CSNY/Déjà Vu Live BY Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young Reviewed by Adam D. Miller    Rather than promote the album on his own, Young took Crosby, Stills & Nash out on the road with him, and with songs like “Ohio” and “Find The Cost Of Freedom,” the group’s back catalogue of political commentaries paired perfectly with his new songs. The tour was a great success, thanks largely to the inclusion of many of these older tracks.Two years later, on the eve of the presidential election, Neil Young is releasing CSNY/Déjà vu Live, a documentary about the 2006 “Freedom of Speech” tour and how it left some fans furious and others proud. The documentary intersperses concert footage with interviews, news clips and audience reactions. Its soundtrack album presents just over a dozen of the songs played on the tour, along with parts of the film’s score. The problem with this compilation is simple. Living With War may have been central to CSNY’s “Freedom of Speech” tour and Young’s documentary is clearly about the polarizing response to songs like “Let’s Impeach The President” in particular. But so much of the appeal of the shows stemmed from the variety of group and solo material of relevance. Some of these songs, like Graham Nash’s “Military Madness” and Buffalo Springfield’s “For What It’s Worth” are included here, but the room occupied by seven cuts from Living With War (including three versions of the title track) would have been better served by songs like “Ohio,” “Immigration Man,” or “Rockin’ In The Free World,” all of which featured on the tour but are absent from this album. That’s not to discount the music that is featured here. David Crosby’s “What Are Their Names” opens the set like a call-and-response protest song. CSNY deliver the lyrics, while the audience responds with an enthusiastic “whoa-oh-oh-oh.” Songs from Living With War like “After The Garden” and “Shock And Awe” come alive with the help of Crosby, Stills & Nash’s background vocals. And while songs like “Déjà vu” and “Wooden Ships” could never live up to the studio versions, it’s remarkable how good they still sound almost forty years later. The highpoint of the album comes from a somewhat unlikely source. Although this hasn’t always been the case with recent live versions, “Teach Your Children,” as presented here, is extremely faithful to the studio version, with pedal still and harmony vocals at full-force. “This is for all the teachers,” shouts Young as the song begins. In many ways, this song – despite its lack of heavy-handed political rhetoric – sums up what the “Freedom of Speech” tour was all about: learning from our mistakes and teaching our children to avoid doing the same. It would have been nice if Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young’s first live album since 1971’s Four Way Street included more. A double-disc set probably would have remedied this, allowing space for many of the songs that are sorely lacking. Hopefully we’ll hear some of those in the film. |
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