Buffalo Springfield . . . Again

As a percentage of recorded repertoire, I probably have more Buffalo Springfield on my playlist than any other artist - 23 of their 34 (or is it 35? more on that later) recorded songs.  They were only together for a short time but three of the band members, Richie Furay, Stephen Stills, and Neil Young, went on to long and successful careers.  While the Springfield's drummer, Dewey Martin, was okay, bassist Bruce Palmer was terrific, something I only discovered years later when listening to their albums on better audio systems.

The first album by the L.A. based band (though Young and Palmer hailed from Canada, and Neil had previously been in a band with Rick James!!) was released on December 5, 1966.  Titled simply as Buffalo Springfield it was a mild success.  I'd read about the band in some magazine and intrigued by the article, though I'd never heard any of their music, went into New York shortly after it was released to (I think) Sam Goody's, which was THE place to find the widest selection of music, and purchased the album.

I really liked the record.  It was fresh sounding and original.  All the songs were written by either Stills or Young; Furay was to start contributing tunes on the second album.  Great harmonies, intriguing lyrics on the Young songs, with Furay singing lead on most.  

However, the album was marred by its horrible production.  The arrangements were mediocre, there was no bottom (bass and drums barely there), and it sounded tinny.  Even with that it was enjoyable.

There is an oddity about that first album.  The version I still have can no longer be found.  The December 5 release contained 12 songs.  However, later in December, the band released a single, For What It's Worth, which was not on the album.  Written by Stills in November 1966 in the aftermath of the Sunset Strip riots, For What It's Worth, became the first and only hit single released by Buffalo Springfield, rising to #7 on the Billboard charts by the spring of 1967.  Trying to capitalize on its popularity, Atco Records released a new version of the first album in March, adding For What It's Worth and bumping another tune, Baby Don't Scold Me off the album.   For what's it's worth, For What It's Worth is one of my least favorite Springfield songs.

But what catchy songs.  The album starts off in high gear with Stills' Go And Say Goodbye.  His other contributions are strong, including Leave, featuring the first of Neil Young's trademark blistering guitar solos, and Hot Dusty Roads, a favorite of my high school buddies and I to harmonize on as we drove randomly around our home town.

Young's songwriting efforts included the weird and wonderful Nowadays Clancy Can't Even Sing, which veers between 4/4 and 3/4 time.  Not yet confident of his voice, Neil declined the vocal letting Richie take the lead.

Neil's other outstanding effort is Flying On The Ground Is Wrong, with its interesting chord structure and middle section.  And I love this lyric:

City lights at a country fair
Never shine but always glare
If I'm bright enough to see you
You're just too dark to care

Though For What It's Worth hit the Top Ten as a single, the album only had middling success.

 

Ten months later, on October 30, 1967, the band released Buffalo Springfield Again.  I consider this one of the finest rock albums ever made, an electic mix of sounds and styles that works together and would not be released today.  The album, produced by Jack Nitzsche, sounds great.  Listen to any song from the first album and then to the opening of Mr Soul, the first song on Again, and you immediately hear the difference.

The first side of the album (yes, kids, albums had sides back then) is Perfect.  Young's Mr Soul opens with its punch lyrics, harmonies and a searing guitar solo.  Next up A Child's Claim To Fame by Richie with James Burton on dobro, a catchy, country-inflected tune.  Stills gets the third slot with Everydays with its sleek, jazzy sound, accented by electric piano.  Then it's back to Neil on the ethereal, haunting, and orchestral Expecting To Fly.  The side closes with a stunning transition from the strings of Expecting to Fly to the slashing guitar on Bluebird by Stills with its closing lines; Do you think she loves you?/Do you think at all?  The dueling guitars of Stills and Young soar and it ends with the unexpected banjo play out.

The second side is strong but not as consistent as the first but it contains what I think is a Perfect pop song, Rock and Roll Woman.  Lyrics, harmony, music and all in 2:47.

 

Even as Again was being recorded the band started to fray.  Bruce Palmer was arrested for marijuana possession and deported for several months and Neil Young, for the first time, temporarily quit the band.  Neil was to repeat this behavior with Stills and Furay repeatedly over the next 35 years.

Like its predecessor, Again was only a middling success, but unlike the first album there was no hit single.

I still remember reading a glowing review of the album in Crawdaddy, the first magazine devoted to covering rock music in a critical way.  Sort of a early version of Rolling Stone.  I was a subscriber for a year or two.

Released on July 30, 1968 Last Time Around, the third and final Springfield album, was only done to fulfill the band's contractual commitments, but it is a fine recording nonetheless; its sound, while not up to the standards of Again, is much better than the first album.  The band was completely fractured by this point, as Young had definitively quit, an act symbolized on the album's cover with Neil looking in a different direction than his band-mates.  The record, stitched together by Richie Furay and producer Jim Messina, only contained two songs penned by Young, and only one on which he actually sings and plays.  The latter is the gentle I Am A Child, the former the gorgeous On The Way Home, sung by Furay (though we rush ahead to save our time/ we are only what we feel/ and I love you/ can you feel it now?).

Furay was hitting his stride on Last Time Around.  Along with the vocals he contributed It's So Hard To Wait, Kind Woman (which became a mainstay for the rest of his career, and featured Rusty Young, who was to join him in Poco, on pedal steel) and the striking oddity of The Hour Of Not Quite Rain, which sounds unlike anything else recorded by the band.  Not Quite Rain originated in a contest by an Los Angeles radio station promotion arranged with the band, in which listeners were asked to submit lyrics which the Springfield would put to music and record.  Micki Callen's poetical lyrics won and Furay composed the music.

The compositions by Stills show his sound evolving into what we heard later in Crosby, Stills & Nash and in his solo career on songs like Four Days Gone and Questions. 

And then it was over.  In August, Young began recording his first solo album, released in January 1969.  At the same time, Stills was getting together with David Crosby and Graham Nash, while Furay, Messina, and Rusty Young formed Poco.

Intially, Stills had the greatest success as CSN became probably the biggest band in the world during 1969-70.  When Young joined CSN in '70 it was seen as a boost to his career, which only saw him become a superstar with the release of After The Gold Rush in late '70 and Harvest in early '72.  Meanwhile Poco received positive critical recognition but achieved only middling success, like Springfield, with record buyers.

Stills also saw initial success with his solo career in the early 70s but that soon faded.  CSN continued as a popular touring band for decades but has not been a creative force since the 70s.  Richie Furay's career with Poco ended when he left the band in 1974, and he has been in several other groups over the years, including as an opening act for a Linda Ronstadt tour in 2006.  In the early 80s he became senior pastor at a non-denominational Christian church in Colorado.  Richie's announced a farewell performance concert in June 2022.

Neil Young has had the longest and most successful career, releasing more than 40 albums between 1969 and 2021, and though the quality has been erratic, he's been spectacularly good at his peak.  Neil is not a good collaborator; he's a guy who needs to be in charge, which is why he's walked out on Springfield, Crosby, Still, Nash & Young, and on Stills and Furay several times.  He finally found the perfect match in Crazy Horse, a bar band that plays anything Neil wants, and provides a platform over which he can do as he pleases with his guitar solos.

I saw Neil play with Crazy Horse in 1986 and it was as good as I could have hoped, with Young's guitar soaring over everything.  In 2001 I finally saw Crosby, Stills, and Nash after being talked into it by my sister.  I was reluctant because they had a reputation back in their heyday of not sounding good in concert and their music sounded dated to me.  I went and I was wrong.  Very good show.  Harmonies were tight, Stills could still really play guitar and Suite: Judy Blue Eyes, which I'd long been sick of, sounded ten times better than the recorded version.

Spring Is Here

Spring training, that is.  Attended my first game yesterday - the Dodgers v the Diamondbacks at Salt River Fields.  Though baseball has done its best to discourage me, it was still fun to see a game.

Clayton Kershaw started for the Dodgers (that's him throwing in the photo).  Didn't throw over 90 but that glorious curveball was working.  Went four innings, gave up one hit, no walks, and made it look easy.  At this point in his career he's an incredibly efficient pitcher.  The Diamondbacks scored five runs in the bottom of the 7th and won 5-3.

Time Fades Away

Cause you know how time fades, time fades away

You know how time fades away

- Neil Young, Time Fades Away

Bill James recently responded to two questions on the "Hey Bill" section of Bill James Online (and you really should spend $3 a month for access to everything on his site), that touch on issues we've often discussed, (1) how memory and the passing of time impacts our evaluation of people and events and (2) how changing standards impact our evaluation.   While Bill is answering questions specific to baseball, his responses, as they often do, apply much more broadly to how we think about and discuss history.

The first question was why the Baseball Writers Association rejected electing Johnny Mize and Jim Bunning to the Hall of Fame, though both were eventually selected by the Veteran's Committee; Mize in 1981 and Bunning in 1996.  Mize and Bunning's careers were not long ago, the former from 1936 to 1953, the latter from 1955 to 1971.  James' response is they were not elected early because they did not meet the HOF standards of the time, though by today's baseball analytical standards they are clearly qualified.

But the essential point here is that the way of evaluating players in that era was COMPLETELY different.  It was entirely about meeting standards--a process that worked 80% of the time, but failed in some cases.  The questions of "How many games did he win for his team?" or "How much better was he than an average player?" or "How much better was he than a replacement player" or "What was his effective winning percentage?" . ... those type of questions absolutely were never asked.  They were zero percent of the process.  There was no understanding that you COULD evaluate players in that way, and there was no one calculating how players would rank if you DID evaluate them that way.  It couldn't be done; the background research had not been done to make it possible to do that.  

 

Prejudice against Mize based on personal factors didn't have anything at all to do Mize not being elected.  What it was, rather, is that the entire process by which we now evaluate players, and by which we now recognize Mize to have been a great player, simply did not exist at the time that he was on the ballot, and he was not recognized as a great player.  He was thought of as being the way we think now about Carlos Delgado or Mark Teixeira or Tino Martinez or Mike Sweeney or Ryan Howard or Adrian Gonzalez--and don't get me wrong; some of those guys may deserve Hall of Fame selection, too, when all the dust settles, but he was thought of the way that we think of those players.  

 

Bunning is essentially the same; he is not an obvious Hall of Famer in terms of meeting the traditional standards by which players were evalauted before sabermetrics.  The number one identifier of greatness for a starting pitcher before sabermetrics was winning 20 games.  The number of 20-win seasons by a pitcher is a very, very, VERY good predictor of Hall of Fame selection before 1980, and somewhat after.  Bob Lemon is in the Hall of Fame because he won 20 games 7 times--period.  Catfish is in the Hall of Fame because, in addition to some other selling points, he won 20 games five straight times.  That's all it is; there isn't anything more complicated than that.   

The second question was about Pete Rose and Willie Mays.  In response to another question on players who got the most out of their talent, James singled out Willie Mays and two other players as uniquely getting over their career 90% of what they were capable of.  The followup question asked whether Pete Rose could be considered in the same category - while less talented, he got a lot out of what he had.  Bill rejected the premise of the question.

Well. . .I think it misses something.  Rose was unique.   There is no other Pete Rose.  He not only hustled, he made a great SHOW out of hustling.  He RAN to the batter's box, running all out, as hard as he could run in that 60-foot sprint between the on-deck circle and the batter's box.  He RAN to first base when he walked--HARD.  Top speed.  He ran to the dugout at the end of the inning; he ran to his position at the start of the inning.  

 

There were other elements to his uniqueness.  He had a philosophy of competitiveness that he talked about and tried to share with others.  I remember one thing he said, "My Dad gets angry when a football player calls for a fair catch."   He charged into Ray Fosse full speed BECAUSE YOU WERE SUPPOSED TO DO THAT.  

 

He came to represent a set of values, a set of expectations, and he was, before his fall, very widely admired because of that.   It's impossible to explain to a younger reader, because the reference points have disappeared.   It's like this story.   William F. Buckley once organized a huge treasure hunt game for his children, in which he took the family's silverware and much of their china and buried it on the family's island property, I think on Martha's Vinyard but it may have been some other Island.  He did that one weekend, planning the Treasure Hunt for the next weekend, but that week a hurricane moved through, and tore the island apart, throwing around millions of tons of sand and completely re-designing the coast line.  They were never able to find the family's silverware and china.   Buckley's wife was not pleased.  

 

It's like that; there was a hurricane that moved through Rose's life, and all of the reference points to what he had once been were destroyed.   

 

Rose was a unique, one-of-a-kind player.   Willie Mays was a unique, one-pf-a-kind player.  Do they have certain traits in common?  Sure.   But were they essentially the same?  Definitely not.   They were both unique.  They were much more different than the same.  

Bill doesn't actually answer the question asked which focused on getting the most out of your talent and abilities.  But what he does reference is how memory changes our perception, particularly if you weren't there at the time.  I remember the Pete Rose discussed in the first two paragraphs.  If you don't what you are more likely to remember is the gambling scandal and his suspension and a lot of questionable behavior and bad judgment since his banning. 

One aspect of Hey Bill I particularly enjoy is that his responses are stream of consciousness.  It is evident he does not revise, edit, or spellcheck his responses.  You are hearing what is on his mind, even if it is sometimes not directly on point, or wanders off halfway through the response.  No matter what he is saying, or how he says it, the responses are always interesting, even when he is in his Jamesian gruff or dismissive mode.

As I get older I see the old guideposts and common references fade away.  What I've experienced is no longer the common experience.  Historical or cultural references I could make 20 or 30 years ago and expect a broad spectrum of people to recognize have disappeared.  The result is my thinking context is fundamentally different from someone a generation or more younger.  It's the same process every generation goes through as it ages.

---------------------------

James full response on Bunning/Mize question:

I think you are not processing how baseball careers were evalauted at that time.  Mize would have hit the ballot about 1958, 1959, sometime in there.  In that era, and for 30 years after that, players were evaluated by whether or not they met STANDARDS.  The absolute standards of Hall of Fame accomplishment were 500 homers and 3,000 hits (and 300 wins for pitchers.)  Mize being essentially a power hitter, the central test for him was whether he had hit 500 homers.  He didn't get CLOSE to 500 homers, winding up with .. ..what was it, 359 or something.  Not checking the details as I go.  He didn't get close to 3,000 hits.  

 

There were other standards that were important as well, of course--a .300 batting average, winning batting championships, winning MVP Awards, holding  major records, and playing for championship teams.  

 

Mize was close to DiMaggio in terms of Home Runs and career length, and not terribly far behind him in batting average, but DiMaggio was a completely different animal; he had won three Most Valauble Player Awards, was a great defensive player and had been a key figure on many championship teams.   Mize was not a GREAT defensive player, had not won any MVP Awards and was not a key figure on any championship teams, although he was a spear carrier on a couple of Yankee teams at the end of his career.  His image was badly hurt by the phenomenon of the 1947 New York Giants, who hit more home runs than any team in history up to that point--which was a very well known fact at the time--but had finished fourth.  The idea was that "they're not really great players; they're just guys who hit a bunch of cheap home runs in the Polo Grounds, where it was less than 300 feet down the foul lines."  

 

But the essential point here is that the way of evaluating players in that era was COMPLETELY different.  It was entirely about meeting standards--a process that worked 80% of the time, but failed in some cases.  The questions of "How many games did he win for his team?" or "How much better was he than an average player?" or "How much better was he than a replacement player" or "What was his effective winning percentage?" . ... those type of questions absolutely were never asked.  They were zero percent of the process.  There was no understanding that you COULD evaluate players in that way, and there was no one calculating how players would rank if you DID evaluate them that way.  It couldn't be done; the background research had not been done to make it possible to do that.  

 

Prejudice against Mize based on personal factors didn't have anything at all to do Mize not being elected.  What it was, rather, is that the entire process by which we now evaluate players, and by which we now recognize Mize to have been a great player, simply did not exist at the time that he was on the ballot, and he was not recognized as a great player.  He was thought of as being the way we think now about Carlos Delgado or Mark Teixeira or Tino Martinez or Mike Sweeney or Ryan Howard or Adrian Gonzalez--and don't get me wrong; some of those guys may deserve Hall of Fame selection, too, when all the dust settles, but he was thought of the way that we think of those players.  

 

Bunning is essentially the same; he is not an obvious Hall of Famer in terms of meeting the traditional standards by which players were evalauted before sabermetrics.  The number one identifier of greatness for a starting pitcher before sabermetrics was winning 20 games.  The number of 20-win seasons by a pitcher is a very, very, VERY good predictor of Hall of Fame selection before 1980, and somewhat after.  Bob Lemon is in the Hall of Fame because he won 20 games 7 times--period.  Catfish is in the Hall of Fame because, in addition to some other selling points, he won 20 games five straight times.  That's all it is; there isn't anything more complicated than that.   

 

Bunning won 20 games only one time.   There are other standards, there were other standards that were relevant to Hall of Fame selections 30 years ago, but Bunning's 224-184 career won-lost record is not really of a Hall of Fame standard.  I would guess that MOST starting pitchers with records similar to that are not in the Hall of Fame.  (Dennis Martinez, 245-193; Frank Tanana, 240-236; Luis Tiant, 229-172, George Mullin, 227-196; Mel Harder, 223-186; Paul Derringer, 223-212; Hooks Dauss, 222-182; Jerry Reuss, 220-191.)   Bunning never pitched for a championship team, and was badly hurt by the collapse of the 1964 Phillies, in the same way that Mize was hurt by the 1947 Giants.  

 

It was NOT prejudice.  It was not.  The processes by which these players are now recognized as great players simply did not exist, or carried no weight in the discussions.  There was a different process of recognizing greatness.  By THAT process, Mize and Bunning fell short.  

 

An Honorable Man

Damian Lewis performing an excerpt from Marc Antony's funeral oration speech from Shakespeare's Julius Caesar.  Wonderfully done.  It is a reminder of the brilliance of Shakespeare's language.  How many of these phrases have become a part of our common heritage, so easily familiar to us four hundred years later?

 

What remains most puzzling about the assassination is the lack of thorough planning by the conspirators beyond the act of killing Caesar.   Though there were many plotters, Brutus, because of his reputation for integrity, fidelity to the Republic, and possibly because of the rumor that he was Caesar's son (probably not), was the key participant, and it was Brutus who insisted that Caesar be the sole target.  Antony, Caesar's chief subordinate, who could have easily been killed, was instead deliberately spared.  It was as if the conspirators thought once Caesar was dead the Republic would spontaneously regenerate itself, a fatal error, compounded by allowing Antony to speak at Caesar's funeral.

In reality we don't know precisely what Antony said, and he certainly would not have said it in the same tone as Lewis.  Immediately after the assassination, public opinion was divided in Rome.  Antony would have been speaking in a public forum to a large crowd without the benefit of modern amplification.  His speech, of necessity, was pitched more broadly and more loudly.  Whatever he said, it was effective, rousing the crowd, generating outrage and anger.  What was now a mob left the scene and began hunting down the conspirators who had fled to their homes and strongholds.  Eventually they were to flee Rome altogether.  Within two years, most of the conspirators were dead.

Caesar's death triggered more than a decade of civil wars.  First, between his supporters and his killers and then among his supporters culminating in the conflict between Octavian (Caesar's nephew) and Marc Antony and Cleopatra.  It was only with Octavian's victory at Actium in 31 BC, Antony and Cleopatra's suicides the following year, and, by order of Octavian, the murder of Caesarion, the 13-year old child of Cleopatra and Julius Caesar, that the civil strife ended.

We're #1!

Balding got so excited by this culinary breakthrough, he couldn't even spell correctly!  Apart from this his twitter feed on China is outstanding.

Personally I'm disappointed Hostess used artificial flavors instead of natural Twinkies flavors.

 

No wonder other countries hate us: they can only envy America's level of innoventiveness pic.twitter.com/iYz5nPZdKl

— Ukranian Hacker Balding 大老板 (@BaldingsWorld) March 25, 2022

Liminal Spaces

Liminal Space - a location which is a transition between two other locations, or states of being

Liminal Spaces - a weird, but compelling, twitter feed

 

pic.twitter.com/87PJgLYK5K

— Liminal Spaces (@SpaceLiminalBot) March 19, 2022

 

pic.twitter.com/Vmx2QDYaYx

— Liminal Spaces (@SpaceLiminalBot) March 18, 2022

pic.twitter.com/jCAmwP1pP9

— Liminal Spaces (@SpaceLiminalBot) March 17, 2022