If I Could Only Remember My Name by David Crosby
At first listen, I agreed with the critics from 50 years ago who declared that David Crosby’s solo debut was a disaster. But hearing it repeatedly, the looseness of it all becomes an engaging mood flow, a mellow druggy jam whose all-star cast of psychedelic era musicians must have been grooving on the slippery harmonies. The strongest track, “Cowboy Movie,” recalls the sagebrush psychosis of Neil Young’s “Down by the River.” But although Young is one of the album’s many guests, that’s Jerry Garcia on guitar, playing with a different kind of distortion than usual for him.
Disc two of the 50th anniversary edition is an almost more enjoyable curation of mostly unreleased material recorded before and during the If I Could Only Remember session. They include moody low-key solo guitar recordings that suggest unrealized ideas as well as demos for completed songs with the sort of beautiful melancholy Crosby brought—at his best—to Stills and Nash.
