Another guest essay by Alan J. Wallace, on one of his favorites:

David Crosby, "If I Could Only Remember My Name" (Atlantic, 1971)

David Crosby's self-produced first solo album, "If I Could Only Remember My Name," is a document of a time that won't come again - a short period of musical cross-fertilization that yielded not just this remarkable album, but the gist of what would become Paul Kantner's sci-fi masterpiece, "Blows Against the Empire," the first album to carry the Jefferson Starship name; and also would provide a setting for "woodshedding" in which Jerry Garcia worked out material for his first solo album, "Garcia" (on which he played everything except the drum parts).

The place was the San Francisco recording studio Wally Heider's in late 1970 and early 1971. Most of the Grateful Dead and Jefferson Airplane members were hanging around and working on various of each other's projects, at least intermittently, and Crosby, riding the rising wave that had carried him from the Byrds to CSN and CSNY's nearly instant superstardom, had decided to make his own record.

So "IICORMN" is a remarkable album, first, for its all-star cast, much of which was assembled by serendipity, not by design - whoever happened to wander in ended up contributing something or other. The cast includes, besides Kantner and Garcia, the Dead's Phil Lesh, Bill Kreutzmann and Mickey Hart; the Airplane's Jorma Kaukonen, Grace Slick and Jack Casady; Graham Nash; David Freiberg (Quicksilver Messenger Service); Michael Shrieve and Gregg Rolie (Santana); and Joni Mitchell. One of the most fascinating things about this record is listening for the distinctive instrumental and vocal voicings of the various players in various combinations.

And it's a true pleasure to do so, because "IICORMN" is a sonic marvel, too. Thanks largely to engineer Stephen Barncard, this record has a wonderfully full, warm, detailed and lush sound to it that makes it possible to pick out the numerous talents at work here.

And then there's the material. The songwriting credits are nearly all Crosby's alone, and it's a strong set, perhaps the fullest realization of what makes Crosby's stuff unique.

Among the highlights in an album chock-full of them:

* "Cowboy Movie," the second song, is, at least lyrically, just what its title implies, an Old West tale of bandits faced with an Indian girl in their camp who may or may not be what she seems. Musically, it's eight minutes and two seconds of midtempo rock built around a simple, repetetive figure that makes the song a gradual crescendo of tension and musical momentum punctuated by Garcia's guitar leads. This is a live-in-the-studio take, and an early rough mix, according to track notes Barncard posted online some years ago, yet it's just about perfect. (Bonus trivia: Lesh, the Dead bassist who played on the original track, actually played this a couple of times on tour with his "Friends" band last fall.)

* "Tamalpais High (At About 3)", the third track, boasts dual lead work by Garcia and Kaukonen.

* "Laughing," the fourth song, features what I consider to be Garcia's finest pedal steel playing ever, period, bar none. Just about everybody has heard at some point that the pedal work on CSNY's "Teach Your Children" is Garcia's. As tasty as that is, this is much more special: A slow, wistful song, "Laughing" gains a truly ethereal quality from the lyricism of the exquisite, sustained notes and glides of Garcia's steel. Of all the songs on "IICORMN," Barncard has called this "the most magical track of all."

* "What Are Their Names," the fifth track (and the one that opened side two of the original LP), is a piece of political protest poetry, but it's the large-group vocal that's notable here. This track probably has more of the album's contributors on it than any other, and it's another that gathers momentum as it rolls along. The vocal chorus: Crosby, Kantner, Mitchell, Slick, Garcia, Lesh, Freiberg and Nash, all recorded singing together live in the studio.

*"I'd Swear There Was Somebody Here," the eighth and final track, runs just a minute and 19 seconds, but it's quite distinctive. Not so much a song, per se, as a sonic experiment, it's all Crosby: just his voice, multitracked and layered with use of an echo chamber and Barncard's wizardry. The engineer has said this recording process took all of 15 minutes, which makes the results all the more stunning: "I had never seen the Muse work so magically," Barncard said.

Though "IICORMN" did make the Billboard charts and stay there for a few months, it's not well-known today and the material hasn't had much exposure in live performance. Around the time it was recorded, Crosby, Garcia, Lesh, Kreutzmann and Hart did perform some of the songs at a couple of shows at the Matrix club in SF (gigs billed, as Garcia once wryly recalled, as "David and the Dorks" or "Jerry and the Jerks," depending on whom you asked).

So "IICORMN" is an album well worth getting to know if you've missed out on it so far. And for those inclined to look a little further into the topic, rest assured that for some years now, about two CDs worth of outtakes from this period at Heider's that were assembled by Barncard have been circulating among collectors and some of that material - which ranges from jams pairing Garcia and Kaukonen to fragments of unreleased Crosby songs - may one day see an official release.

Knowing that all that's out there somewhere only makes more obvious the worst thing about "IICORMN": it's just a shade under 38 minutes long.