Month: August 2011

…and somehow, I think the person most surprised by that fact may be David Crosby.

When he got kicked out of the Byrds in the late 1960s, he joined up with Stephen Stills, formerly of Buffalo Springfield, and Graham Nash, who had left the Hollies, to form what was generally considered to be the first “supergroup.” If I could remember the name of the group, I’d tell you. At least one of their first two albums, the latter with Neil Young, also formerly of Springfield, was in every dorm room at college. I saw CSN at some point in the 1980s at Albany’s Palace Theater.

Crosby was known for his left-leaning politics, and his excessive use of drugs and alcohol, which resulted in numerous arrests, multiple rehabs, and a liver transplant.

My sister Leslie gave me this album about a decade ago called CPR: Live at the Wiltern. Usually, she gives me religious material, but this was a 2-CD set, with the first album jazzy/noodly. The second album featured songs I knew: Long Time Gone, Deja Vu, Eight Miles High, Ohio, and Almost Cut My Hair. Turns out CPR stands for Crosby, Jeff Pevar, and keyboardist/vocalist James Raymond, who is the son Crosby never knew he had until years later.

My favorite David Crosby performances, though, were on the first season of The John Larroquette Show (1993-1994), where Crosby played Chester, sponsor to Larroquette’s John Hemingway, “a recovering alcoholic who becomes the manager of a big city bus station”. Crosby appeared in about a half dozen episodes of this “comedy noir”, then they got rid of the character Chester when the show lightened up in subsequent seasons; wish I could find those episodes online somewhere.

Here’s the title song from the CSNY album Déjà Vu.