Three Out of Four Ain’t Bad
Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young – Déjà Vu
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Despite being a 6-year “veteran” at school, I’m still fairly young; in fact, young enough to cause some raised eyebrows among some of my elder colleagues who wonder how on earth I came to love the music of their childhood and teenage years, rather than my own.
Other than the fact that The Beatles vs. Gin Blossoms is simply not a fair comparison, it largely had to do with the existence of an LP collection that belonged (and still belongs) to my step-dad, which infused me with a love of the musicality, great song-writing, and sheer power of such groups as the aforementioned Beatles, as well as the Rolling Stones, the Who, Jimi Hendrix Led Zeppelin, and even venturing into the folk-rock worlds of Jackson Browne, James Taylor, and Cat Stevens.
One such group that I learned to enjoy was the cumbersomely self-titled Crosby, Stills, Nash, and (sometimes) Young. As a group that sounded like a strange mix between a jazz-vocal ensemble, a country band, and the Grateful Dead, they truly had a unique sound of their own.
Saturday night, I had the opportunity to see them perform for free at the Greek Theatre, thanks to a ticket giveaway from local NPR/Music station KCRW. [For those of you longtime readers of this blog, you might remember Rocking Out on a School Night, a post from nearly two years ago. Same radio station. Same kind of giveaway.]
Anyway, despite the fact that only 75% of CSNY performed (Neil Young is apparently too cool for these guys now), it was a great show, and even more, the audience surprised me a bit. I fully expected to see nothing but a sea of 50-60 year old boomers who literally grew up with these guys. Yet throughout the venue was a quite large contingent of younger generation folks, including including lots of parents with their teenage kids, who realize that great music is simply timeless.
I wonder if 20-30 years from now, I’ll be taking my kids to see geriatric Coldplay rock it out reminiscently of “The 00s”!
Themocracy
I love it, Kyle! CSN(and sometimes Y) are timeless, and I hope I take my boys to see great bands like them when I am old. I’ve seen Peter Frampton with my Mom, and also Survivor (although my Mom got free tickets to the Survivor concert through her work and she thought that we were going to see the cast of the reality show, not the band!) When we showed up at the show and I saw the people walking into the arena I knew something was up. Can you picture me and my Mom rocking out to Eye of the Tiger? I am glad you live in a city where you can get awesome tickets to see great bands like this. Keep being the coolest Math teacher (and one of the coolest friends) I’m proud to know.
Wow….”Eye of the Tiger”. What a great song! Did Survivor have any other songs??? Hey, I know Portland must get some great shows too….after all, you’re home to Elliot Smith, The Shins, M Ward, etc….