David Crosby - If I Could Only Remember My Name - WOW!

I've had this record for years but for whatever reason, didn't play it til today. It's the fave album of several of my friends whose taste and insight I respect highly, but...It just got put on a pile, probably 20 yrs ago and never played. It's the best CSNY record not released under that name (Stills isn't credited but I've read that he's on here and I think I can hear him). Jerry, Phil, Bill K., Mickey H., Paul K., Grace, Jorma, Jack, Joni, Neil, Graham, Frieberg, M. Shrieve, G. Rolie, and a cast of thousands. I think it might be equal to Deja Vu but further listenings will bear that out (or not).

Your thoughts?

 

Very groovy

 

Love the vibe ,sound and music on this one
Only song I skip is Cowboy...

 

Love it in 5.1. Great smoking music.

 

This is a top 10 album for me. It's divine.

 

stills is nowhere to be found on IICORMN, he was making his own solo album at the time.

 

you might want to try 'cowboy movie" on crosby's box set, garcia is replaced by neil young, makes it a quite different vibe for sure.

 

People only seemed to start remembering this one around 1998, when it got a namecheck in Mojo. I bought it the following year and agree - it's superb, better than any solo album released by Stills, Nash or McGuinn.

 

The original UK Atlantic pressings of the first CSN and CSNY albums were awful. I had an original of IICORMN though and it sounded fantastic.

Iconic album. Fantastic.

 

I'm in a similar boat. CSNY and the individual parts were some of my favorite music from 69-75. I had a lot of Neil, most of Steven Stills solo efforts, a couple Crosby, Nash albums and one Graham Nash album back in the day. Somehow I missed this one. Five or six years ago I bought a copy and was amazed at the quality. I see it as one of the best, if not the best solo effort by any of the four.
Maybe because I didn't listen to the heck out of it back then it seems fresh. That may also be the reason I can listen to it now just about any time.

 

One of my favorite albums. Great vibe throughout.

 

It's a classic, for sure.

I'll post these, both have the link to the "It's the Pope's second favourite album" list that I always post in IICORMN threads:

If I Could Only Remember My Name
Poll: favourite track on IICORMN

 

It's the best album by CS&N, CSN&Y or any of the original members individually, excluding Young possibly. IMO, it was also recorded very well. Originals sound great, the Classic 331/3 sounds great and the 45 Classic even better. I buy a nice looking original every time I find one just to find the best copy. However, if you can get your hands on either of the Classics I think you're good to go. Just stop there.

 

The first show I ever went to was CSN when I was in middle school and I loved their collective efforts. I also love The Byrds and the albums they made with Mr. Crosby and without him. So when I picked up a used vinyl copy of IICORMN I was so pumped up. But for some reason I did not hear it. Sat through a listen and thought about tossing it out. Totally labeled it as garbage. Still I kept enjoying the other stuff. Not too long ago I read an article praising it. It blew my mind that people thought this was some sort of classic record. That's when it all changed. I pulled the record out and turned it on. Night and day. It's being put on the table right now actually. Everybody says that music is love.

 

Yep. I'd pick it as the best solo album by any of them.

The reputation of this record has risen and risen in the last twenty years or so - seems the times caught up with it.

'Laughing' is one of those songs that if you play it to an aspiring muso and they don't love it, they're not up to snuff. Epic.

Another one of those records I can sell blind in the shop just by putting it on.

 

100% agree. I have the 45 Classic and the US original, too and reach the same opinion.

 

Not a fan in general but this album is sublime. Very good red wine music

 

You may have just summed it up. The sound quality initially is what sold me but the content is something that just wouldn't be attempted today because it wouldn't sell 100 million copies in the first week or whatever like Adele does. Time will tell if any Adele album is revered as a classic in 40-45 years. Yes, Everyone knows that music is love. Unfortunately, it's also a business and the two don't always jive. Instantly gratifying rarely ends up being indefinitely gratifying.

 

Yes, it's great.

 

From CSN certainly my favorite solo/duo album by a long shot.

 

A great album. I remember seeing used copies all the time back in the 80's, but for some reason never took the chance. Just one of many mistakes...

 

I'm happy I was lucky enough to listen to this particular album from its release. Though a couple of years later, and an obvious Byrds link, I've always thought of Gene Clark's No Other in the same light as IICORMN. It's not the style or sound but just the "feel" for me.

 

It's a completely gorgeous and unusual album that's been one of my all-time favorites since I discovered it as a CSNY-obsessed teen in the mid-80s.

People who slight CSNY or the "CSNY phenomenon" as having been wholly dependent on the success of Crosby, Stills and Nash and of Deja vu would do well to look at (listen to) the strength of the fragmented group: to have If I Could Only Remember My Name, Stephen Stills, Songs for Beginners, and After the Gold Rush come out in the months after Deja vu (and before Four Way Street) is pretty staggering. Four distinctive visions and voices, and four top-flight albums. Those guys took the immense burden of the "supergroup" tag, and each of them went out and did his part to back up the title. For my own part, I think they were all basically infallible through the end of 1975.

And even in that very distinguished company, If I Could Only Remember My Name is special. With its huge cast of Laurel Canyon and Haight-Ashbury alumni, the album is a dreamy wake for all the high hopes of the 1960s. Its beauty is as timeless as that of Golden Gate Park, the Marin headlands, the fog, and the smell of eucalyptus. But those threads of loss ("I'd Swear There Was Somebody Here" "Orleans") and of menace ("Cowboy Movie" "What Are Their Names") go to a very specific period in the life of the Bay Area. It's a post-Haight, post-Altamont San Francisco, with the leaders of the Weather Underground hiding alongside Crosby in Sausalito. A "Zodiac Killer" San Francisco, with the cultural and political backlash signified by Dirty Harry also in the breeze...

The 2006 Rhino re-master with the outtake Crosby/Garcia collaboration "Kids and Dogs" is, for me, pretty much essential. Probably my favorite piece of Garcia soloing (acoustic, then electric, then acoustic) ever.

And then there's Paul Kantner's Blows Against The Empire, which uses the same loose stable of musicians and which was recorded at Wally Heider's in sessions that were interwoven with Crosby's. The album channels a lot of that IICORMN vibe through Kantner's sci-fi imagination, but the mood is recognizably similar to that of the Crosby record. "Have You Seen The Stars Tonite," from Blows and on which Crosby sings and shares a writing credit, could easily have fit on If I Could Only Remember My Name.

 

When you're done being blown away by this monster, and yearning for a similar vibe, try Terry Reid's "River", and Dennis Wilson "Pacific Ocean Blue". Similar knock out classics.

 

Brilliant album with sort of a stream-of-consciousness vibe. It was in a class by itself at the time of its release with those wordless songs. It may well have been an influence on the ambient music that peaked in later years. I always thought Crosby was the best overall songwriter in CSN&Y for his intricate chord progressions and impressionistic melodies and lyrics.