From this sample, these guys are all washed up...
CSNY/Deja Vu Live caught me totally by surprise.

From this sample, CSN&Y are all washed up...

First, it seems like the guys can't sing anymore. Their voices crack and rattle and they can't carry a tune individually; much less as a quartet. Their attempts at harmony were agonizing. I don't think you could smoke enough rope to make their singing sound good.

There were some moments, when I thought their instrumentals would rise up and drown out their singing, but as their guitar work came to the forefront, I realized their instruments weren't in tune and they weren't playing together; much less in the same key.

The venue acoustics didn't help matters, either. It sounded like they were playing in the largest tin bucket in the world and at opposite ends of the bucket to boot.

If you were there at the live concert and/or you just want to relive the moment when CSN&Y once more celebrated their, "freedom of speech", buy this CD.

If you're interested in good music, go back to their catalog and find some of their re-mastered and enhanced studio albums from the days when CSN&Y really were a powerful musical force.

4 Rock-Solid Stars, Well-Earned
Remember "Four Way Street?"

It was recorded June 2-June 7, 1970 at the Fillmore East.

Fast forward 38 years.

Neil's "Living With War" was a moment, an act of passion, and in the overall career sense of Neil Young as a member of Buffalo Springfield through the present, maybe not his best work as a songwriter-performer.

But if you'll take a look at that well-worn copy of "Four Way Street," you'll notice "Ohio"...and you'll realize that, for the most part, politics have been at the center of CSNY from the beginning.

They rock, and they hit a few sour notes, but all in all, as a 2008 document from a legendary band that deserves that status, Deja Vu Live is a solid 4-star effort. Search for the "Military Madness" videos on YouTube, and you'll want to own this CD.

Maybe the DVD will be better....
It's rather comical, leaving Neil in charge. The Barney Fife of CSNY does it again. He's been adrift aesthetically since David Briggs passed, and his errant judgment cuts across every aspect of his career, save PRAIRIE WIND and MASSEY HALL. What is on offer here is a very unrevealing cross section of some, and mostly his, songs from the Freedom of Speech tour. I caught the show in Hershey and this disc fails to capture the impact and power of the performance. How in the world you leave off OHIO as it segues into OVER AND OUT I'll never know. In the course of the concert, it was the single most effective 9 minutes of music that this group has ever done. It hit the crowd in the heart and it brought home exactly what has transpired in America over the past 28, and especially the most recent 8 years: a decimation of the US Consitution in the name of greed fueled by xenophobic intollerance and jesus whipping. A fallen empire on its knees....
Don't take my say so - look at Russia's current actions: Putin is fully aware of the impotence of W and his puppetmaster Cheney and sees an opportunity to arouse the Russian bear and re-invent totalitarian influence. W is too busy with Olympians gone wild in the volleyball sands, and a tied down military in the oil sands. God help you if your criticism gets heard.
That's what this tour was about, but a single CD edit of the many powerful performances by Stills (God Bless him, even as he battled cancer), Crosby (still the philosophical and political brains of teh outfit) and even Nash (whose performance transcended his usual hippie-cloyingness) would give you the impression that they were just along for the ride. Not so. But you start to understand why they get pissed at Ol Shakey. This isn't even as good as some of the bootlegs I have heard from this concert tour, so I would advise you to skip it, and hopefully the DVD will restore the integrity of the entire performance. It is better than TIME FADES AWAY, which again was a disaster as a document of a tour that, at least in Philadelphia, was the best live Neil Young concert I have seen or heard, ever.
Of course, who knows, maybe he is saving the good stuff for his massive Archive release on blu-ray (what on earth is the wait for a guy who uses first takes to commit his ouevre to blu-ray?). Hey, hey, my, my....

To have something you have to give something up!
It is very sad to witness some of the greatest artists of our generation forego (and therefor deprive us of) their art just to swim in the shallow pool of political ideology. It is hard enough to swallow when Nashville "entertainers" go this route for the other side of the aisle but when true artists like CSNY, Steve Earle and Bruce Springsteen do it all you can do is cry. Would you buy a CD with Bill Clinton on sax, Condi Rice on piano and Mike Huckabee on bass? I didn't think so!! Why would you want your geo-political philosophy to flow from the likes of the author of the book "Almost Gone"?!?! All rational people are "anti-war" but there are plenty of irrational dictators, theocrats, communists, totalitarianists, fascists etcetera in the world that make war very difficult to avoid from time to time. If free people did not fight people who would take their freedom from them then infantile expressions of political ideology like Neil Young makes on this record would cease to exist. If the U.S. armed forces vanished today it would take Vladimir Putin about a week to cross the Bering Straight and lay claim to every last drop of oil in Mr. Young's country. If he is too naive to see that why would we care what his political opinions are? It is not a strech to say that this CD would not exist if it were not for wars prosecuted in the defense of freedom by valiant and virtuous men and women throughout history. Great art can enrich 100% of our lives. Political ideology can only fuel the fire of the false self in a maximum of 50% of us. What would make any sane artist trade one for the other? Some of the music on this CD is very good but the experience is ruined by the persistent lyrical insults to common sense.

They don't make social protests like they used to!
Neil Young, appalled and angered by the actions of the Bush Crime Family, put out the caustic and accusatory CD, "Living with War," a couple of years ago. It was a blistering indictment of the Iraq War and the crimes and misdemeanors perpetrated by the current administrtion. He quickly realized that the material on "Living with War" would lend itself beautifully to sounds and philosophy of his old bandmates in Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young -- the ultimate troubadours.

CSN&Y cut their teeth as social protestors with their music from the '60s and '70s. Songs like "Ohio," "Wooden Ships," "Chicago," "For What it's Worth," and "Find the Cost of Freedom," galvanized a generation and helped expeidate Nixon's departure from the White House. Many of those songs are indeed included here, next to Young's latest anti-war rants.

I'm not sure that protest music has the same power it once had. In fact, some people were angry and confused with CSN&Y's "Freedom of Speech" tour, reacting the same way the Dixie Chick's redneck-fan base did when that group spoke out against the Bush Insanity. All I can think of to explain that is that these people weren't actual CSN&Y fans and had only come to the shows to hear them play "Our House" for 90 minutes.

Most of the "Living with War" tunes are reimagined here. Especially fun is the boys' version of "Let's Impeach the President," which benefits from the four-part harmony and crisper production values than found on the studio album. Old protest chestnuts are included, such as Nash's "Military Madness" and Crosby's "Who Are The People?"

The album is fun, cool, historical, well-performed and well-produced. Better yet, it will raise the blood pressure of every mouth-breathing neo-con from Tallahassee to Telluride. The sad part is that they had to do it all.