Graham Nash And David Crosby Whistling Down The Wire

Maybe it took more than nine months to come up with another batch of first-rate material, or maybe David Crosby and Graham Nash were saving their first-rate material for the next Crosby, Stills & Nash album, but Whistling Down the Wire, their third and final new studio album as a duo, was a distinctly second-rate effort. As usual, Crosby's loosely arranged jazz-blues tunes were offset by Nash's more pop-oriented songs, but this time around neither of them came up with anything memorable. Crosby seemed most comfortable on his "Dancer," an instrumental, while Nash expressed himself in poetic metaphors that were difficult to follow. In "J.B.'s [Jackson Browne's?] Blues," he seemed to have what be considered a potentially critical message to deliver to a friend, but to his wider audience it seemed merely cryptic. Happily, Crosby and Nash bounced back the following year when they reunited with Stephen Stills for CSN.

Graham Nash - Reflections (2009) {3CD Box Rhino-Atlantic 8122-79935-8}
EAC rip (secure mode) | FLAC (tracks)+CUE+LOG -> 1.33 Gb | MP3 @320 -> 540 Mb | Artwork | 5% repair rar
© 2009 Atlantic / Rhino | 8122-79935-8
Rock / Folk Rock / Classic Rock / Pop / Soft Rock

He's been part of two huge-selling international superstar rock groups, and recorded some very popular albums on his own and with David Crosby. Yet Graham Nash has never been thought of as a talent in his own right the way that, to varying degrees, either of his three bandmates in Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young have. This three-CD, 64-track box set can be seen as both a way of focusing the spotlight on Nash's work both within and outside of his famous bands, and also as a career retrospective of sorts, spanning as it does about 40 years of recordings. Like almost all such box sets, however, it won't be as balanced as everyone would like between his various career phases and contexts, or contain as much in the way of revelatory rarities as some would hope.

David Crosby & Graham Nash - Crosby-Nash, Live (1977) {MCA 088112052-2 rel 2000}
XLD rip (secure mode) | FLAC (tracks)+CUE+LOG -> 329 Mb | MP3 @320 -> 124 Mb
Full Artwork @ 300 dpi (jpg) -> 10 Mb | 5% repair rar
© 1977, 2000 MCA Records | 088 112 052-2
Rock / Folk-Rock / Pop / Soft Rock

At the time of its original release in November of 1977, Live was a disappointment. As a single LP in the wake of Wind on the Water and Whistling Down the Wire, it seemed a backhanded insult to this duo, who had a lengthy and illustrious history (on the other hand, ABC Records, who released it, was virtually out of business at the time). The music also seemed somewhat perfunctory, and the content offered almost no recent material, just an odd choice of older songs. The 2000-vintage CD fixed some of those problems, adding two key songs and improving Live in just about every way possible.