Merchandise / Lower / Institute - Live 2014.09.23 Red 7, Austin, Texas

When I first saw Merchandise almost a year ago, I was blown away. I'd never heard of them before, but they were the best band I saw on that day at Fun Fun Fun Fest (except for maybe Television, naturally). I forgot about them for several months afterwards until I re-read the review and saw the imperative I'd left for myself to buy one of their albums. I immediately bought their second album, Children of Desire (2012), and it didn't take me long to get Totale Nite (2013). I purchased the "Begging for Your Life / In the City Lights" single as soon as it was released a few months ago and picked up After the End when it came out a few weeks ago. I can't get enough of them. When I heard they were coming to Austin, I immediately bought a ticket.

Artist: Merchandise

Venue: Red 7 (inside)

Location: Austin, Texas

Date: 23 September 2014

Opening Acts: Institute, Lower

Setlist:
01. Corridor →

02. Enemy

03. In the City Light

04. Green Lady

05. In Nightmare Room

06. True Monument

07. Telephone

08. Little Killer

09. After the End

10. Anxiety's Door →

11. Totale Nite

Like many of the smaller venues around Red River and 6th Street, exactly what bands play on any given night, and what time they will hit the stage, is often left unknown or unannounced until the doors open. At a place like Red 7, where the doors usually don't open until 9pm, and bands get added the bill with no apparent notice, this can mean a headliner doesn't hit the stage until midnight. For those that have things to do in the morning, this can be quite frustrating. Nonetheless, for a band that I really like, I'll still do it on occasion, especially when tickets are just $12. (However, there have been times when I've had to say no, even after already buying a ticket.)

So on this occasion I found myself at the venue a few minutes after 9pm, unaware of the set times until I walked in the door. Seeing it would be an hour until the first of two opening acts I'd never heard of, I settled into a corner with my book. Bauhaus and Joy Division came through the PA, presaging the music to come.

First up was Institute, an Austin punk/post-punk band. They played a noisy, aggressive 20-minute set with just enough nuance and musicality to keep me from retreating to the corner. The singer clearly wanted to be a punk; his band perhaps preferred something marginally more sophisticated. The band held it together fine, except for the bassist's amp going out on the last song, unrepaired until the singer stormed off stage at the end of the song. The singer was on some sort of weird trip; he had some kind of unsettling substance smeared across his face, he could only sing while sneering over his right shoulder, his twitching and jerking about landed him off the stage twice, his singing was mostly garbled yelling and atonal grunts, and he did it all while wearing a Never Mind the Bullocks, Here's the Sex Pistols t-shirt. How punk. At their best, they might hope to be considered a Fall knock-off. At their worst, they're a mess of punk clichés that could gladly be left back in 1977.

Second in line was Lower, a Copenhagen band that seems to reside somewhere in the realm of post-punk. I couldn't figure them out, although if I had known at the time that they were Danish, maybe I wouldn't have thought so hard about their appearance. The lead singer could have been a frat boy in America but instead was a harmless crooner. A couple songs got into a good groove with the bass and drums locked together under some appealingly angular guitarwork, but most of the songs just dragged.

Merchandise eased into their set with the opening duo from their new album, After the End. Carson Cox started into "Corridor" with wide, vast acoustic guitar sweeps, while Chris Horn played a synth part and Elsner Niño offered a sparse percussion arrangement. This led seamlessly into "Enemy", which already provided a taste of the big sound that the band is aiming for. Cox's strumming sped up, Niño laid down a bouncy beat, David Vassalotti offered a catchy lead guitar hook, and Patrick Brady's bass kept it all moving. In the bridge, the guitarists went wild and the whole thing sounded like a rave-up.

This is a band that hardly makes sense. Emerging from a punk scene, they initially gravitated to noise and industrial music. In the midst of a constant stream of output, they suddenly signed onto 4AD and released something of a pop album. It sounds huge, it has melodic guitar hooks all over the place, the lyrics are actually printed on the insert, and somehow it actually sounds like a natural step forward.

It must be some kind of miracle that when I heard the cheesy electronic tom-tom roll that introduces "Green Lady", it immediately felt like the best moments of their industrial-jam back-catalog, I eagerly anticipated the big guitar hook that was about to start, and the combination thereof made me want to dance in a way that rock music almost never does. Why I do I love that retro drum sound? It should be incongruous, but instead it just makes them seem even bigger.

The best words I have to describe this bands are simple like that: big, vast, wide, expansive. Their earlier records partially obtained that result through extended song lengths, often in the area of ten minutes, but ever since Children of Desire their production has been aimed at opening up into a wider space than any average punk or noise band would care to consider. They now excel at the art so well that they have been able to hone their songs into more traditional pop-song length and arrangement without losing their sense of vision and scope.

Played live back to back, "In Nightmare Room" (from Desire) and "True Monument" (from After the End), both highlights of their respective albums, sound like they belong together. You wouldn't guess that from their recorded studio versions, in which the former is dark, shadowy, uptempo, and driven by a drum machine, and the former is bright, melodic, moderately paced, and adorned with vocal harmonies. On stage, their differences merge and they seem cut from a similar cloth. "In Nightmare Room" brightened up with a live drummer, and "True Monument" picked up an extra edge.

If there's a misstep on the new album, it's "Telephone", which sticks out awkwardly in the middle of the album. The poppy beat is garishly over the top, the titular sound effects are crassly cheesy (and they already successfully used a telephone sound at the end of "Satellite"!), and the lyrics are awful and clichéd. Just like on the album, it stuck out during the show and brought it down a notch. The song fared better live, where it shed the telephone ringing and gained more energetic guitar work, but it was still the low point of the set.

The other problem that also translated directly from studio to stage was the inescapable feeling that the audience is being had. How could a band like this make something so akin to pop? It isn't a complaint in itself, but it is hard to feel like there isn't some joke or ironic gesture. Something feels just a little forced. It's so hard not to like the catchiness of the new songs, but I wonder if I'm supposed to reject it. Is it some kind of statement to prove that audiences are foolish enough to accept anything with the right mix of pop magic? Or is it a statement that punks, hardcore types, and anyone too obsessed with "authenticity" are ridiculous to think that a band like Merchandise could "sell out" by presumably aiming for mass appeal?

The only other distracting issue was the mix. Horn's keyboard parts were almost indiscernible, and Cox's vocals were also a little low. The drums and guitars sounded great, but the upper registers felt underrepresented. (Also, where was Horn's sax?) This is one case where seeing them on a big stage at something like Fun Fun Fun Fest was clearly preferable. With their sound as big as it is, a smaller venue like Red 7 makes the music almost claustrophobic. At the festival, they sounded huge. The massiveness of their sound made an instant impression on me. At Red 7, they sounded restricted and restrained. I think they would have torn the walls down if they could.

Scores:

Institute: D-

Lower: B-

Merchandise: B+

Bonus scores:

Children of Desire: A

Totale Nite: B+

"Begging for Your Life / In the City Light": A-
After the End: B

A Few Thoughts on Devo

Devo has been on my mind a lot recently, ever since they came to my town on their Hardcore Devo tour in July. The tour was primarily based around their early material, particularly their home demos recorded before they signed a major label contract. I decided not to go, primarily because I find some of their early material to be problematic. In fact, after realizing that I didn't want to see the show, I started reevaluating my collection of Devo albums. I had bought their first four albums in rapid succession in 2005, and although I've listened to several of their other albums and collections, no others appealed to me enough to merit purchase.

Over the last two or three years, I've reviewed my entire music collection from start to finish. (Yes, it really did take two or three years.) In the process, I realized that my tastes had changed and that my ideas about collecting music were not the same as they once were. The complete story perhaps merits its own more complete post, but the short of it is that I started getting rid of anything I didn't connect with. Some things I'd outgrown (Everclear, Green Day), some just weren't actually very good (INXS, Adam Ant, Richard Lloyd, Daniel Ash), and some were things I'd bought because they were "important" but I just couldn't get into (Raw Power, Suicide, U2).

In this process, I realized that most Devo albums aren't actually very good. Devo's politics, social commentary, and satire are among the best commercially available, but their early and latter-day writing leans too heavy on relationship songs that are uninteresting, clichéd, or even repulsive. Musically, their creativity and experimentation appeared to peak with their debut album, and it gradually drifted away as their career progressed. They still managed to periodically write good tunes and wield clever concepts, but the rate of innovation took a sharp downturn.

As a result of this realization, I did something I've never done before: I sold everything except their first album and bought a "greatest hits" compilation. I'll save the detailed explanation of the personal significance of such an act for the aforementioned separate post, but I think Devo's career merits a greater discussion at present to justify my decision.

["Mongoloid" b/w "Jocko Homo" single, 1977.]

Devo was founded in the early 70s in Ohio in the wake of the Kent State shootings, the same source of inspiration for Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young's "Ohio". They started out as more of a performance art or cultural critique outlet based around the ideas of Gerald Casale and the long-forgotten Bob Lewis. Mark Mothersbaugh brought additional, similar ideas along with greater musical proficiency and equipment. As friends and siblings joined to form a band, Lewis gradually shifted to something of a management role before leaving under seemingly contentious grounds around the time the band signed a contract with Warner Bros. Records.

In the meantime, the band had been ceaselessly writing songs and recording homemade demos for years. Most of these recordings never saw the light of day until the Hardcore Devo compilations were released in 1990, although a few appeared on a supposedly official "bootleg" under the title Mechanical Man in 1978, and the best of the bunch were later re-recorded. The forgotten songs, the same ones being featured on the recent tour, are unfortunately a decidedly mixed lot. While the band had boundless creative energy, many songs were blatantly sexist. Although I realize they may have intentionally pushed the envelope in the name of satire, I find many of these early songs unlistenable for this reason.

[Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo!, 1978.]

Nonetheless, by 1977, the band began releasing singles on independent labels and managed to catch the eyes of Neil Young and David Bowie. The next year, they recorded their debut for Warner Bros., Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo, produced and financed by a certain Brian Eno. Somewhere in the process, the more objectionable songs were filtered out in favor of a strong set of cultural and social critiques. "Jocko Homo" was a statement of purpose in 7/4, "Satisfaction" is among the greatest cover versions of all time (and it doesn't even use the signature original riff!), and "Mongoloid" challenges preconceived notions of developmental disability. The album is full of pointed sarcasm whose bitterness does not detract from the strength of the message.

[Duty Now for the Future, 1979.]

Devo's second album, Duty Now for the Future (1979), is a classic example of a sophomore slump. Most of the album featured further re-recordings of older material, but the song choices are decidedly second-rate. Only "Blockhead" and "Secret Agent Man" were successful reinterpretations, and "The Day My Baby Gave Me a Surprize" (sic) was the only worthwhile new song. The only other redeeming quality is the cover, which mocked the new requirement of placing UPCs on album jackets. Musically, the increasing use of synthesizers was somewhat intriguing, but lyrically, the album suffered terribly. "Pink Pussycat" is particularly egregious, but "Clockout" is also quite disappointing for taking a promising idea and going in a poorly chosen direction.

[Freedom of Choice, 1980.]

Devo's mostly widely recognized and best-selling album is probably their third, Freedom of Choice (1980). The band unabashedly embraced synthpop and produced an early landmark of the genre. It features their biggest single (at least in the US), "Whip It", as well as several other fantastic singles ("Girl U Want", "Freedom of Choice", "Gates of Steel"). But even if the stylistic traits and the singles excel, the rest of the album is a bit of a drag. Most of the songs just aren't very compelling, but a few ("Ton o' Luv", "Don't You Know") are outright bad.

[New Traditionalists, 1981.]

New Traditionalists (1981) follows a similar trend: the singles "Beautiful World" and "Through Being Cool" are excellent, but the rest is bland or worse. Almost all of the other songs are relationship-based and offer nothing clever or insightful. I don't even know what to make of "Love Without Anger".

There seems to be a pattern here. Devo has always been a band with great ideas, but new ones came increasingly infrequently, such that most of their albums after New Traditionalists are lucky to feature a single good song (e.g. "Post Post-Modern Man"). In their quest to challenge and critique, they've often been on the line, and their earliest work is often on the wrong side of it. Their debut features the cream of the crop of several years of songwriting, but no later album could live up to that level of consistency. The lesson to learn is that Devo should perhaps be considered a singles band. Their albums tend to contain a lot of filler around a small number of truly exceptional songs and ideas.

[Greatest Hits, 1990.]

This should not be interpreted to imply that Devo is best forgotten or that they aren't worth the hype. To the contrary, Devo's contributions to underground and mainstream music cannot be overstated. They pioneered music videos, they presaged merchandising, they spearheaded synthpop, they practically invented postmodernism in music, they were outspoken advocates of the then-superior laserdisc (the precursor to today's DVD and Blu-ray), they resolutely believed in the idea that a true modern artist should provide a complete multimedia experience, and they did it all while criticizing and mocking the entire system that they existed within. They never backed down or sold out. That being said, the quality of their songs didn't always match the strength of their ideals, and especially early on, they sometimes let their sexual frustrations obscure their vision. I do not mean to downplay the apparent misogyny present in some of the dark corners of their back catalog; even if meant ironically, some songs present an image of sexual relations that are simply crass or unacceptable.

[Greatest Misses, 1990.]

It is for these reasons that I sold everything except Q: Are We Not Men? and started looking for a compilation. The obvious and most widely available choice (in the US) is the Greatest Hits collection, possibly augmented by or substituted with Greatest Misses. However, neither one succinctly and sufficiently comprises their best material, and both feature several weak tracks. Between the two, they contain most of Q: Are We Not Men?, which is redundant since the album is still worth owning individually, and most of Duty Now for the Future, which is disappointing, since it's a relatively weak album. A clearly superior choice is Hot Potatoes: The Best of Devo. It does contain several mediocre tracks from Oh No! It's Devo (1982), as well as an atrocious remix of "Whip It", but otherwise, it manages to collect just about every worthwhile track up through New Traditionalists.

[Hot Potatoes: The Best of Devo, 1993.]

Scores:
Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo: A

Duty Now for the Future: D+

Freedom of Choice: B

New Traditionalists: C+

Hot Potatoes: The Best of Devo: A-

Further reading:

Interview with Mark Mothersbaugh (The A.V. Club, 1997)

Interview with Bob Lewis (The Daily Record, 2010)

Interview with Jerry Casale (Flavorwire, 2009)

Bob Lewis' history of Devo (pdf; currently available only on archive.org)

P.S. Although I wasn't interested in Devo's most recent appearance in Austin, if I had been living in here in 2012, I would have loved to have seen the double-billing of Devo with Blondie!

Peter Hook - The Haçienda: How Not to Run a Club (2009)

Title: The Haçienda: How Not to Run a Club
Author: Peter Hook
Publisher: Simon & Schuster (UK), It Books (US)
Year: 2009 (UK), 2014 (US)

I haven't done a book review in a while. A very long while, actually. But I've recently read several music-themed works and I'm feeling inspired. In the interest of full disclosure, I got this book for free through a promotion from the US publisher. (I was one of the two lucky winners of this contest.) Perhaps the fact that I got it as a promotional tool makes me more inclined to write about it. It is also worth noting that the US edition comes five years after the original UK release and appends a new postscript. I'm not aware of any other changes beyond the cover and the addendum.

[The UK cover.]

I'll admit: I probably would not have bought this book on my own. However, I was curious enough to put my name in the contest. While I like Joy Division, New Order, Factory Records, and the idea of a record label opening a venue/club for the obvious crossover appeal, the reality is that the Haçienda was far better known for acid house and rave music, which do not interest me. Oh, and ecstasy, which also doesn't interest me. Since Peter Hook is well-known for being something of a egotist and power-tripper (do some research around here to see what I mean), I wasn't sure how much I wanted to hear about drugs and booze and rock 'n' roll yet again.

But I got the book, so I certainly wasn't going to not read it.

The Haçienda is structured chronologically, with individual years serving as chapters. It begins in 1980 as New Order rises from the ashes of Joy Division while the band and their label (Factory) start thinking about opening a club. It opened in 1982, primarily making a name by hosting indie bands, most of whom were not even affiliated with Factory. The Smiths infamously played some of their first gigs there, and countless other noteworthy bands came and went during the early years. Oddly, New Order performed there rather infrequently. Success eluded the Haçienda until the late 80s, when the DJ nights became increasingly popular. Drug use was rampant, gang activity and violence became increasingly problematic, and the police and local government grew displeased. It closed inauspiciously in 1997 when the licensing came up for renewal and money problems became insurmountable.

Hook spends most of each chapter telling stories about himself and the club, sometimes interesting, sometimes not, and frequently quite indulgent. The worst offenses are a prologue detailing a long night of partying at the Haçienda at its height in 1991 and an interlude detailing a long night of drugs and drunk driving on Ibiza in 1988, while Hook and the rest of New Order were supposed to be recording Technique, an attempted crossover album that hasn't dated well.

However, he also summarizes the activities of the year and provides some perspective on the management and general atmosphere of the place, which is the real root of the narrative. Each chapter also includes an excerpt of the financial accounts of the year, a schedule of the major events (sometimes even with setlists!), and a few notable quotes. The financial records are usually left unexplained, but mostly seem in line with the perpetual joke/myth that the place never turned a profit. Surprisingly, at its height around 1989 and 1990, it appears that the Haçienda may have actually earned money, although it was probably used immediately to pay off debts.

The ancillary material is mildly interesting, but ends up turning about a third of the page count into pure reference material. Considering the considerable thanks heaped upon Claude Flowers (who "got the ball rolling and prompted me to remember a lot of stuff I thought I'd forgotten") and Andrew Holmes (who did "a fantastic job shaping the raw material and bringing it to fruition"), I wonder how much content was actually written by Hook. This isn't helped by Hook's acknowledgment that he began DJing only as a "celebrity DJ" who just picked the records but otherwise did no work and just partied.

That being said, there are certainly some humorous stories and revealing statements. I was bemused at the thought of Einstürzende Neubauten bringing a pneumatic drill into the venue for a show in 1985 and proceeding to attack a central pillar. Seeing the lists of amazing bands that played there proves that the management's taste and reach was impeccable – at least in the beginning, when they were perhaps dangerously ahead of the curve. Hook even dispelled the longstanding joke/myth that every copy of the "Blue Monday" single lost them money. Apparently the first two million copies netted them a loss of ten pence each, but the subsequent runs were simplified to cut costs and thus earn a profit.

The book is not without ironies, though. One is that Hook quotes from Tony Wilson's novelization of 24 Hour Party People, although the movie it was based on is quite famously largely invented. The line between truth and fiction is again blurred as a result, which casts doubt on some of Hook's more exotic tales, like launching fireworks inside the venue for a New Year's party and subsequently setting about five grand on fire.

The greatest irony, though, comes in the epilogue, where Hook states, "Would I run a club again? No. Too much responsibility – plus the wife would kill me." This section is followed by a postscript (written in 2010, after the first UK pressing) in which he describes opening a new club, FAC 251 – The Factory, located in the former Factory label headquarters.

Score: C-

P.S. I realize that providing a score in the C range risks being meaningless or content-free. The point is that if you love Hooky or the Haç to death, you'll love the book; otherwise you won't. So for the average reader, this book ends up being at best average, perhaps boring or even depressing.

Crosby, Stills & Nash - Live 2014.08.28 The Long Center, Austin, Texas

Artist: Crosby, Stills & Nash
Venue: The Long Center
Location: Austin, Texas
Date: 28 August 2014

Set 1:
01. Carry On/Questions [originally performed by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young]
02. Marrakesh Express
03. Long Time Gone
04. Southern Cross
05. Just a Song Before I Go
06. Delta
07. Don't Want Lies [The Rides cover]
08. Back Home [new song by Graham Nash] → The Weight [partial; The Band cover]
09. To the Last Whale: Critical Mass [Tape] / Wind on the Water [originally performed by Crosby & Nash]
10. Our House [originally performed by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young]
11. Déjà Vu [originally performed by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young]
12. Bluebird [originally performed by Buffalo Springfield]

Set 2:
13. Helplessly Hoping
14. Girl from the North Country [Bob Dylan cover]
15. I'll Be There for You [originally performed by Graham Nash]
16. What Makes It So [new song by David Crosby]
17. What Are Their Names [originally performed by David Crosby]
18. Guinnevere
19. I Used to Be a King [originally performed by Graham Nash; performed with Shawn Colvin]
20. Burning for the Buddha [new song by Graham Nash]
21. Almost Cut My Hair [originally performed by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young]
22. Wooden Ships
23. For What It's Worth [originally performed by Buffalo Springfield]
24. Love the One You're With [originally performed by Stephen Stills]

Encore:
25. Teach Your Children [originally performed by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young]

When I saw CSN just about two years ago in Kentucky, they were in good form and put on a great show. They played just about every classic I could have asked for and threw in some new tunes as well, which actually went over quite well. The five-member backing band seemed excessive, but having a solid team is hardly a crime.

It's worth remembering, though, that that tour was actually originally supposed to have a very different form. In fact, it was supposed to be a 30-date tour of a reunited Buffalo Springfield. After Neil Young backed out, Crosby and Nash invited Stephen Stills to join their planned tour as a duo, and so the summer tour was reconfigured for the CSN trio format. (Does this remind anyone of a few past moments in history involving Neil Young and Stephen Stills?)

More recently, while CSNY were preparing to release the CSNY 1974 box set, it would seem that almost everyone involved was hoping for a full quartet reunion tour to promote the album. (For example, examine the hopeful thinking of Graham Nash and David Crosby.) Unsurprisingly, a certain member was apparently uninterested, so it was left to the other three to do the job. And thus we have another CSN tour!

At face value, the show was very similar to the one I saw two years ago. The setlists share most of the same classic material (and in almost the same order), the same backing musicians were present, Graham Nash was again barefoot, Crosby again claimed one of the musicians was from the area (this time James Raymond, obviously not true), Stills played just about every guitar solo, Crosby and Nash were responsible for the harmonies, and so on. In practice, though, the night was quite different. Because of the many similarities, I won't rehash what I already covered thoroughly last time, but rather focus on the differences.

First of all, the crowd was possibly the oldest audience I've ever seen. Even last time I saw CSN, there were still plenty of younger people to offset the baby boomer bias. But in Austin, a town where young people simply cannot stop moving, and a town known for such a lively, abundant, and young music scene, I've never before seen a show where I might've been the youngest person I saw. Even bands accused of being nostalgia acts, like Paul McCartney or the Monkees, attracted a large cross-section of all ages.

But more importantly, once the band started playing, it was clear something was off. Specifically, that something was Stephen Stills' voice. Although he might have struggled two years ago, it wasn't really a problem then. It is now. He couldn't enunciate anything. Most of his songs ended up as a garbled mess, where words were only decipherable if someone else was singing harmony. Stills could usually hold a tune, but sometimes he seemed to forget his lines, making his mumbling all the worse. He let Nash take most of his parts on "Wooden Ships" (like last time), but he had the audacity to mock Bob Dylan at one point, impersonating his hypothetical take on "Helplessly Hoping", but in fact sounding like an accurate representation of himself! The lowest points were probably his cover versions ("Don't Want Lies", which Stills co-wrote, and Dylan's "Girl from the North Country"). Both were sung with little or no harmony additions, and their relative unfamiliarity in the CSN canon made it impossible to parse the words.

Not helping anything were Stills' guitar leads. Last time around I thought he played excellently, even if his style was a bit indulgent. This time, indulgence was the order of the day. He could play fine, but his parts weren't as compelling, and his need to take the lead on almost every song began to drag them down with the excess weight. For some odd reason, he had a weird little slide part that he tried to fit into every single solo, regardless of how well it fit the mood or rhythm. Rarely did it fit, and often he couldn't even get it right, so it stuck out awkwardly almost every time. "Bluebird" was the worst offender, as Stills could not be stopped, no matter how bad his solos got. He spent minutes stuck on doing simple volume swells before descending into the depths of drunken blooze cliché.

At least Nash and Crosby held up well… mostly. Nash's new songs "Back Home" (a tribute to Levon Helm) and "Burning for the Buddha" (in honor of self-immolating Tibetan monks) were decent, and Crosby's new song "What Makes It So" was good, too. But the point of using the recorded tape of "Critical Mass" to introduce "To the Last Whale" is lost on me. Also, Nash's latter-day "I'll Be There for You" was positively one of the worst songs I've ever heard from a professional musician. In general, Nash's abilities have held up as well as ever, and he can still hit every harmony perfectly on cue. Crosby, though, honestly surprised me with how well he could sing. It may have been the best I've ever heard from him. He was powerful and hit notes that I don't think I've heard from him before. The strength of his voice was probably the high point of the night.

Among the many oddities of the show was the surprise appearance of Shawn Colvin to sing the lead of Nash's wonderful "I Used to Be a King". Less exciting was whatever excuse was necessary to extend Déjà Vu into an unending mess with seven (!) instrumental solos – one for each backing musician, bookended by more of Stills' indulgence. And while I was disappointed that "Guinnevere" was performed at a snail's pace, I was pleased with the minor rearrangements of "Almost Cut My Hair" and "Wooden Ships". However, on the latter, the band shed any subtlety of the line, "Who won the war?" by answering it themselves with, "No one!"

"For What It's Worth" still resounds strongly today, especially in the wake of events like the shooting in Ferguson, Missouri. Conversely, "Love the One You're With" sounds increasingly cynical and seems an odd choice for a singalong song. And I have to admit, when the band came out for the encore, having again ignored the same two obvious choices as last time I saw them, I was disappointed when they left after "Teach Your Children", leaving "Suite: Judy Blue Eyes" for another day. I doubt Stills could have done it justice, anyway.

Score: C-

P.S. Thanks to Alyssa!

P.P.S. I was also annoyed that Nash claimed that Stephen Stills wrote "Southern Cross". It is well-known that the song is based off The Curtis Brothers' "Seven League Boots" and thus they are credited as cowriters.