Customer Reviews

Just Roll Tape: April 26, 1968

5 star:		(33)
4 star:		(19)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

First, a little context: in April '68, the 23-year-old Stephen Stills is nearing the end of his Buffalo Springfield days - in less than two weeks (May 5th), that fabled group will play its final concert, w/the band's patched-together final LP, Last Time Around, being released that August. While Crosby, Stills & Nash is (obviously) on the horizon, at this juncture it's by no means definitive - Nash is still w/the Hollies, after all; and Crosby and Stills, while pals, have yet to commit to a partnership together. In other words, for Stills - everything's in flux.

So what's a young singer-songwriter-guitarist to do? Apparently, after a session guesting on Judy Collins' "Who Knows Where the Time Goes" album, it's slipping the engineer a couple hundred bucks so that he can lay down demos of a handful of new songs ... and what songs! "Suite: Judy Blue Eyes," "Helplessly Hoping" and the Crosby, Stills and Kantner-penned "Wooden Ships" turn up the following spring on Crosby, Stills & Nash's debut; "Black Queen" graces Stills' first solo LP; "Change Partners" and "Know You Got to Run" highlight his second solo album; and "So Begins the Task," which he played live with CSNY in '69 and '70, appears on the classic two-LP Manassass set. "Treetop Flyer" (which was recorded elsewhere) shows up on Stills' overlooked 1991 acoustic set, "Stills Alone."

I add the context just so I could say this: "Just Roll Tape" is a tremendous set that shows Stills at the peak of his song-writing prowess. While it may not be the perfect pick for casual fans or neophytes, for those of us who are the opposite, it's a godsend. It's unbelievable that some of these (like "Change Partners") were held back for years and others ("All I Know Is What You Tell Me," "The Doctor Will See You Now," "Judy" and "Dreaming of Snakes") were left behind.

Let's hope this is the first of many releases from Stills' vault.

If you're looking for polished studio material, this cd is not for you. If, however, you are a fan of acoustic Stills and like to hear him in good voice,you should give this one a listen. This is just Stills with a guitar. As advertised, this cd contains material left behind from an impromptu recording session which followed the recording of a Judy Collins album. Not surprisingly, there is a previously unheard version of Suite: Judy Blue Eyes. With no harmonies to accompany it, it may sound a bit bare at first, but Stills is in fine voice throughout this product and he is hitting notes much higher than I remember ever before. He has added another rather simple love song simply entitled Judy. Altogether, there are five previously unheard tracks, two of which are great: The Doctor Will See You Now opens with a Neil Young sounding riff. It also features a high-pitched voice, one that is amazingly in tune; Bumblebee is a fun, upbeat number. Helplessly Hoping, Wooden Ships and Know You Got to Run all sound different without the csn harmonies, but all are good. Wooden Ships does not contain the entire song as csn recorded it, but is still quite listenable. Helplessly Hoping is great even without the harmonies; it would have been a hit either way. The cd also contains different versions of Change Partners and Manassas's So Begins the Task. A longer version of Treetop Flyer is included, probably to capitalize on the song's current popularity. It is not a part of the 1968 sessions as is evident in the voice. Any fan of early Stills will be pleased with this effort.

I have been waiting two months for this release and I am pleased to say that I love it! These stripped-down versions of the tunes we're familiar with and the previously-unreleased one's as well really give you insight into how great of a writer Stills is. Especially interesting are the snippets of lines that became lyrics in other tunes Stills was to release later on. Extra thanks to Stephen for finally providing us with an audio version of "Treetop Flyer"!
We Stills fans can't thank Joe Colasurdo enough for getting this long lost tape to Stephen all these years later. Its nice to know that music still means more than money to someone out there.
Now if we can just get CSN to release an album of all-new material in an acoustic format

This album is worth having merely for the fact that you get to hear the origins of songs -- or portions of lyrics -- that ultimately wound up on five different albums featuring Mr. Stills. And to think they were all there in 1968 before he hooked up with Nash and Crosby. I like the raw element to these takes, especially listening to Stephen tuning his guitar just before breaking into the opening of Suite: Judy Blue Eyes. The previously unreleased cuts are gems as well, and it's a treat to hear them nearly 40 years after he first laid them down on tape. This is a worthy purchase for any Stills fan.

Lots of good comments already written...
But heads up again on the tape hiss - it's thick - & heads up on the guitar distortion. Fine on the finger-picked songs like "Helplessly Hoping" - but noticably distorted on the strummed or flat-picked songs.

Obviously not recorded for official release - or meant for the mainstream music market - but still great that it's seeing the light of day!

Just be aware that it's not at all clean.

I'm sure some folks will complain about the stripped down production, but how many times do we listeners get a chance to hear an artist bursting at the seams, and on the verge of super-stardom? Now I'm not discounting Buffalo Springfield, but any fan of Crosby, Stills and Nash, will surely love this historic disc. The cd really heats up during the second half. The complex "Suite Judy Blue Eyes", (I was always convinced C,S and N must've worked it out together), but here it is by Stephen himself. What a treat. If Neil Young ever released anything like this raw studio recording, people would line up around the block to get it, and then proclaim it;Genius. I think Stills has always been under-rated, and maybe something like this will finally get him some of his overdue props!

A simple review here:
I am a 'weak' CSNY fan. (caught them live, respect them as artists, but only own a few cd's). I so admire Stephen Stills' talent, but i'm definitely not a close follower of his career. Many of his great songs were recorded years before i was born!

That being said, i do love demo recordings and try to collect them. There's a natural feel, something more intimate and definitely less refined, but you get a look at the basic feel of the melodies as they existed in the artist's mind at that time.

These recordings ARE demos--nothing to rave about in mad artistry, of course. But from the first listen I was hooked. I played it for 2 of my friends the day i downloaded it and they both loved it instantly as well.
I totally recommend this cd. Probably devoted Stills fans and newbies would like it best (IMHO).

That's it from me. Thought an unsophisticated review may be useful to some....since there are others out there who may be interested music lovers but not knowledgeable followers of Stills/CSNY.

Enjoy!!

Obviously, Mr. Stills did not set out to make definitive versions of these songs. He just wanted to get them down before he forgot anything, and to work on them with Mr. Crosby.

However, it's a fascinating glimpse into the process that took place, and a rare chance to hear Mr. Stills pre-production. With the exception of the first CSN album, his work was often over-produced, so to hear him in raw form is refreshing.

99.9% of all the songwriters in this world would die to have written this batch of songs. Any body of work that would lure Neil Young into your band would have to be pretty astounding, and so it is.

Much love and prayers go out to Stephen in his fight against prostate cancer.

It must have taken guts for Stephen to release this raw collection of tracks culled from an impromptu recording session in April of 1968. Stills was in a musical limbo, having just taken flight from the Buffalo Springfield, the nest that had nurtured his talents, and not yet soaring with the vocal and songwriting talents of David Crosby and Graham Nash. Several of the songs included here would receive their definitive treatment only under the auspices of their compelling harmonies.

Despite taking guts to do it, I'm unsure why Stephen chose to release these recordings. This is the type of stuff that bootleggers aspire to getting their hands on. Yet this tape somehow managed to evade the greedy hands of those Audio Treetop Flyers. They have survived to see a day when studio out-takes and alternates of pristine, overdubbed-beyond-reality, officially released numbers have become the stuff that paychecks are made of. But Stephen doesn't really need another paycheck, now does he? The artist's brief comments in the liner notes state that the songs "now feel like great friends when they were really young". Perhaps that statement gives insight as to why Stephen has chosen to grant these tracks their liberation. Great friends don't let great friends languish in a vault. And have subsequent versions of `Wooden Ships' and `Suite: Judy Blue Eyes' begun to feel old and haggard, and this is Stephen's way of infusing them with a renewed essence? Is it an opportunity to revel in the creative process that yielded timeless masterworks? How about blind nostalgia?

Regardless of Stephen's motivations, I appreciate him delving into what must be a huge cache of audio recordings spanning decades. If nothing else, Stephen's 1968 impulse to "make a tape of my new songs" puts a number of his compositions into a chronological and social context. There are four, forty-year-old new songs (`All I Know Is What You Tell Me', `The Doctor Will See You Now', `Judy', and `Dreaming of Snakes'). Of that quartet, only `The Doctor Will See You Now' strikes me as a song that may have evolved into a composition challenging for grooves on a Stills album. With lyrics like "how can you think when you've thought everything through", the song possesses a `Positively 4th Street' feel, and features an intriguing melody as well. All four songs are compelling in their own right however. `Dreaming of Snakes' sports cryptic lyrics, and `Judy' serves as a precursor to the major heartbreak that would be `Suite: Judy Blue Eyes'. This lesser ode to Judy Collins offers intimate fare such as, "I'll do anything to please you... will you let me try? Running around in circles like a bird in flight, just above my head you hover like you want to light... but you can't decide where".

Among the tracks since recorded and released are abridged versions of `Suite: Judy Blue Eyes' (sans the vibrant and familiar coda), `Wooden Ships' (sans the imaginary dialog between two soldiers as the opening stanzas), and `Bumblebee' (suffering an all too bootleg like, tape-malfunction-induced termination). Versions of `So Begins the Task', `Change Partners', and `Helplessly Hoping' seem finished, while the definitive acoustic version of `Black Queen' will always be found on Stills' first solo project (check out Stephen's `Supershow' performance of the song for the definitive electric version). `Know You Got To Run' would undergo the most drastic revision, being performed later at a slower pace and adapted to banjo. The gem in the bunch, even minus its coda, is the intense, even spellbinding Suite to Judy Blue Eyes. This is likely the earliest recorded version of the song, and having the opportunity to hear it in its embryonic form, perhaps being performed for Judy herself, is nothing less than startling.

The entire disc times out at only forty minutes, and seven of those are devoted to the bonus track, `Treetop Flyer'. This is clearly a rehearsal take, probably not more than ten or fifteen years old given Stephen's raspy voice, and the omission of the "....I'll fly guns..." lyric, which has more recently been abandoned. It's not a particularly sturdy version, suffering from a false start, although the take does get `into the zone' from time to time. It's inclusion is a bit curious. Given that these are essentially demo recordings, it's no surprise that almost half of these undeveloped tracks time out in less than three minutes each, with five more in the two minute or less range. The liner notes don't add much weight either, but Graham Nash does contribute four period photographs, and reportedly gave Stephen the kick in the butt to release the disc. It's nice to have. Thanks Graham. Thanks, Judy. Thanks, Stephen.

Many people have already touched on the key elements of this disk:
Uneven sound, great story in terms historical and personal context, excellent snapshot on some of Stills' biggest hits, etc. I have always been a huge fan of CSNY and all their configurations, but have also been supremely frustrated by so much of the over produced crap that has come out over the years. The irony is that a lot of the studio manipulation was at the hands of Stills who could apparently not leave well enough alone. Neil has been much better about putting things out warts and all, allowing his soul to pour out of the speakers. Well, Mr. Stills and Rhino Records, thank you VERY MUCH for pulling this one out of the dusty stack. This is great stuff peaking with an incredible Helplessly Hoping, which I listened to three times while sitting in the driveway after buying this disk. It has been a number of years, but this more than makes up for the hideous alternate version of H.H. found on the CSN box set. Stills has always had tremendous soul, but he would not allow it to really come through on an official release. Any other raw treasures you have, I will snap them up...

Thanks again!