music friday: day on the green 1974

43 years ago, we attended our first Day on the Green. (I eventually attended five. My second featured Robin Trower, Peter Frampton, Dave Mason, Fleetwood Mac, and Gary Wright. The third had The Who and The Grateful Dead. The fourth, Peter Frampton, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Santana, and The Outlaws. Finally, my fifth and last had Led Zeppelin, Derringer, and Judas Priest.)

First up was Jesse Colin Young, who was at the peak of his post-Youngbloods career. I remember him being enjoyable. Here he is from late 1973:

Next, we got Joe Walsh and Barnstorm. This was just before they broke up, with Walsh going solo and eventually joining The Eagles. Again from 1973:

The co-headliner was The Band, who we had seen just a few months earlier with Dylan (the tour album, Before the Flood, had come out the previous month). From The Last Waltz in 1976:

Finally came Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young. We saw them near the beginning of the tour, which was a reunion of the foursome. They were supposedly not happy with the results of the tour, playing in giant stadiums ... ah, but they got lots of money! As was often the case at Day on the Greens, people took toilet paper rolls to the top row of the upper deck and slowly unrolled them ... the best ones would completely unravel and float across the sky towards the center of the stadium. When CSNY began the acoustic part of the show (a bad idea in itself), the crowd had been there for many hours, and heard some great music. CSNY wasn't really doing it for me, at least, and I remember a guy sitting next to me shouting, when Crosby was admonishing us to quiet down for the acoustic stuff, "Sorry, Dave, the toilet paper guy's got you beat!"

Here they are from near the end of the tour: