David Crosby shares unreleased demo off ‘If I Could Only Remember My Name’ reissue

If you're unfamiliar with If I Could Only Remember My Name, it's the definitive David Crosby album, the culmination of the psychedelic folk experiments he had tried out in The Byrds and CSN(Y) and the first time he had written an entire album in that realm. And though it's technically a solo album, it's also kind of a supergroup, featuring other members of CSNY, the Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, Quicksilver Messenger Service, Joni Mitchell, and more. Jerry Garcia especially played a big role in it. Here's an excerpt of our review:

The folky, shambolic, Neil Young and Graham Nash-assisted "Music Is Love" opens the album on its most CSNY-like note, though it's even more of an overt hippie anthem than "Wooden Ships" or the Joni Mitchell-penned "Woodstock" or anything else the group had released prior, and the record just gets weirder from there. The radio-friendliness disappears by track two, "Cowboy Movie," eight minutes of jammy psych-rock that finds Crosby backed by half of the Grateful Dead and sounds as freeform and improvisational as anything the Dead were doing on stage in that era. Songs like "Tamalpais High (At About 3)" and "What Are Their Names" marry the glistening, acid-soaked instrumentals of Deadhead faves like "Dark Star" and "St. Stephen" to the painstakingly beautiful vocal harmonies that Crosby penned in The Byrds and CSN(Y). "Traction in the Rain" reminds you that all Crosby needs to hypnotize the listener is his voice and acoustic guitar, and that -- as a psychedelic folk singer -- he could rival Tim Buckley or Syd Barrett or Vashti Bunyan or any of the other cultishly-loved solo artists who were reevaluated as underrated pioneers during the 2000s freak folk boom. On "Orleans" -- a harmony-laden arrangement of a French traditional fueled by several overdubs of Crosby's own voice -- he practically invents the style of Fleet Foxes' first album. On album closer "I'd Swear There Was Somebody Here," he leans into the studio-as-instrument approach and creates the kind of audio mindfuck that Panda Bear would make a career out of, using almost nothing more than his voice and effects.

Read the full review here.

This is the second David Crosby-related 50th anniversary reissue that Rhino put out this year, the first being the super deluxe edition of CSNY's Déjà Vu (order yours). Croz is also still active, and earlier this year he released the new album For Free.