Ever since I’ve been involved in music, it’s seemed there’s been one crowd or another telling me who I’m supposed to like.<\/p>\n
In college, the music majors all dug the Alan Parsons Project. \u00a0“It’s like…above rock”, they mewled. \u00a0Perhaps it was; it was also beneath interesting.<\/p>\n
There were others.<\/p>\n
(Below the jump, because of all the videos)<\/p>\n
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Back in high school, and running at least part way through college, one of the “Yougottas” was the various incarnations of Crosby, Stills and Nash (sometimes with, sometimes without Young).<\/p>\n
And in the days before music videos and ubiquitous internet reporting about all things celebrity, all I had to go by was the tale of the vinyl or the tape; I didn’t know so much what an insufferable bunch of flower children they were; I didn’t see Graham Nash’s constant mugging, David Crosby’s smug Malibu politics and eternal hippie-dippiness, Steven Stills’ pointless prickliness.<\/p>\n
But I did hear Stills’ interchangeable, meandering guitar style (on the electric, anyway – he’s always been a very capable acoustic guitar stylist). \u00a0The endless procession of minor-to-augmented-seventh chord progressions. \u00a0And always, always the music – as over-ornamented in its 3-4 part augmented-key harmonies as any Mariah Carey obligato-ing, and\u00a0Crosby’s ninthing and Nash’s way-too-high, way-too-nasal, annoyingly-perfect harmony:<\/p>\n