Buffalo Springfield: two LPs; Atlantic Sd806.

Reviewed by Pat O'Dea.

This isn't just another oldies album, because Buffalo Springfield still repay playing. And they stand up to the test of time so well precisely because they never went in for any of those adventurous projects that date so quickly. And as always the melodies of these tunes by Stephen Still, Neil Young, Jim Messina and Richie Furay just keep coming round and round in your head for days afterwards.

Most of the tracks have appeared in one guise or another on other Springfield albums, so it boils down to whether your taste in the old material matches that of the man at Atlantic. Nearly all the choices are good ones. Still's "Sit Down I Think I Love You" and "Rock and Roll Woman" sound remarkably like the kind of music he's still working at today. Neil Young's "Out of My Mind" is not so familiar, but a lovely song all the same. Even though the album leans fairly heavily on cuts from the first two Springfield LPs its sad that no one saw fit to include either Young's first anti-drug song "Flying on the Ground is Wrong" or "Do You Have To Come Right Out and Say It" which was also released as the flip of their first hit "For What Its Worth". That's here, of course, and its so fortunate that all of these brilliant early songs missed out on the big screen treatment that the later Stills and Young tunes got given by CSN $ Y.

In fact, after listening to Neil and Steve doing teenage harmony together and after hearing all the skilled pickin and pluckin' going on in these simple tunes, yes after hearing all the energy talent and taste spread over these two records I feel tempted to say something like: this was America's answer to the Beatles!