Manassas and the sophomore album curse in Americana

Manassas didn't play long together, but in the short time they did, they shone so very brightly. Their self-titled debut album (which really gave the band its name by accident when the album cover photo prominently featured the name) was a classic, a testament to Stephen Stills' creative juices flowing as wildly and wilfully as rarely before and never again afterwards. Chris Hillman, rock music's ultimate right hand man and perfect second banana, did exactly what was asked of him: the very occasional write or co-write, the equally occasional lead vocal, and lots of support of the boss on acoustic guitar or mandoline when needed. The ensemble, full of cracks like Dallas Taylor, Samuel "Fuzzy" Clemens and Al Perkins were top notch and able to adapt to any of the various styles Stills would want to play in. And that variety of styles, best on display on that self-titled double album, truly makes Manassas Americana: blues, folk, country, latin rock - all parts, mostly foundational ones, of the American music experience. Stills' genre-bending really reached its culmination with Manassas. He would never be as adventurous or explorative again.  

He certainly wasn't when it was time to do a follow-up, unfortunately following a worrying trend in country rock and Americana to follow up a masterpiece with a dud. Dillard & Clark? The Fantastic Expedition of -  an absolute classic. Second album: a muddled, deeply disappointing mess. The Flying Burrito Brothers? The Gilded Palace of Sin - a stone-cold classic, arguably not only one of the best albums of its genre, but of all time. Second album: a dispiriting, disappointing 'meh' of an album. Somehow, in the still young Americana genre, its best bands could only get it together for a single shot of greatness. The reasons are manifold: distractions (read: drugs), general apathy (read: possibly drugs) drugs (read: drugs), musical incompability (read: dr..no, that one's probably really for musical reasons). Dillars & Clark morphed from an acoustic bluegrass-flavored vehicle for Clark's songwriting into a fast-paced, traditional-minded electric bluegrass group that suddenly had no place for Clark's melancholic songwriting. The Burritos famously lost Parsons to his love affair with Keith Richards and its accompanying drug regime.

And Manassas? Well, distractions were plenty: Stills met Véronique Sanson on Manassas' big Europe tour, then wed her and had his mind on his soon to be founded family. Hillman was distracted by Geffen's money-waving Byrds reunion project, then Geffen's money-waving false supergroup The Hillman-Souther-Furay Band project. Drummer Dallas Taylor fell into a hard heroin addiction. Atlantic wasn't happy with the recordings, asking for new recording sessions and - allegedly - more involvement from an increasingly distracted Stills. Recording engineers Ron and Howard Albert expressed doubts about the quality of recordings and were dutifully told to take a hike by Stills, who took his band and recordings elsewhere. Frankly, the making of Down The Road sounds like a mess, and it's no wonder that the band couldn't concentrate on making quality work. A group that just a year could fill a double album with songs and still have songs to spare all of a sudden were unable to put together even a slim ten track set of quality songs. It's not a bad album per se, just a massively disappointing one. 

So, here at One Buck Records we accept the challenge of trying to improve Down The Road. The excellent outtake collection Pieces brought a number of excellent outtakes. I also dallied with some of the booted performanes such as the band's stabs at Stills' "Thoroughfare Gap" (the 'cuban bluegrass' version showed up on volume two of the All Pearls, No Swine series) but sadly the muffled sound quality was not good enough to seamlessly integrate these with the rest of the tracks. So this new version, dutifully retitled Do You Remember The Americans? to reflect its now twice featured new title song, features half original tracks and half outtakes published on Pieces. One idea that came quickly were the bookends - the two different versions of "Do You Remember The Americans?" to bookend the album and the two latin rock numbers to bookend the album sides. I wasn't a huge fan of "Pensamiento" off the original album, so I took the early version of that song and attached it to the second version (actually the album version) of  "Do You Remember The Americans?" as a closing medley. 

Some quick words on some of the other songs from Pieces I used here: "Sugar Babe" was of course already on Stephen Stills 2, but this version is awesome and thus deserves a place here, double appearance be damned. "Witching Hour" is an outtake from the first album, and a song that's probably better than any of the ones on Down The Road, so why it was abandoned and then not even reconsidered is beyond me. Maybe Stills thought it was too personal, with its (veiled) digs at camerades Crosby, Nash & Young, but still(s). He shelved "Like A Fox" (with luxurious chorus vocals by Bonnie Raitt) for "not being enough song" and being unfinished. Well, that description sounds about right for about half of Down The Road, so the Albert Brothers kind of had a point there re: quality control. "Like A Fox" still sounds livelier than some of the more drudgy tracks that did make the album. "Love & Satisfy" was dropped from the album at the last second. Why? Beats me. "Lies" is a much harder driving rocker, with guest Joe Walsh on guitar. 

So, this version is a definite improvement on Down The Road, which admittedly wasn't very hard, but I think it really holds together as a quality collection of songs, the way it should've been from the start. But, you know, distractions and all that...