David Lindley Boltzmann's Atom

After spending nearly nine months as a guest of the Texas penal system, veteran rocker David Crosby emerged from his incarceration sober and brimming with ideas that had previously been stunted due to decades of substance abuse. In many ways Oh Yes I Can (1989)—Crosby’s second solo effort during his two-decade-plus career—is a musical rebuttal to his equally vital debut effort, If I Could Only Remember My Name (1971). Even the album’s title appears to indicate his newly achieved success and freedom from the haze that so indelibly influenced the earlier compositions.

As two of the most distinctive artists from the '60s and '70s given their work in CSNY, Crosby & Nash also did great work as a duo act. Wind on the Water was released in 1975 after the previous year's CSNY reunion tour and the dissolution of their contract at Atlantic. In many respects, this alliance made perfect sense.

Ex-Talking Head David Byrne and actor/composer Ryuichi Sakamoto (who co-starred in the film) each get a side of this beautiful score to Bernardo Bertolucci's Academy Award-winning film, and each took home Oscars and Grammys for their efforts.

In a few years this will be a mere curiosity, not the abomination of marketing that it now seems. David Helfgott, one hopes, will be happily retired on the earnings from his 15 minutes of fame, and the movie Shine which documented his mental illness and aborted an attempt at a professional pianist career will be consigned to the video rental shelves. But for now, unfortunately, we have before us a document of a pianist whose fingers and imagination have not developed singly nor in the amalgam necessary to be considered an artist.