Stephen Stills 2 (Vinyl record album review)

Album name: Stephen Stills 2

Artist name: Stephen Stills

Year: 1971

Number of discs: one

Label: Atlantic Records

Collection: Brenner / Gessner

Distinguishing characteristics: “G” written on top left of album, indicating that my father owned this record

Buy it on Amazon: $68.00

My review

Level of familiarity before listening

I’m familiar, more or less, with Stephen Stills’ work as a member of Buffalo Springfield and of Crosby, Stills (and) Nash (and Young), but I am pretty sure that I’ve never listened to this or any other solo Stephen Stills record.

What I expected

Folk rock, I guess.

What it was actually like

Before listening to this record, I paused for a moment and asked myself, “If each member of CSN/Y had an identity, what would Stephen Stills’ be? The boring one?” And then I listened to it.

In brief, it was bad. To elaborate, it was really bad. To elaborate even further than that, not a single song on “Stephen Stills 2” merits any positive attention whatsoever, though I will concede that Marianne was the least bad.

I especially disliked the trumpets and conga drums on Open Secret, at least until I got to Ecology Song, which I would characterize as a kind of cross between gospel and some kind of big band jazz crap. The lyrics, which were about – you guessed it – ecology, were also incredibly bad:

America is lost, figurin’ the cost
You can hang your head in shame
It’s disgusting

It was the worst song I’ve heard in a while, and makes me want to compost this record.

Grade

2/5: bad, but I was able to listen to the whole thing