Suite Judy Blue Eyes is Still Seven Minutes Too Long.

Suite Judy Blue Eyes is Still 7 Minutes Too Long.

Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, Gemain Amphitheatre Columbus Ohio, August 29^th 2006

Last night was a lot of fun, yes you heard me right, last night in the year of our lord 2006. However if you ignored the attire and the lack of cannabis smoke in the air, if you were seated too far away to see the age on the band members faces, if you didn’t look at the Jumbotron, it could have been 1970. There were peace signs and long hair, there were the sounds of CSN&Y singing a protest song. The funny thing was, the song was written 35 years ago about a different war, and a different time.

I am a fan of CSN&Y they have been a part of my personal soundtrack for many years, classics like “Ohio” and “Helplessly Hoping” songs that have been a staple on Album Oriented Radio since the songs were new. I am 40 years old, and by the time I became familiar with this music it was already many years past being relevant. As a rebellious teen in the 80’s I was listening to music that was considered “classic”. In 1982 the power and message of the music was just a reverberation, an echo of events long ago.

I remember the seduction of the 60’s era however, I remember wishing I had something to protest, to feel rebellious about, something to feel strongly and righteously against. I remember as a young man listening to music already 20 years in the can, imagining what it must have been like. When young people spoke out and made a change in the world, when it was ok to smoke weed and participate in free love. When these people, empowered, helped end a war and brought down a president all in the name of truth, justice and the American way.

Those kids are now in their 40’s and driving BMW’s and Lexus sedans, they are rich, successful and aging gracefully. Life has been good to them, life in America.

The band can still sing, and play their folksy style of guitar very well. They can still harmonize with the best of them and I liked hearing the music. The crowd was pretty evenly divided between young and older. The lawn was covered with kids in their 20’s with peace signs and tie dye, I wonder why they didn’t invent their own symbols of rebellion and social conscience, why are they recycling the 60’s?

The band played many new songs, all war protest songs or songs that derided the government, or defamed our president. The music was good, inspired and technically on the money. The boys of CSN&Y are professional musicians after all and know what they are doing. I simply couldn’t help but be struck by the hollowness of the message. This is not 1969 when they played the Woodstock Music and Art festival on Yasgurs farm. This is not 1970 when four students died at the hands of government troops inspiring the classic hit “Ohio”. This is not even 1974 when Richard Nixon resigned in disgrace after Watergate and the disasterous end of the Vietnam war. This is 2006 and George Bush 43 is in charge. There has been no Woodward and Bernstein to uncover a lie, there have been no shootings in the streets by the national guard, it is a different time altogether. And the innocence has ended, it ended a long time ago.

The message of CSN&Y was all about how our president is a crook (sound familiar) and about how our government lied to us (again sounds familiar doesn’t it?) and how the war is awful and we should get out right now. The thing is, I would bet out of 2600 young men that tragically lost their lives serving our nation, no one in that crowd knew one. In Vietnam there were 50,000 casualties, body bags on the news every night, and almost everyone knew somebody affected by the war. The entire thing is just recycled, and hollow. It is ok to protest the war in Iraq, it is even ok to disagree with presidential policy, but the vitriol has no sting today. It has all been done before.

Slf