What a pleasant surprise.

When the Stephen Stills name showed up in my email box I found myself suddenly thinking of such songs as "Black Queen" and "To A Flame"...

It's been a long time for me.  I'd say this goes back to when I was 16 and had just left home.  I was living in an attic somewhere and was somehow fond of hanging off of my fire escape watching people passing by... Probably... it was winter time.

It was a simple matter of curiosity that allowed me to go this far back to see how I would respond to the music of this musician.  In a few moments I was surprsied to hear what I suspect was an unreleased selection about a very deep-sea dive some 200 feet down.  The words are mesmerizing.  I followed every detail.  This sort of story is why I believe I was attracted so much to the original solo album released by this artist.

There is some distortion in the recording... I've worked in radio for years and it is always disapointing to discover how frequently the technicians responsible for live concert work tend to be sloppy,  excerting a sort of hit and run policy towards audio.  The main problem being that most people simply listen over auditorium speakers instead of headphones and it appears to sound great.  If only the technician had put on his headphones long enough to check for over-modulation.

Minor audio imperfections aside,  the performances are quite passable... I would say such luck that Neil Young cancelled his tour and that Stephen Stills put together this small ensemble,  it was completely appropriate for his musical selections.

Having enjoyed the principle portion of the program,  I come to second surprise.  Further into the program there is a small mini-concert inside of a concert with a pleasant kind of intimacy in which the artist goes off into some cover songs.  I suppose at this point Stephen Stills was playing simply some of the songs he personally has liked.  A bit unlike what one might expect to hear at a major concert,  and a bit more like one might expect to hear an artist play among friends at some very late night moment in after hours at a coffee house,  Stephen is playing "Everybody's Talking At Me."  This is followed by some basic blues. It is very un-commercial.

To sum up,  there is a lot that this recording reveals in the immediate appeal of this artist's first solo album that showed roots,  a love of simple jams and late night rambles.

Thank You to the Palladium and well,  even the techy who was perhaps more interested in listening to the musician perform than attending in great detail to his sound archiving of this 1976 event.

Thanks Wolfgang.