Crosby Stills Nash & Young at the White River Amphitheatre July 27th

It's been 37 years since Crosby Stills Nash & Young's first serious appearance--at Woodstock, on August 17, 1969-- and America is more lost than ever.

During Woodstock, we were in the middle of a massive escalation of the Vietnam War. Today, we're in the Middle-east and Afghanistan, waging a new war against some other people that don't really seem like our enemies ("don't feel like Satan/But I am to them"). We don't burn flags, we blog. It might have worked better when we burned flags, and protested, wore black armbands to Kent-Meridian high school, and burned down the ocassional draft board office.



Neil Young, earlier this year, was pissed off enough to create a new album, completely focused on The President and His War. So rather than sitting around waiting for someone else , he took matters into his own hands. The resulting album Living With War, is a searing indictment of our leaders, and of ourselves for following along. Neil talked his old confederates, Crosby, Stills, and Nash into taking the album on the road, as part of a CSNY tour. The show would give a nod to the oldies; the songs that everyone can sing along with. But it would focus on The War.

Opening with the song Flags of Freedom, the stage showed flags from all the countries of the "coalition." Our partners in crime.

Neil used his love of his adopted country like a bludgeon, lashing out at government, consumers and war. The set included a lot of chestnuts like Carry On, Wooden Ships, Long Time Gone, and some others, including my favorite Nash song, Military Madness. The highlight of course were the songs from Young's Living With War: Flags of Freedom, After The Garden, Living With War, Restless consumer, Shock and Awe.

The second set started with some moldy oldies, Helplessly hoping, Our House, Guinevere, and the like, and then went into the solo work. Stills had an interesting song, that he played with only Young--Treetop Flyer. It was also the only time he seemed to shake off the doldrums. Crosby too, often seemed a little bored; it has probably not been easy for him to take a back seat. Some of the best vocal work in the show was between the frequent collaborators, Crosby and Nash.

This second set included some more Living With War tunes, like Roger And Out, and the centerpiece of the set was the singalong Let's impeach the president, with excellent video and singlong lyrics on screen. The show ended with old political tunes, Ohio, Chicago, and Young's Rockin' in the Free World. Rockin' led to an extended cadenza of distortion and feedback with Young riding around the stage like a wild stallion. Because Neil was front and center for nearly the entire show, there was more feedback than at a Crazy Horse show, and by the end, the strings were all broken on his Les Paul. A mellow version of Woodstock was the only encore. And they were gone; ghosts gone modern in the twilight of their career. . . with Neil now in charge, and dragging his old friends back into relevance in a shining moment of music and protest.
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