Monday, September 12, 2011

No. 997 -- King Midas in Reverse


Performer: Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young
Songwriters: Allan Clarke, Tony Hicks, Graham Nash
Original Release: single, Butterfly (The Hollies)
Year: 1967
Definitive Version: Four Way Street (Expanded Edition), 1992

I’ve never heard The Hollies' version. I would suspect that one could find it on YouTube (aka the Greatest Site in Internet History—at least after the late, great BaseballTruth.com, of course) or somesuch location.

When I got my first CD player in 1990 ($260 for a Sony six-disc changer, kiddies), I went through a major rebuying of my favorite albums. I was not really in a big CSNY phase at that time, so I held off on Four Way Street until I read in Rolling Stone that CSNY was going to re-release it in 1992 as an expanded edition. It was all to the good, of course, but I was disappointed that the band decided to add only four acoustic songs—no electric. They all were solo selections—one per letter—tacked to the end of the acoustic disc, which seemed to have a particular order. In other words, the edition was merely a bonus rather than a proper expansion.

The highlight is Neil Young’s 9-minute medley of The Loner, Cinnamon Girl and Down By the River. King Midas was Nash’s contribution, and when I hear it I have vague recollections of my Grand Blanc apartment, which I’m sure I’ll talk about more later, with its orange shag carpet and wood paneling straight out of the ’70s—or even ’60s. In some ways, it was like living in my own bad basement.

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