Artist:     Buffalo Springfield

Album:     What’s That Sound: The Complete Albums Collection

Label:     Rhino

Release Date:     6.29.2018

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BUY DIGITAL

BUY PHYSICAL

Buffalo Springfield died too young, but the music they produced and the bands they begat will live forever.

Stephen Stills (Crosby, Stills & Nash), Neil Young (Crosby Stills & Nash & Young, and solo), Richie Furay (Poco), Bruce Palmer (long story) and Dewey Martin (Medicine Ball), played their first concert in 1966 and by 1968 they were done, but even in that short time, what a mark they made! Thankfully, Rhino has made the Springfield catalogue easy to acquire in multiple formats, and I recommend getting them all. More on that later, but first, the music that defined a generation.

In 1966 I left New York City and arrived in a foreign land, Los Angeles. FCC regulations dictated radio stations be regional, so I departed a world dominated by Nancy and Frank Sinatra, the Four Seasons and the Four Tops to enter a school cafeteria playing Big Brother & the Holding Company and Buffalo Springfield. A New Dawn was breaking, and the unfamiliar light nearly blinded me. Home for Christmas break in 1966 and too young to drive myself, a friend cruised me around Manhattan, where I stuck my head out the window for a couple of hours and asked anyone within earshot, “Who’s Janis Joplin?” Not one person knew.

In today’s world every day brings a new protest, but in 1966, Buffalo Springfield released Stephen Stills’ song “For What It’s Worth” (“Look what’s happening here…”) about the Sunset Strip riots (in which a thousand kids­­—­including Peter Fonda and Jack Nicholson—protested a curfew), really the first salvo in the Counterculture’s attack on the Establishment, and an event which lead directly to the Vietnam protests. We all know how that went. Stills’ powerful lyrics galvanized teenagers and continues to crop up as an anthem to change over a half century later. Rhino Record’s making sure it stays that way by re-mastering not only that song, but all three studio albums.

Each of the three records contains classics: Furay’s “A Child’s Claim to Fame” and “Kind Woman;” Stills’ “Rock and Roll Woman” and “Bluebird;” Young’s “Mr. Soul” and “Expecting to Fly,” among many others.

The set contains the three albums plus mono mixes for Buffalo Springfield and Buffalo Springfield Again, five albums in all. The CD set retails for about $30 and includes high-resolution downloads and streaming, a bargain. The limited-edition (5,000) five-LP box is on 180-gram vinyl and retails for about $65, or a little under $15 a record if your math is shaky. Here’s why you should get them both: You’ll need digital files for travel, and you’ll never find a more pristine recording than the new remastering. If you don’t have a turntable, you should still get the LPs, hold these sleeves and gatefolds, feel them and the history they made, then frame them—they will help keep you strong. If you do have a turntable, you won’t need convincing…just act quickly.

After all, you never know when you’ll need to protest…or need a “Kind Woman.”

—Suzanne Cadgène