*CSN&Y : Deja Vu* One of the best LPs ever?

running out of songs, eh, let's see:

1969:
the couch album
neil young s/t
neil young - everybody knows this nowhere

1970:
deja vu
stills - s/t
young - after the gold rush
1971:
4 way street
stills - 2
crosby - if i could only remember my name
nash - songs for beginners

1972:
so far w/ohio and find the cost of reedom
young - harvest
nash - wild tales
manassas
crosby*nash - s/t

1973:
manassas - down the road
young - time fades away

1974:
young - on the beach

1975:
stills - s/t
young - tonight's the night
crosby*nash - wind on the water

yeah, you are right, they were running out of songs

 

I understood Almost Cut My Hair in the same way both Question Mark and Tfarney did. It was about whether you had the courage to stand up and stand out in a day when thuggish "hard hat" workers in Niagara Square in Buffalo, and the baton swinging police in full riot gear, were a threat to peace demonstrators. I was there and I was one.

 

I actually remember getting into it with some redneck in a beer store in Salamanca, NY. I had hair down to the middle of my back and an American flag on the back pocket of my jeans. He must have been in his forties and he didn't like that. One word lead to another and pretty soon we were out in the parking lot. He was yelling that long haired hippie crap, and because I had three or four of my buddies with me, we were giving it back to him. He tried to throw a few kicks at me but it ended after that. There were many incidences like that in the late 60's & early 70's. The Bob Seger song 'Turn The Page' can really capture that feeling of having long hair back in those days.

 

"Deja Vu" was very much an album of it's time, but what's wrong with that? It addresses things that were happening then, and a lot of them are happening now. I think 'Almost Cut My Hair' is the most important on the album. It's not serene, it's not beautiful. It's more like a war cry for individual freedom, to have a choice about how you look and how you think. I was only 10 in 1970, but I have older friends that had a lot of trouble with the cops and the locals just over their appearance. But in Texas, being a longhair would get you more than just criticism. You could easily be beaten up or even killed. Wearing your hair long was much more than a fashion statement. It was a badge of courage. Easy Rider is a good example. The guy in the Cat hat was real. If you want to dismiss it as 'hippie crap', then maybe you would have worn the Cat hat back then.

 

the best part of 'almost cut my hair" is hear ng david crosby sing it today.

he just simply wails, usually a show highlight.

renny

 

Agree. "Couch" is better.

 

Can't agree with that at all. The early Beatles lyrics were never intended to be poetry. They are just a vehicle to get the melody across. It doesn't make any sense to criticize them for being simplistic and trite. That is like criticizing the Beach Boys because they weren't Bob Dylan. Their goal when writing A Hard's Days Night wasn't to be Keats and Yeats.

Nonsense. On what basis do you make the conclusions you draw above? I can't imagine that anyone familiar with Nirvana lyrics would conclude that they are about "how tough it is to be a white man in America". You're going to have to back your assertion up with some specific lyrics.

There are about 60 original Cobain songs. There might be 2 or 3 drug references in all of those songs. I'm not saying the guy didn't do a truck load of drugs but if you think drug use was a common lyrical thing in those songs you are mistaken.

 

Amen

 

Country Girl is one of the most breathtaking musical compositions I have ever heard.

 

DEJA VU gets some flack for being a little diffuse, less cohesive and maybe a little less "fresh" sounding than the first record. But it's aged very well in my opinion and in its own way is just as strong. I think it's a definite classic.

 

I understand why people perceive "Almost Cut My Hair" as "dated hippie crap." I felt that way about the Croz for a long time myself. Any objection I have to Crosby and the rest of CSN is not so much the dated hippie values of Déja Vu, but the way in which they failed to live up those values later in the 70s and thereafter. But as someone else has already noted, the music on that track absolutely cooks, and hasn't dated in the slightest.

 

Listen, I have just read the lyrics to ACMH for the first time (I couldn't really make the words out by ear so far)... Can anyone explain to me what in hell they are about? So he almost cut his hair... "Why"??

 

I'd like a dollar for every person to whom that description applies.

I agree with you about the music, BTW.

 

I had long hair when 'almost cut my hair' came out. I thought it was laughable then and laughable now. CSN+/- Y may be many things, but subtle they ain't.

 

Crosby Stills Nash & Young - Almost Cut My Hair Lyrics


Almost cut my hair
It happened just the other day
It's gettin kinda long
I coulda said it wasn't in my way
But I didn't and I wonder why
I feel like letting my freak flag fly
Cause I feel like I owe it to someone

Must be because I had the flu' for Christmas
And I'm not feeling up to par
It increases my paranoia
Like looking at my mirror and seeing a police car
But I'm not giving in an inch to fear
Cause I missed myself this year
I feel like I owe it to someone

When I finally get myself together
I'm going to get down in that sunny southern weather
And I find a place inside to laugh
Separate the wheat from the chaff
I feel like I owe it to someone


crosby almost cut his hair to conform, but felt he owed to someone, somewhere ( a dead soldier maybe, a civil rights activist) to maintain his hippie values.

those values, at that time, were very pro-peace anti-vietnam war, pro-civil rights movement.

do they mean anything today, probably not as much as back then, but i believe it was written, and sung, from the heart and with conviction, and still is.

guess you had to be there.

 

Thanks rip, >your< explanation makes perfect sense! But those lyrics - particularly the first verse - make no sense AT ALL to me! No I wasn't >there< in '70... but not "far" enough so as to be unaware of any of this (the background you explain)...

Ah well, I suppose it's my problem, and I could have WORSE ones...

 

Those kind of Neil vs. CSN comments are grist for the mill. Through 1977, all four guys were neck and neck. Neil had/has a creative drive that is exceptional. It's hard to think of anyone who has been so single-minded, goal-oriented AND prolific for so long, or even half as long. I basically buy into the whole Neil thing... good, bad, etc... But I can't imagine using Neil Young's work as a means of crapping on CSN. He knew them. He was on an album with them. However, the same argument can be made about ANYONE as compared to Neil Young. Everyone looks shabby compared to Neil Young. Neil is a heavy guy with an extraordinary career. CSN's work through 1977 is brilliant on the whole. Between the solo albums, duo albums, and one group album they were a real force.

I think it's better as well. Those three guys were a cohesive unit, led by Stills. That albums works because the songs are great and they were all on the same page. Deja Vu quite nearly didn't happen. The sessions were disorganized and chaotic, and Neil's presence changed the vibe a lot (and not for the better in terms of the group's sense of unity and purpose). There's almost another complete album of outtakes that are just as good as what's on the album, yet they struggled to finish the album as we know it.

 

I like the first one better.

 

Oh boy. You're right. I did miss the point of your post. It happens

I missed your point here as well. I didn't realize you were paraphrasing arguments from those that dismiss Cobain as a narcissistic whiner, etc. That perception of Cobain is (obviously) a real sore spot with me. Sorry again for misreading your post.

 

Okay, I'm seven months late to the party, but: one of the best LPs ever? Nope.

It gets off to a good start--"Carry On" is one of my favorite post-Springfield Stills songs--but while I admire "Almost Cut My Hair" in principle, I don't enjoy the song at all, and "Helpless" has never moved me (a minority opinion, I admit, though I do like Nick Cave's cover). Nor do I like "Everybody I Love You" -- far too lame an ending for a supposedly classic album.

But the song that really annoys me is "4+20." The song, IMO, is the epitome of self-pitying navel gazing. Let's see, first Stills explains that his parents were poor and that his father "worked like the devil" to escape poverty. So now Stills turns to himself -- and we learn that his woman has apparently left him. "Night after night," poor Steven can't sleep, wondering where his woman is. But while Steven's dad endured a lifetime of striving to escape poverty, poor Steven is rendered unable to function simply by the absence of this woman, so much so that he now wishes that his life would "cease." I imagine that Steven wants us to feel sympathy for him, but to me he always comes across as pathetic. It's the juxtaposition of his dad's story with his own that does it, mostly -- I understand all too well the pain of losing a girlfriend, but hasn't Steven gained any perspective from recounting his dad's trials and tribulations? Apparently not.

Just for balance, I'll close by mentioning that I like (not love) Neil's suite, I find Nash's two hit ditties charming when I'm in the right mood (which is only sometimes), and I especially enjoy Crosby's relatively formless title track -- a vast improvement from the previous album's "Guinnevere." The cover of "Woodstock" is okay. So there's a few songs that I like a lot, a few that are okay-to-good, and four (out of 10) that do nothing for me (or that actively annoy me). For me, that comes out to a B rating, maybe a B+ when I'm feeling generous...

 

I don't see how anyone could dig CSNY and not dig "Helpless," "Teach Your Children," and "Our House." Nash suffers from the same problem as Paul McCartney, I guess: too melodic and tuneful a songwriter to be taken "seriously."

 

Too cutesy would be most people's problem with Graham Nash, I'd wager.

 

Deja Vu, S/T and If I Could Only Remember My Name, get a lot of play here at the house. Always have......always will.

 

I have no idea why "Helpless" has never grabbed me, but it doesn't. Just seems slow and plodding, without any emotional resonance. As I said, I admit that this an unconventional opinion (you're no stranger to those, I've noticed). Why do I love the title track from "After the Gold Rush," but not "Helpless"? Beats me, but them's the facts.

As for the Nash tunes, they're certainly melodic, and sometimes I do find them very appealing. Other times "Teach Your Children" seems too sanctimonious, and the domesticity of "Our House" seems too cloying. But they're not bad. And I do think that Nash's popcraft provides a welcome change of pace for the album.

 

I have read a lot of criticism of this song, but the last sentence of the above posting sums it all up. I was a Junior in college when Deja Vu was released and this song and album was very relevant to the times and what was going on in the country at that time. The album was released at about the time of Kent State and that album became an anthem to many activist college students at that time. Deja Vu holds many dear and vivid memories of that time for me.