Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young
Greek Theatre
Los Angeles, CA
August 31, 1969
(Low Generation Recorder 2)
JEMS 2014 Transfer: low generation cassettes > Nakamichi CR-7A azimuth-adjusted transfer > Sound Devices USBPre 2 > Audacity 2.0 (24/96) capture > iZotope RX3 clean up > iZotope RX MBIT+ resample 16/44.1 > Peak Pro XT (speed correction / subtle tweak / edit / index) > xACT 2.21 > FLAC
01 So Begins The Task
02 You Don't Have To Cry
03 Pre-Road Downs
04 Long Time Gone
05 Bluebird Revisited
06 Sea Of Madness
07 Wooden Ships
08 Down By The River
09 Find The Cost Of Freedom
10 Get Together w/Joni Mitchell & John Sebastian
The announcement in July 1969 that Neil Young had joined CS&N took more than a few people by surprise considering Young's past history in Buffalo Springfield. Upcoming CS&N shows were now being billed as CSN&Y, however, several shows had to be cancelled due to Nash contracting nodes on his vocal chords. CSN&Y eventually debuted on August 16 at the Auditorium Theatre in Chicago for two shows which were met with favorable reviews. It's well known that Woodstock was the group's third show and first documented live recording.
One week after Woodstock, CSN&Y begin a six-show run at the historic Greek Theatre (August 25-31, 1969). Which brings us to the supergroup's ninth show and second documented live recording.
There are two circulating recordings for the six-show run, the first captured on a Uher 5" portable reel to reel and the second offered here, both recordings have been dated over the years as capturing the 26th and the 31st.
After comparing this capture to the other extant capture from the Greek Theatre, we can confirm it appears to be from the last night (31st) and that the last night was documented by two different tapers. There is enough dialogue before "So Begins The Task" on the Uher reel to compare and positively confirm both captures are for the same night. Though we are not able to conclusively confirm this is the last night, on our tape the following dialogue appears before "Down By The River". "We really had a good time with you and we hope you did with us. Yeah, and before we, uh, this is going to be I guess our last date and we want to come back and do it some more. I'll tell you something the management, I must be very honest with you, the management of the theatre really was was a bit apprehensive as to the sort of people that would come and see us at the Greek Theatre and he is pleased, man, he is really really pleased at the cooperation he's got from everybody that's come to see us. And we would like to thank everybody that got this show together, all the light men" (all three members of the group talking over each other)". This dialogue is missing from the Uher reel but we believe this would be something likely said at the close of the run and not the second night. Since we can identify both shows are from the same night the conclusion is both tapes capture the closing night.
Neither recording is complete, the Uher reel misses the last two songs and most of the between-song dialogue. The second, offered here, misses the first eight song, but captures the second half of the show in its' entirety. Combining the two recordings gives us a near-complete picture of a typical night during the Greek run.
Our tape begins with a joke about the Marx Brothers missing on the Uher reel recording. One other thing to note, our copy has "You Don't Have To Cry" following "So Begins The Task"; the Uher reel recording has it coming before "SBTT." Since the Uher recording has cuts between almost every song and there are no noticeable cuts in the second recording, it is our opinion "YDHTC" is now in the correct place in the set list.
These tapes came to JEMS from an unlikely source, my neighbor. Somewhere along the way I got into a conversation with him about my hobby and he mentioned how some friends of his had recorded CSNY way back in the day. After probing with a few questions, it seemed likely to be 1969 or 1970. It took a few months, but he eventually handed me a bag of tapes. Inside were cassettes marked Denver '69, Denver '70 and Greek '69. Could they be master tapes? Maybe, but just as easily first or second gen.
That being said, it does seem like this is the closest to a verified source/lineage as we're going to have for this particular capture.
As is often the case with tapes this old, playback wasn't easy. The tapes required re-shelling and multiple playback passes to get the full recording transferred without squeaks and distortion. The result is quite listenable and hopefully offers a modest upgrade to the best circulating version. Samples provide.
Fearlessly treading in to put all the pieces together was Comrade mjk5510, who spent a lot of time on identifying the correct date, the audio and the notes you see above.
BK for JEMS and mjk5510
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