Frankly, I’m surprised.
I’m surprised I missed David Crosby’s 65th birthday ten days ago.
I’m surprised that David Crosby REACHED his 65th birthday. Apparently, so is David Crosby. In a Cox news article in anticipation of the CSNY concert this past weekend in Saratoga Springs, Crosby is quoted as saying,”I didn’t think I was gonna live past 30. Gotta remember, I was a junkie – junkies don’t live. They just wait around until they die. So I had no expectation of being this age.”
Anyway, I’ve been playing his music of late, as is my habit with birthdays of performers, and I almost always forget one: the 1999 Live at the Wiltern by CPR. (The Amazon listing is here.) This is a somewhat jazzy disc by a group consisting of Crosby, Jeff Pevar, and James Raymond, a biological son of Crosby that David didn’t know about until a few years ago. Here is a review of the 11/10/1998 concert, which also featured percussionist Steve di Stanislaw and bassist Andrew Ford.
Most of the reviews of the 2-CD set fall into two categories. Fans of CPR really like the first disc, which is primarily tunes from the first CPR studio album, but don’t really enjoy the second disc. Fans of Crosby’s older music tend to find the first disc unfocused and a little boring, but are intrigued by the remakes on disc two of tunes such as Almost Cut My Hair, Eight Miles High and Ohio. I find myself in the latter camp.
But what I really wanted to talk about is the acting career of David Crosby. I saw him on a Roseanne episode, but I remember him best as Chester, the recovering alcoholic on The John Larroquette Show, the AA sponsor for John Hemingway (Larroquette). Crosby appeared four or six times. I thought season one, with that quirky theme by David Cassidy(!), was a great dark comedy. But by season two, the powers that be lightened it up, dropping Crosby (seems as though his character died, but I’m not positive). It is generally considered to have “jumped the shark” after that one great, Crosby-enhanced season.