Day 14 · Sunday, July 19, 2026
If I Could Only Remember My Name by David Crosby album cover
folk rock · 1971

If I Could Only Remember My Name

David Crosby

Why it matters

Grief runs under every note of Crosby's first solo record, made in the months after his girlfriend Christine Hinton died, and it turned a Bay Area jam session into one of the strangest, most beautiful mourning rituals in American rock.

"I'd Swear There Was Somebody Here" carries no lyrics at all — just Crosby's voice layered against itself in a slow, ghosted round, the sound of a man calling into a room he already knows is empty. That refusal of words is the album's method, not an accident: "Song With No Words (Tree With No Leaves)" and the wandering coda of "Tamalpais High" chase feeling past the point where language would only get in the way. Around him the loose Grateful Dead and Jefferson Airplane players keep things floating rather than driving, which is why "Cowboy Movie" — the one hard narrative — lands like an intrusion from the outside world. What endures is the drift, and the courage to let a voice keep sounding when there is nothing left to say.

Listen

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Tracklist

  1. 01Music Is Love (2021 Remaster)3:23
  2. 02Riff 1 (Demo) [2021 Remaster]2:23
  3. 03Cowboy Movie (2021 Remaster)8:07
  4. 04Tamalpais High (At About 3) [Demo] [2021 Remaster]1:54
  5. 05Tamalpais High (At About 3) [2021 Remaster]3:31
  6. 06Kids And Dogs (Demo) [2021 Remaster]3:08
  7. 07Laughing (2021 Remaster)5:24
  8. 08Games (Demo) [2021 Remaster]3:17
  9. 09What Are Their Names (2021 Remaster)4:14
  10. 10Laughing (Demo) [2021 Remaster]3:59
  11. 11Traction In The Rain (2021 Remaster)3:47
  12. 12Song With No Words (Tree With No Leaves) [Demo] [2021 Remaster]3:13
  13. 13Song With No Words (Tree With No Leaves) [2021 Remaster]5:56
  14. 14The Wall Song (Demo) [2021 Remaster]4:16
  15. 15Orleans (2021 Remaster)2:00
  16. 16Where Will I Be? (Demo) [2021 Remaster]3:41
  17. 17I'd Swear There Was Somebody Here (2021 Remaster)1:22
  18. 18Cowboy Movie (Alternate Version) [2021 Remaster]10:57
  19. 19Kids And Dogs (2021 Remaster)7:00
  20. 20Bach Mode (Pre-Critical Mass) [2021 Remaster]2:00
  21. 21Coast Road (2021 Remaster)5:16
  22. 22Dancer (2021 Remaster)5:03
  23. 23Fugue (2021 Remaster)2:03