you have a rather skewed view of what pop music is, much of it has a lot of chord structures and changes. And most far more complex than anything Mr Crosby ever has done.
And nothing Crosby ever did is very complex. Guinnevere is a cool song, but nothing particularly complex or hard to play on a guitar, in fact it is quite simple. The same with Lee Shore.
Come to think of it, I just read a CSN biography and it seems to me that when there is a place in there that talks about them having trouble recording one of his songs because they couldn't follow him, because he never did the changes the same way twice and didn't seem to have a good sense of timing and would just change at odd points randomly. I think perhaps it was Deja Vu.

 

When you listen to Kooch's and Lindlet's s smoldering, sharp edge playing on their three duet albums, I'd hardly call these light pop. I wouldn't call them hard rock either. Both guitarist brings the edge that Stills and You g brough to their collaborations with the other two.

Ironic given that Gene Clark was pushed from rhythm guitar by Crosby and the others for the same reason supposedly.

 

The edge that Misters Young and Stills brought to CSNY was because of their songs and Stills great studio abilities.
Kootch? I am thinking that must be Danny Korchmar? Those guys are just as good when playing on a pop record as a rock one.
Adding blistering guitar to pop songs doesn't change what they are. It often makes them far more listenable...............

 

No. Chord progressions aren't what defines the difference between the two music styles. And the chord progressions in those songs are not anything special. Guinnevere is a nice song, but that is partly due to Mr Stills amazing studio knowledge and abilities and the way the guitars were recorded.
The song is light pop. The only thing that classifies it differently is the album it is on.

 

Well, let's face it, they sure weren't heavy metal. I'm not all that sure what their musical worth as a duo were; losing Young is a pretty big hit to a group, and losing Stills is a net loss too. Frankly, I've never found much in the way of memorable songs to hang my hat on. The whale one is nice. I'm sure I would have enjoyed toking up on a grassy knoll near Big Sur or somewhere in 1975 or so and see them play, but that didn't happen. Outside of CSNY completists, I don't see them as being very consequential. "Lightweight" was the first adjective to pop into my mind, although I've got nothing against them personally. "America" was the first synonymous band to pop into my head, and I would put them into "light pop" or "barbershop duet" category without too many qualms. Firefall was a little heavier, and Randy VanWarmer a little lighter. James Taylor was grittier. Pure Prairie League lives somewhere on the same street. They needn't necessarily be taken as some kind of insult (the barbershop duet maybe could be, but "light" is neutral)

 

And all this time I thought they were doom metal...

 

No, but his studio abilities are what made CSN(Y) so ass kicking early on, which is what I was making reference to.

And the Hollies was indeed a rock n roll band with great vocals. They are obviously dowop and Everly Brothers influenced.

 

Yes they are

then....

Jimi Hendrix is Carnaby Street fake Blues
The Rolling Stones are Chuck 'n Muddy for dummies
Bob Dylan is a Woody Guthrie wannabe contest winner
Janis is poor man's Bessie Smith
The Allmans are Coltrane and Bobby Bland jammed band
The Beatles are background music for screaming girls
Elvis is a truck driver's idea of hillbilly blues
Led Zeppelin are riff stealers
Costello is Buddy Holly after too much fish and chips
Eric Clapton is Armani's blues
Sinatra is Orchestrated Cosa Nostra
Neil Young is epileptic folk
Joni Mitchell is a singing nun
Joe Cocker is spastic pub rock
The Doors are bad poetry with a Vox organ
Lou Reed is heroin chic
Frank Zappa is jazzy porn
Sex Pistols are Eddie Cochran with more distortion
Bob Marley is commercial reggae
The Who are three lunatics and a singing boxer
The Kinks are the Who without balls
Free are Otis Redding with no money to pay for some horns
and so on.

 

I'm afraid it's your writing skills that fail you.

 

Coming from the guy who declared Styx the epitome of a rock band and who vigorously defended Bread's rocking credentials, these arbitrary designations don't mean much.

 

The music ?

 

I don't feel about it. Good music, although subjective, is good music. Don't classify it. Listen to it, and enjoy it

 

Yes... I light one up, pop open a cold one and listen to them quite often.

 

Stills = (country-) rock
Nash = pop
Crosby = weird s***
Young = contrariness

 

I wouldn't say Stills gave EVERYTHING a rock edge. "Helplessly Hoping" (a fine song) is pure acoustic country- folk without a single drumbeat. "49 Bye-Byes" ventures into light pop territory.

 

While I do hear folk influences all over CSN (and the occasional Y), and yes, the material that Nash and Crosby certainly had a pop element to them (they sound more folk with a distinct commercial sensibility to my ears and looking at the material itself I see everything from pop to rock to folk and the occasional bit of jazz influence) the way they were played and arranged had as much to do with how they were composed themselves. The playing of Kootch and Lindley on, for example, the Crosby-Nash albums took them much more into the rock real. Than they might have otherwise been so I wouldn't classify them as pop any more than I might classify The Beatles as pop alone.