Music Arcades: Buffalo Springfield: Boxed Set

This crops up just a few weeks after the Springfield played together again for the first time in 42 years (minus their original drummer and bass players: one of each deceased, but I'm not sure why Jim Messina wasn't there). There have been many rave reports. Here's a round-up of the "triumph" and the influential windbag Bob Lefsetz described the performance as "revelatory… the essence of music… the core of great songs and great playing never goes out of style". Here's the full audio and the best quality video I've seen (I love the way the fringe on Neil's jacket seems to have thinned out to the same degree as his hair with the passing years):

I wasn't there, but I was expecting Guy — who was down the front, as usual, as part of the International Rust Fest delegation — to be crowing about what I'd missed. So I was surprised when he said implied that people were getting carried away with the nostalgia of the event and hearing Richie Furay sing Neil's songs — as he did back in the day, as evidenced many times on these four discs.

I've forgotten almost all the history of Buffalo Springfield that I learned from five Neil Young biographies, apart from Bruce Palmer's drug busts, the dodgy managers, and the reputation for incendiary live performances. No live recordings are included here — I assume that none exist — but one track, Buffalo Stomp (Raga) — is unique in crediting all members as writers, suggesting it's an improvised jam — hints at what they might have sounded like live. It's quite extraordinary, almost like Can-meets-Soft-Machine, and stands out from everything around it. That aside, it's the demos that really charm on this listening. Mostly recordings of either Young, Stills or Furay alone or Stills and Furay together, they're really intimate and warm.

Back in February I was wondering which songs Alasdair Roberts played at the Hal-Wilner-curated Neil Young tribute show in Vancouver. I never found any audio bootlegs, but videos appeared on YouTube of him playing The Needle and the Damage Done and this song from 1967, One More Sign, which had never had an official release until this boxed set. Classic Alasdair:

It's easy to say with hindsight, but you can hear that Springfield were, with the possible exception of Buffalo Stomp (Raga), a band of several parts, rather than a whole. Still, they packed a hell of a lot into two years.