neil young

and #s of boots. sorry gang. read my lips, vote dead man

After The Gold Rush.

but On The Beach too. the title song makes me cry.

I voted Time Fades Away

this was already done.
Best of Neil Young studio records

This one has live albums.

Some of them, anyway. (Unplugged, Year of the Horse, Road Rock vol. 1)

Oh. The studio albums poll had the live albums too. Nevermind then.

I voted Ragged Glory because it needs more love and less rockism. That's a srsly good record, yo.

First person to vote "Old Ways" gets a dollar from me.

I voted for "Old Ways" just for the cash. You want my paypal address?

After The Gold Rush = the good songs are so good they make you forget about the bad ones

On The Beach = pretty much all good

I mean "When You Dance" is kind of endearing as a cornily sincere, b-level hippie artifact, but Cripple Creek Ferry is a real turd of a song, and Birds isn't great either.

I got to get away from this day to day running around

TRANS FTW!

Arc/Weld. The worst/best live albums ever.

Dead Man is actually really really good.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Tonight's The Night

closely followed by Goldrush and On The Beach

TTN is definitely my favourite - it's so fucked, so moving. Tender, ragged and rocking in equal measure.

Baby Mellow My Mind aches so hard - the swell of pedal steel, touch of lonesome barroom piano, and Neil's voice actually breaking up.

Come On Baby Let's Go Downtown rocks. It sounds so triumphant in its hedonism yet the undercurrent is utterly bleak.

Other favourites - Everybody Knows, Rust, Zuma, Time Fades Away, Sleeps With Angels, Live Rust. Hell, there hardly any poor ones. I've not heard the infamous Landing On Water, but Are You Passionate was bloody awful. Trans is ace though.

Ragged Glory is great fun, one of his most satisfying rock records, but I wouldn't quite put it in the top rung of Neil albums.

Harvest - handful of great songs and some dreary stuff too. Overall, it's too slick, too polite. I like Neil a little scuffed around the edges.

Rust Never Sleeps has Powderfinger, for the win.

Anyone else notice how Apatow kept dropping the cover of Landing On Water all over Knocked Up. What's the deal with that? Consensus aropund these parts on that album?

Rust Never Sleeps for "Powderfinger", but also because of the individually peculiar time and place in which I first loved this record. Also, it's an incredibly balanced album in so many ways I can't be bothered to expand on here.

Consensus aropund these parts on that album?

I noticed the curious product placement too, Tal. There's an interesting thread here devoted to Landing on Water.

no "none of the above"????

just snuck in a vote for tonight's the night. right in the nick of time.

emotion of the less contained and calculated variety

me for tonights the night, too. its so close though - there are better songs on zuma and everybody knows, and almost enough to give the nod to one of them, but TTN takes it

Yeah, Tonight's The Night would be my second or third and very close.

Rust Never Sleeps by a hair, for side one and Powderfinger alone (though nearly sunk by Welfare Mothers).

Oh c'mon, Welfare Mothers is great! My favorite Neil Young throwaway.

DIVORCEE

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

a 3-way tie this time then.

Fair result.

Wait. Zuma should've been much higher, though.

c'est vrai

Someone voted for Everybody's Rockin' again.

One vote for "Zuma"! No way!! This poll is corrupt!!!

"On the Beach" - there's an ILM album if ever there was one

Sleeps With Angels is way too high. And Freedom is way too low.

The fact that Zuma ranked below Trans completely invalidates this poll.

So, basically, I'm the only person who voted for "Zuma"? Don't believe it.

I wasn't around when CSN(and sometimes Y) were at their peak, so apologies for the following somewhat naive question:

How much of Neil Young's popularity in the 70s can be attributed to his association with CSN? The thought never really occurred to me until I was checking out CSN(Y)'s Allmusic entry today, which says "it was the only American-based band to approach the overall societal impact of the Beatles".

Personally, I like Neil Young exponentially more than CSN(Y), so my gut feeling is that the majority of Neil Young's fans were there on account of his own talent. But was there a certain contingency of fans who cheered loudest for "Ohio" and "Helpless", contemplating to themselves at the Live Rust concerts that it would be better if CSN were up on stage too? Or was it more like "Why the hell does Neil Young ever play with them? They butchered 'Helpless'..."? Just wondering what the prevalent view was back in the day.

When CSN and sometimes Y reunited for a predictably horrible album in 1988, Neil begged off the obligatory tour, saying, "I dunno man, those guys need some serious practice."

And that Allmusic statement strikes me as comically absurd.

Yeah, I admit it raised my eyebrow as well, but then I go the ILM search function, and the second thing I read on the Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young C/D S/D thread is "i'm more interested in the fact that CSN(Y) (or whatever) were actually REALLY POPULAR and BIG -- as in springsteen in '85/outkast or britney spears BIG. that's such a radical sea-change in mass public musical taste that deserves some comment, no?"

On The Beach is very good, but would have voted Everybody Knows this is Nowhere, in fact i shall play it now

hi alex, how is the weather in denver? in frankfurt it has been raining most of the day. i would have voted <i>after the goldrush</i>, i think. but <i>on the beach</i> is a decent winner, too.

i will never learn the ilm html tags...

weird

it was the only American-based band to approach the overall societal impact of the Beatles

In their time their American album sales were HUGE. Their cultural cachet was such that their public greeted "Ohio" as a major statement. I'm wary of statements like AllMusic's, but the Shakey bio also makes the same suggestion.

CSNY were huge because the Byrds, the Hollies, and the Buffalo Springfield had all been huge before.

Dead Man = Neil's best electric work?

look at the bill for this thing
http://www.vancouver2010.com/more-2010-information/cultural-festivals-and-events/event-listings/hal-willner's-neil-young-project-_70660zv.html

damn "T-Bone" is what they call "a big get" in the business!

i do love it, not gonna lie

brb hiring Danger Mouse to do a T-Bone/Doghouse mash up

there are days when I think nothing sounds as good as the studio recording of cortez

the one disappointment i've had from my neil young listening spree is confirming that "cortez the killer" is indeed his peak because like, imagine if there was something even better?

"Like An Inca."

"like an inca" is definitely one of the highlights of trans and i assume probably the 80s given what else i've heard but it's no "cortez". are there any versions of it with sax? i feel like that's what it really wants

certainly better than "rockin' in the free world"

Okay wow, that's a helluva question: which do I like better, "Cortez the Killer" or "Like an Inca" ...

or "No Hidden Path" ...

group ILM podcast for "Doghouse" tbh

whenever i hear the Trans hate, i can always point someone to "Like an Inca". or i guess "Hitchhiker" if someone's more preferable to his 70s vibe.

I really liked the Transongs in this context, esp. w Nils singing and dancing around in his vocoder mask---wiki:

Neil Young in Berlin is a live video by Neil Young, directed by Michael Lindsay-Hogg, and recorded in October 1982 during the European Tour for his album Trans. It includes the song "After Berlin" written especially for that concert and only performed once.

It was first issued on VHS and later on LaserDisc and DVD.

Track listing
All songs written by Neil Young.

"Cinnamon Girl"
"Computer Age"
"Little Thing Called Love"
"Old Man"
"The Needle and the Damage Done"
"After the Gold Rush"
"Transformer Man"
"Sample and Hold"
"Like a Hurricane"
"Hey Hey My My"
"Berlin"
On the DVD, "Like a Hurricane" is omitted in the track list on the back cover, but is still present on the disc.]

That European tour in support of Trans almost bankrupted Young, according to Shakey. The Berlin concert's fun.

Coulda done w more Transongs actually, esp. instead of "Old Man," unless that had been vocoderized too.

That version of "After The Gold Rush" was the first I'd ever heard, seeing it on HBO when I was in 7th grade.

i just watched this

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NmhRxu2_yTM

Everybody knows this is Erehwon

weld is really good but way down in the rust bucket is phenomenal, even with "t-bone". crazy horse at their very best the whole way through

"Why aren't you dead yet?"

silver & gold is solid! it's no comes a time or harvest moon as far as his folk albums go but it's certainly better than harvest.

i'm four tracks into greendale and i'm really struggling to understand how dreadful it is so far. did poncho take all the energy with him when he sat out these sessions? was neil heavily medicated when making this album? it's so incredibly sluggish and these songs go on forever with nothing happening. this is absolutely the worst album i've heard from him

paging Tyler to compile a solid Silver & Gold through Greendale playlist

"bandit" is the first track on greendale to be alright, it's still a bit sluggish and neil's barely singing, mostly just whispering, but there's one really pretty section

greendale is great, bandit is a highlight

maybe give it a few spins, leave it, come back in a year or two

Greendale was love on first listen for me so I can't advise. The relatively laid-back vibe of the Horse is great for these down-home stories. And I think Neil's lyric-writing is at one of its all-time peaks here... less so on Sun Green and Be the Rain, where the soapbox overwhelms the storytelling, granted. But there are so many badass couplets and punchlines, almost everything rhymes but almost nothing feels forced... whenever I get to the fourth wall crumbling in Grandpa's Interview I'm pretty much guaranteed cry.

it's so dull! i can't care about the elaborate concept at all when the songs barely have tunes and most of the album is infinite plodding low-energy blues rock

prairie wind though is fine, similar in quality to silver & gold but with fuller instrumentation. the horns on a few tracks are maybe a bit much

it's so incredibly sluggish and these songs go on forever with nothing happening.

This is my opinion on all Neil after 1996 with the exception of a song or two that rises to the level of a C-. And I love almost all Neil before that point. He seems to have lost his ability to write original songs and is now writing in modes he previously used but now without any content.

-Obligatory Crazy Horse album (every album in GCD and is 20 minutes long)
-Folk mode concept album about an old muffler he found on the side of the road in 2001

"...marlon brando, that old muffler and me"

This is my opinion on all Neil after 1996 with the exception of a song or two that rises to the level of a C-

psychedelic pill is definitely way better than that - the epics do go on forever but it's really engaging jamming that rises well above how much of a bore greendale is. le noise is very unique and is pretty compelling overall. barn & toast are both decent enough (except "boom boom boom" which is dire) crazy horse albums even if neither really has anything new to say except the slight latin influence on some of toast.

I'm totally with ufo on the Greendale hate, and you didn't even mention the egregious use of bullhorn.

"ordinary people" rules, how did he not put it on freedom? this is easily the best thing from those sessions

i really don't like niko bolas as a producer though, the rest of chrome dreams ii has some alright tracks but somehow "ordinary people" demonstrates that bolas has gotten even worse at his job since the 80s. the mix is really ugly, the bass is barely audible and the drums have this really trebly sound that i thought people had left behind in the 80s but no it's somehow worse

"no hidden path" is by no means one of his better epics but it's alright and a huge step up from greendale in every way except the mix. it just seems to be really hard to mess up his epic jam vehicles but greendale's are reliably duds

I mentioned it upthread but the version of "ordinary people" from Bluenote Cafe is by far the best version

“Ordinary People” on chrome dreams II is actually a bluenotes recording from 1988, so that is probably the 80s element you’re hearing there.

No Hidden Path is such a warm & passionate song. Triumphant too. I spent a few years driving back and forth across the American West -- No Hidden Path is like the sonic version of how it felt to come up the highway and hit Grand Teton after hours traversing the Wyoming wind!

what i meant is that "ordinary people" is a recording that dates back to the 80s but sounds better than the rest of the album

hawks & dove is mostly forgettable. 3 decent outtakes & "the old homestead" (which i'm less fond of), then the second side is new country tracks which are bizarrely conservative but there's nothing else remarkable about them

reactor is just kinda unhinged. like, there's some decent playing here but the problem with "t-bone" is just how relentless that riff is, it's ridiculous. "shots" is the highlight but is similarly relentless and those gunshot noises are endearingly bizarre. also what was with all the overdubbed percussion on this album? they got really silly with it

My undying love of Side B of Hawks & Doves is probably where I truly go off the rails Neil fanhood-wise. I find it ingenious, and anything in the Neil decades ahead that reminds me of Side B of Hawks & Doves wins my heart immediately, which is why I go nuts over Fork in the Road and The Monsanto Years and the more numbskull songs on The Visitor. I love when Neil goes "bash-you-over-the-head simplistic". Those moves feel really canny to me in a way I cannot yet explain... Anyway, I always appreciated Christgau's H+D review: "what I want to know is whether the DEW-line boys in "Comin' Apart at Every Nail" launched a missile or let one slip through"

the problem with "t-bone" is just how relentless that riff is, it's ridiculous.

Which is what makes it great.

I also really like side 2 of Hawks & Doves--an EP's worth of bluegrass, like Trans being an EP's worth of vocoder fun, both discs filled out with unrelated tracks to make an album.

Even Everybody's Rockin' could be an EP's worth of '50s-style originals filled out with kinda obvious covers.

Also, Union Man is really funny. And thanks to how exactly they work out the "vocal arrangement", it never stops being funny.

Listened to Mirror Ball for the first time in a long time the other day, and damn! Always considered "I'm the Ocean" one of my fave Neil tracks, but this might be in my Top 5 of his albums.

Mirror Ball is vv underrated somehow, and it even was at the time of its release despite Pearl Jam still being a pretty hot commodity and Neil coming off one of his (i think) greatest albums.

world record is underrated!

mirror ball is a good album that came right after one of his very best three album runs and is unfortunately not on the same level as that

I’m surprised Mirror Ball landed at #5 in that year’s Pazz & Jop poll (with moderate enthusiasm, averaging over ten points per ballot). I’ll have to revisit it but “I’m the Ocean” and “Downtown” have always been favorites.