Crosby and Nash – Another Stoney Evening

 

Music: B+     PCM 2.0: B-     MLP 5.1: B+     DTS 96/24: B+     Extras: C

 

 

Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young all had a superb career as a group as well as individually.  Their efforts collectively especially as CSNY, versus just as CSN, are amazing.  Combining beautiful harmonies with rich vocals supported by passionate writing that was just as beautiful as it was truthful, which was not always a beautiful picture to paint.  It is fair to say that their observations of the 60’s and 70’s are heard with every note, every word, and in everything that they stood for. 

 

Crosby and Nash contained just as much zest as the larger group, which is quickly heard from their 1971 show Another Stoney Evening, which featured the two working with acoustic guitars and piano arrangements doing some of the classic CSNY numbers as well as material from their solo projects.  Check out Graham Nash’s Song for Survivors DVD-Audio review on this site.

 

Track Listing

 

Anticipatory Crowd

Déjà vu

Wooden Ships

Man in the Mirror

Orleans

I Used to be a King

Traction in the Rain

Lee Shore

Southbound Train

Laughing

Triad

Where Will I Be?

Strangers Room

Immigration Man

Guinevere

Teach Your Children

Exit Sounds

 

What is always a challenge when listening to a live performance is comparing it back and forth with its studio form.  There are some musicians who can actually pull off a live sound that is similar to what would be achieved in a studio setting.  The hardest part of course is making everything clear and accurate, but then again there can be something raw about the live setting that makes it more authentic, since its not as polished.  With musicians like those in CSNY they certainly had an edge playing live since their studio wound was very organic and raw to begin with.  Take for example Neil Young’s solo project with his Harvest album, which was recorded in a barn!  That type of setting allowed for a richer, more wholesome sound that a studio would have glossed over.  This particular session for Another Stoney Evening is similar allowing all the intimacy to be felt and heard.

 

As a DVD-Audio, this is one of the few to date that captures a live session, so expectations are reserved for something different than what a normal studio album would be on the format.  The audio options are PCM 2.0, high resolution MLP 5.1, and the DTS 96/24.  The PCM delivers a very solid presentation that some fans might prefer especially since it cuts back on some of the reverb and other ambience that gets thrown into the 5.1 mixes.  However, those 5.1 mixes deliver a very authentic recreation of a live session with the guitars dominating out of the left and right front, while vocals are more centralized.  There has been very little tampering done to the mix for the 5.1 in order to try and make it sound fancy as the case with some of DVD-Audios.  The DTS 96/24 does not sound as clear as the MLP, but there is a slightly more prominent low end in the DTS that some might favor.  Although this recording is over 30 years old it does not sound as dated as some might expect.  The advantage of the evening consisting in what would be now considering an ‘unplugged’ session is that no fancy equipment was used that typically dates material.  Instead the instruments come across full, rich, and as invigorating as they did then. 

 

In any case this marks a very early effort at bringing forth some live material into the format and with pleasing results as this, we can only hope for more.  DTS Entertainment is bringing forth more titled with the higher 96/24 bit rate, which is making a bigger difference since Queen’s A Night at the Opera debut.  One can only hope for more material from CSNY on the format as well, which has been on hiatus in the world of DVD-Video as well.  Neil Young has the most amount of work available both DVD-Video and DVD-Audio.

 

 

-   Nate Goss