Mutual Muse

When discovering music retroactively, it is the product of research and recommendation -- not listening to top-forty radio. So the music-lovers of vintage rock, for instance, tend to follow veins of musical relationships. A good example (which leads even to the present) would be: Muddy Waters -- The Bluesbreakers -- The Yardbirds -- Cream -- Derek and the Dominoes -- Stevie Ray Vaughn & Double Trouble -- The Black Keys. I have recently made a discovery that if I had been an adult or adolescent at the time the music came out, I might not have noticed in the haze of bands competing for my ear and radio play. I have long been an ardent fan of Buffalo Springfield, an American band full of great musical ideas and talent from the latter half of the sixties, who came to an untimely end because of battling egos. Their finest work was their middle album from 1968, entitled, Buffalo Springfield Again. It is a record that encompasses its own little universe of musical and lyrical ideas, stating its creative intentions better than most any group of its time -- and certainly full of unique surprises. Now recently I have been discovering the seventies incarnation of a British band called, Traffic. I decide to give a listen to their sixties incarnation and select their 1968 self-titled effort, Traffic (and coincidentally the middle album also for that version of the group). I take an immediate liking to it, and find it to be a different animal than the later incarnation of the group. What is more, it makes me think of an American band, who, in their own way, they resemble more than any other of the time: Buffalo Springfield. It is not a mere question of them being contemporaries of each other. Here I am detecting a similar vision, approach, quality and style of musicianship. It feels like I'm home again, listening to a lost album. Sadly, both groups, as they were formed for those respective albums, soon collapsed from infighting. Their final albums were odds and sods left over after coming apart; for Traffic it was Last Exit; for Buffalo Springfield it was Last Time Around. Traffic was later reborn with a new direction (though with a definite musical continuity with its sixties version, and in way so was Buffalo Springfield, in the form of Crosby Stills & Nash (aka, "CSN"), then later, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young (aka, "CSNY"). With the British group it was a rivalry and clash of musical directions between lead guitarist, songwriter and co-lead vocalist, Dave Mason, and keyboardist, songwriter and guitarist, Steve Winwood. With the American group it was a similar conflict between co-lead guitarist, songwriter and co-lead vocalist, Stephen Stills and co-lead guitarist, songwriter and vocalist Neil Young. Too much talent in one place to be happily contained? Interestingly, in both cases there was so much mutual respect that the rivals took each other back (in both cases temporarily) when, on the one hand Stephen Stills and company made the album, Deja Vu by having a creative reconciliation with Neil Young, and on the other hand when Steve Winwood and company made the album, Welcome to the Canteen by having a creative reconciliation with Dave Mason. In both cases the reunions didn't get past a single musical tour, but the similarities do not end there. Finding myself delighted by the particular contributions Dave Mason had made to the sixties-version of Traffic, I listened to his debut solo album, Alone Together. This is a wonderful album, through and through, but once more, I felt like I had gone back to home sweet home: it bears an astonishing resemblance in style and quality to Stephen Stills first two solo albums, which I acquired after loving his special contributions to both Buffalo Springfield, CSN, and CSNY. Rarely have I found such a pleasing (and accidental) affinity between contemporaneous British and American groups and artists. It is far more the case (at least to the trained ear of the rock fan) to find differences between the popular music of those two Anglophone realms in the late sixties and early seventies period; even when comparing groups in similar subcategories between the two nations, you can't get much more different than The Grateful Dead and Led Zeppelin, or James Taylor and Cat Stevens, or Grand Funk Railroad and Black Sabbath. Yet in the case of the Dave Mason (et al.) / Stephen Stills (et al.) paradigm, I think we have a delightfully miraculous situation of a mutual muse! How cool would it have been if any assemblage of these musicians featuring those two key players had met at a rock festival and jammed together? It would have been musical nirvana!