11. David CrosbyIf I Could Only Remember My Name
I worked in this record store in Ohio when I was a senior in high school and halfway through working there we got a new manager. This guy Jeff Sanders, he’s a Deadhead. By that time I was starting to get into punk rock, harder stuff, and I really didn’t wanna know about The Grateful Dead. It just wasn’t my bag. But occasionally he would play something that I would kinda relate to. Like I remember ‘Brokedown Palace’, that Grateful Dead song, I was like, "Oh…that’s kinda cool, that’s sorta churchy with its gospel vibe." But Jeff had a party and all the employees went. We were all gettin’ baked, drunk, on this summer day. And he put this record on and I didn’t really notice it until this song called ‘Laughing’ came on. It’s the fourth song on the record. And it was so beautiful. There’s this moment in the song where him and Joni Mitchell and Graham Nash do this vocal rise that is literally one of the most beautiful vocal things I’ve ever heard. They just sing together, a wordless sound. It stuck with me.
I think the record as a whole is incredibly beautiful and meditative and I’ve never really heard anything like it. Ironically his band on it is The Grateful Dead. Phil Lesh is the bass player, Bill Kreutzmann’s the drummer, and Jerry Garcia plays pedal steel on ‘Laughing’. Neil Young’s on the record also. Paul Kantner, Jack Casady’s on it too. So it’s David Crosby’s San Francisco record. I love the whole record but the song ‘Laughing’ is a perfect song, it’s absolutely sublime. It’s probably that summer day, that moment I heard it, whatever, planets aligned. I could never get that record out of my mind. I have it. I have it on vinyl. Jeff gave me his copy, ’cause I liked it so much. He was so happy that I liked it that he gave it to me and I still have it to this day.
