Retrospective: The Best of Buffalo Springfield (1968)
MVC Rating: 4.5/$$$
Their biggest hit, the Stephen Stills-penned “For What it’s Worth.’ is a cool relic of the 1960s protest era, which will still hit you in the face with its, ‘Stop, children, what’s that sound everybody look what’s going down.’
It does, however, take a little out of my admiration of the protest song, when I find out it is essentially a song about young folks partying loudly in a Sunset Strip neighborhood and the neighbors complaining, leading to counterculture kids protesting and police, perhaps, using a little too much leverage on the billy clubs. Curfew riots, they called them.
‘Paranoia strikes deep, into your life it will creep.’
So I’m thinking Buffalo Springfield on this one was cutting their teeth on this whole protest thing. And a little later, Neil Young, after leaving the Springfield, blew everybody out of the water with ‘Ohio’ the angry tour de force about four college kids shot dead at Kent State. Now that, at the least, is worth an angry diatribe. Tin soldiers and Nixon’s coming.
(Memo to myself: write a blog post listing top protest songs.)
Great songs on this retrospective, no need to get anything else from Springfield, unless you are a huge fan or collector. As good of a band as they were, they were only together a few years. Members went on to be in Poco, Crosby Stills Nash and (later) Young. Great incubator of talent. Members of the The Byrds and Hollies were also in that rich cross-polenization.
I tend to like the Young songs best and have remained a huge fan for decades.
Young’s authorship on Springfield songs include, the Beatleesque Mr. Soul, and the fine Broken Arrow. with its relevant Native American references.
Others: the fragile, I Am a Child, the beautiful Expecting to Fly, and Nowadays Clancy Can’t Even Sing.
From Broken Arrow:
“Did you see them, did you see them? Did you see them in the river? They were there to wave to you. Could you tell that the empty quiver, Brown skinned Indian on the banks That were crowded and narrow, Held a broken arrow?”
Counting down my 678 vinyl records before I die of brain disease.