Customer Reviews

Retrospective

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Buffalo Springfield was a band more known for what it's members did after they left, than the great music they made as this short lived group. Although only together 18 months, they were the blueprint for some of the most successful country rock bands to come, such as CSN, Poco, and the Eagles, along with about every other west coast rock group. The songs on this retrospective, which originally came out in 1969, just after their breakup, were written by either Steven Stills or Neil Young. The lone exception being "Kind Woman", which was penned by Richie Furay, who later recorded it again with his band Poco. The first song here, and probably their most famous single "For What It's Worth", established Steven Stills as a great songwriter. It also had that catchphrase in it, "There's something happening here/what it is ain't exactly clear", which was a popular line in 60's counterculture at the time. Another great Stills song is "Bluebird", which features some nice guitar work. It starts out as an all out rock song, then comes that famous guitar interlude, and then switches gears and becomes a banjo driven country song. Absolutely brilliant! Not to be outdone is Neil Young. He pens 3 great tunes in a row, starting with "On The Way Home". I love this song. With it's horn arrangements, it's different than any other Buffalo song. "Nowadays Clancy Can't Even Sing" is a beautiful folk rock song with CSN type harmonies. His masterpiece here is "Broken Arrow". A unique song that has a bit of everything in it, from full orchestration with a bolero type of drumbeat, mixed with a countryrock sound with numerous rhythm changes. This song rivals anything those boys from Liverpool were doing at the time. There may not have been a better songwriter around than Neil Young during the Springfield period leading up to his first 2 brilliant albums "Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere", and "After The Goldrush". Although this is a relatively small retrospective, every song here is a gem. Buffalo Springfield was one of the most creative bands of the 60's, but because of their strong individual writing and performing talents, this was also the reason for their breakup. This is an excellent historical document of the band that started the whole folk, country rock movement. Highly recommended!

Other reviewers have provided a good overview of the group, Buffalo Springfield. I'll add my plaudits to the mix by saying this is a truly outstanding collection. "For What it's Worth" is one of my all time favorite songs in creation and it is an excellent musical statement of the violence of the 1960s riots. It is a political anthem that really does make one "stop, now, what's that sound, everybody look what's going down." This work deserves a place of honor in our soundsystems and in our lives. It is truly exceptional. I LOVE IT!

This is a good collection of Buffalo Springfield. There is the omission of a couple of songs that I expected to be on here, but overall this album is an excellent compiliation.

Particularly solid and classic are: For What It's Worth, Bluebird, Broken Arrow, and Expecting to Fly.

This is definately the CD for someone who wants to quickly get aquainted with the music of Buffalo Springfield. Buffalo Springfield had many talented musicians, not the least of which were Neil Young, Richie Furray, and Stephen Stills.

Of all the folk-rock groups that emerged in the wake of the Byrds, the Buffalo Springfield probably contained the most talent per square inch and imitated the instigators of the genre least slavishly. But the Springfield are also an agonizing case of unfulfilled potential and the whole being less than the sum of its parts.

Unlike several other groups of their ilk, Stills, Young, Furay and company never turned out their one exquisite, era-defining album (like Love's _Forever Changes_) or even a string of irrepressible singles (like the Lovin' Spoonful). They also didn't get around to recording until late '66, at which point folk-rock had already given way to psychedelia. That being said, Steven Stills definitely did his best writing and singing with this band, and Neil Young's tunes were rarely less than interesting, even when they were disastrous ("Broken Arrow").

So - Retrospective. This disc, which has been in print continuously since 1970, is quite redundant, and the sound quality is variable (the early tracks were quite ineptly mixed). Their one great album, the innocent and headlong debut, is represented here by only four tracks, and not even the best ones. (The Rubber Soul jive "Sit Down, I Think I Love You" seems to be here in lieu of Young's superior "Flying On the Ground Is Wrong"). Every one of Young's songs from the next two albums is on this disc, although admittedly that's only five, one of which is sung by Richie Furay ("On the Way Home", from _Last Time Around_). In general, though, the song selection isn't as arbitrary as it could have been, and certainly the compilers had to do some guessing; Buffalo Springfield didn't release a lot of singles, or a lot of anything for that matter.

Since the Springfield only released three albums, and the latter two are quite uneven, this might actually be a useful sampler for those who are curious but don't want to risk the investment on the rather ponderous _Again_ and half-dreadful _Last Time Around_. But the first album, which is everywhere and cheap, is all that's really essential.

My lord look at this line up.Sephen Stills Neil Young Richie Furay,and Neil said "hell we were just playing what we felt"So true ,they came off with some fantastic songs.They werent even trying it was so natural.They tossed out songs like new shiny dimes.Unadulterated,pristine,hard,soft,all very good.Iam a realist,old stuff is better than this crap they hype down your throat now.Stephen.

Around about the time that music was starting to get downright bizarre with groups like the Mothers of Invention stirring things up these guys came out of left field with their country-folk-rock slant and threw a curve into my little head. Every song was totally different in feel and intent. You can tell they weren't really studio rats yet because the tracks are uneven in tempo and arrangement/production from time to time but that didn't dampen their enthusiasm or imagination. Neil Young really stands out on this collection because he was blazing his own trail, not just following Stills and Furay down the path. But these songs are very special to those who grew up listening to this band and, as best-of cds go, this one represents them quite well.

In Superman's Bizarro World everything is reversed. So it was with Buffalo Springfield. While some refer to this band as a 'supergroup', such as Blind Faith, they were really a collection of emerging artists who, instead of coming together in their prime, broke apart to establish their true claims to fame. This is the band where Stephen Stills and Neil Young, and to a lesser degree Richie Furay and Jim Messina (who together later founded Poco), honed their artistic styles, and rather tentatively dipped their toes into the waters of stardom. Ironically, it was Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, featuring two members of Buffalo Springfield, that eventually became the quintessential 'supergroup'.

Buffalo Springfield are often characterized as a pioneering 'country-rock' band, and while they certainly helped develop that genre, they were much more. Stills and Young were never awkward about delving into inspired rock and roll, and Richie Furay and Jim Messina contributed a soft-rock alternative, so the band had a very diversified feel. The 'Retrospective' collection does a good job of exploring these territories, although it unjustifiably focuses too much attention on Young's experimental psychedelia ('Broken Arrow' and 'Expecting To Fly') which is marginal at best. A serious omission is made in selecting these numbers as opposed to Stills' fine composition 'Questions' from the 'Last Time Around' LP.

Stills and Young do all the songwriting on this compilation, with the exception of Furay's 'Kind Woman', which sounds more like a laid-back Eagles composition than most laid-back Eagles compositions. Stills and Young both offer a trio of classics, opening with the biggest and only hit the band ever had, the youth protest anthem 'For What It's Worth', which rose to number 7 on the national charts in 1967. The song is still a real treat, especially in the stereo version offered on this CD, which separates out the vocal harmonies nicely. When the song was released as a single, it included "(Stop, Hey What's That Sound)" after the title, since the words "for what it's worth" appear nowhere in the lyrics. Without the parenthetical documentation, many would not have associated the title with the song.

Still's other standout contributions are 'Bluebird' and 'Rock and Roll Woman'. Together with 'Questions', 'Bluebird' represents the best of Stills work with Buffalo Springfield. The song is a tapestry of electric and acoustic guitar virtuosity, with the lyrics woven seamlessly throughout. It segues unpredictably into a banjo coda for a melencholy concluding verse. It is highly representative of all the best work Stills has produced. 'Rock and Roll Woman', for some reason, always impressed me as a precursor to 'Suite: Judy Blue Eyes', and I've often wondered if Judy Collins, who inspired 'Suite: Judy...', also inspired 'Rock and Roll Woman'. It's another gem, only slightly less dazzling than 'Bluebird'.

Young's contributions are impressive as well, and a foreshadowing of where he was bound as a solo artist. 'For What It's Worth' is followed by the driving guitar strains of 'Mr. Soul', which had every right to be a Top 40 hit. Young also contributes the orchestrated ballad 'On the Way Home', and the timeless 'I Am a Child', which has only gained credibility and an auditory patina over the decades.

The remainder of 'The Best of Buffalo Springfield' (a name reportedly lifted from the back of a parked steamroller) consists of lesser fare. Stills 'Sit Down, I Think I Love You', and 'Go and Say Goodbye', though featuring pleasant vocals, offer only rudimentary melodies and lyrics. Despite its shortcomings, 'Sit Down...' does feature all three of the Springfield's guitarists (Stills, Young, and Furay) weaving a nicely wound melodic bridge, and the interesting use of the word 'you' as a hinge between two verses (check it out!). Young's 'Nowadays Clancy Can't Even Sing' is similarly a cut below the capabilities he would later exhibit in a stream of songwriting prowess which continues strong today.

For myself, this collection and the CD 'Last Time Around' are essential componants of a Stephen Stills collection. Unless you are of a mind to purchase the Buffalo Springfield box set, which is a bit more than I was personally looking for, both CD's are necessary to collect the best of Stills' early work. As a bonus the fine Neil Young selections make the entire collection a very pleasant listen. Since we are generally inundated with these artists later works, hearing them in their genesis is an ear opening experience.

One reviewer describes The Buffalo Springfield as "a lesser known" group from the 1960s. Lesser-knowns do not usually get into the R&R Hall of Fame [an exception would be The Velvet Underground], as this group did in 1997.

Anyone who knows anything at all about the quintet is well aware that group member Stephen Sills, after the 1968 break-up of Buffalo Springfield, helped form Crosby, Stills and Nash which, in 1969, had two Top 40 hits. In 1970 they were joined by Neil Young and that year added four more Top 40 hits. After seven years had passed the original trio returned to log six more hits, three of them Top 40, and in 1989 a reunion of the four scored with the minor hit Got It Made.

Meanwhile, Jim Messina, who had replaced original Bufalo Springfield member Bruce Palmer after their first two notable albums, along with Richie Furay, helped to form Poco in 1970, a group that registered 13 Top 100 hits from there until late 1989.

So this was, in every respect, a highly-influential group which, also including Dewey MArtin and, in their short time together, contributed five songs to the Billboard Hot 100 for Atlantic Records' Atco subsidiary. The best of which was, of course, their first - For What It's Worth (Stop, Hey What's That Sound) which reached # 7 early in 1967. All five hit singles are here, but just the one B-side, Mr. Soul, which backed Bluebird [# 58 in August 1967].

In keeping with the trend to re-release early 10- to 12-track CDs with bonus tracks [as was the case with some Elvis Presley volumes, and the Sarah Vaughan and Donovan "best of" compilations], this would make a nice 16-track collection with the addition of: Do I Have To Come Right Out And Say It? [the flip of their first hit]; A Child's Claim To Fame, which backed Rock "N' Roll Woman [# 44 in October 1967]; Everydays, the B-side to Expecting To Fly [# 98 in January 1968]; and Four Days Gone. the flipside of On The Way Home [# 82 in October 1968].

And while they're at it they could add a page or two of liner notes to augment the sincere but meagre one brief paragraph contributed by Ahmet M. Ertegun of Atco. Now that would be an instant winner.

This review is mainly in response to the reviewer who wrote anything by Buffalo Springfield is "hugely more enjoyable than anything by the Byrds." In 60s parlance, NO WAY. That's not to say that Springfield didn't record some excellent songs-- they certainly did, as this collection demonstrates. However, for a "Best Of" collection, "Retrospective" is suprisingly uneven. It seems Buffalo Springfield had two great singer-songwriters, Steven Stills and Neil Young, which is usually more than enough for any great band. Trouble is, they also had and a couple of merely adequate (or even subpar) ones (Rich Furay predominantly) whose work is equally well represented. For every gem like "Mr. Soul" or "Bluebird," there is a lump of coal like "Sit Down, I Think I Love You" or "Nowadays Clancy Can't Even Sing," which would not make the cut on a regular Byrds album, let alone a "Greatest Hits." The recording quality is likewise uneven, far from the impeccable production found on the first six Byrds albums. In one area only does Springfield outshine the Byrds-- chops, and that is almost exclusively due to Stills' sterling musicianship on lead guitar (the Byrds did not get an equivalent lead guitarist in their lineup until Clarence White joined, and by then their days of greatness as an album band were behind them). Another complaint is that the recoding levels on the songs represented here are all over the map, leading to much unecessary jockeying with the volume controls on your stereo. To summarize, buy this collection for the classic Stills / Young numbers "For What It's Worth," "Mr. Soul," "Bluebird," "I Am A Child," and "Rock And Roll Woman." The rest you can safely skip over. For a true "Greatest Hits" collection, in which EVERY SONG is a blockbuster, buy "The Byrds Greatest Hits (Vol. 1)."

Before Stephen Stills and Neil Yound joined the supergroup Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young, they was a part of a lesser-known group called Buffalo Springfield. In the sixties, these guys played the typical rock music of the days - and did a damn good job of it. Unfortunately, the band achieved very little success, and they soon disbanded. Stills and Young went on to pursue other musical projects following the band's break up. Even so, during their days with the band, they recorded some damn good tunes. Read on for my review of Retrospective - The Best Of Buffalo Springfield.

PROS:
-If you're one of those people who wants to hear what Stephen Stills and Neil Young sounded like before becoming a part of CSNY, this compilation is for you. The band's lone hit, For What It's Worth, is here for your listening pleasure.
-You also get a number of underrated masterpieces. There's A LOT more to these guys than just their lone hit!
-This is an affordable compilation.
-A number of stores carry this compilation, so you shouldn't have to look too hard for it.

CONS:
-The major complaint I have about this compilation is one I make about A LOT of them - It doesn't even come close to filling the eighty minutes you can fit on a compact disc. Why? They had plenty of other excellent tunes they could have filled the time with.

OVERALL:
To put it simply, this is a compilation that casual Buffalo Springfield/Stephen Stills/Neil Young fans will love. If you like sixties rock, Buffalo Springfield are worth checking out.