neil young

When I was deep in my getting-into-Neil phase, I remember being underwhelmed by Re.ac.tor and never went back after my initial listens. The two songs off that album that are on Rust Bucket are pretty good so I will probably pick up a cheap vinyl copy if I see one.

Duncan Disorderly (Tom D.) at 4:57 17 Mar 21

I've heard re.ac.tor two or three times and might like it less than the two I mentioned,

"T-Bone" is genius, I wish it was 20 minutes long. "Opera Star" and "Shots" are also great. You know what is terrible though? Side 2 of "Hawks and Doves", what a waste of vinyl.

oh you gotta hear the live "t-bone" off of the way down in the rust bucket, so bonkers

I would imagine Neil's worst songs would still be decent given the Rust Bucket treatment - that guitar sound is the best.

that's why he don't wanna be good

Landing on Water, easily. But This Note's for You is still out there, waiting.

I actually like This Note's For You. And there's a recent (2015) live album from the same era, Bluenote Café, that's even better, and sheds more light on that whole project.

Yeah Bluenote Cafe in its own way might be the most impressive of the Archives, for putting an era most people, myself included, clowned

I know I won't convince clemenza or alfred that anything but the properly released studio albums are vital but I don't think the Archives are ephemera at all, it's more an alternate history, or a look in to what could have been if Neil had made better decisions...

Also evaluating Crazy Horse on studio albums alone is just invalid

but Bluenote Cafe I finally got ok he was on to something

I love "Prisoners of Rock 'n' Roll."

As my premature dismissal of Are You Passionate? indicates, I have a bad habit of avoiding certain albums because of one song. So the title track has kept me clear of This Note's for You to this day--I'm sure I'll like some of it. I didn't mean ephemera as a putdown--just a handy term for non-album stuff. It's as much the cost. After I get those final few studio albums, I may move onto other stuff.

I love the way over the top version of “Prisoners” on the Year of the Horse live album.

year of the horse is fun, overlooked in the crazy horse live catalog

The greatest start to any Neil live album — someone in the audience shouts "They all sound the same!" and Neil replies "It's all one song!"

haha love that part

I'm not a fan of the album, but "This Note's for You" is a keeper. Still hilarious.

Bluenote Cafe is an improvement. The first CD does nothing for me, but the second CD is a LOT better thanks to three epics: the definitive electric version of "Crime in the City (Sixty to Zero)" ("Got thrown out of Bible school for giving the finger to the preacher!"), "Ordinary People" and a great version of "Tonight's the Night."

"Doghouse" is on the second disc

Neil's greatest song

great horn arrangements on the Stax style version of "On the Way Home"

Yeah, Blue Note Cafe and A Treasure make up for This Note's... and Old Ways---BC does have some beer commercial horn-rock bits that were cliches even at the time, but more of it's fine as wine (maybe not the very best wine, but I wouldn't know about that anyway).

Stereogum has a great interview with Poncho.

oh yeah I forget about A Treasure - also a far better document of that era than the actual album

it all started to go south for me (until Freedom)

there were things i liked about life (same thing everybody else liked, basically) and this note's for you, but the real honest-to-god comeback for me was el dorado, the ep that came out before freedom and shares a few tracks with it. that one was a lightning bolt out of fucking nowhere when it came out.

Yeah A Treasure is very good, Christgau's A- rating us actually spot-on. It's by far my favorite release covering the '80s before 1989's Freedom/Times Square/Eldorado sessions.

Well, maybe not "by far," but the only one I like as-is and as a whole.

but the real honest-to-god comeback for me was _el dorado,_ the ep that came out before _freedom_ and shares a few tracks with it. that one was a lightning bolt out of fucking nowhere when it came out.

Eldorado cost me $25 at the time. I've always been fascinated by the choice of formats it was available in. CD-only in Japan (makes sense), vinyl-only in Australia (WTF? OK, Neil).

Yeah, I was ecstatic to find a used CD copy of Eldorado for like 7 bucks at a Half Price Books back in 2019.

xgau:
Eldorado [Reprise (Japan), 1989]
This is certain to become a legend on rarity alone, and if you believe mad guitar is all he's good for, you may even think it's worth a buck a minute at the $25 it cost me. I think it's versions and/or work tapes, with two otherwise unavailable songs and mad guitar that ends too soon. I'm glad to own it. But I get reimbursed. B+ I might have bought if I'd ever seen it (was still kind of a mail order wuss at that point).

I believe it was announced that he was going to reissue Eldorado at some point

(At least still a *living American Rock Star* mail order--er, wimp)

I believe it was announced that he was going to reissue Eldorado at some point

I think I heard that at one point, maybe it will be packaged with Toast.

I know it's not the right timeframe, more of just a joke about how likely it is we will see it soon.

"Cocaine Eyes" always makes my Neil Young top tens.

"Prisoners of Rock 'n' Roll" has become the go-to track, but I dig "Around the World" for its wtf chorus.

“too lonely” on life rocks, iirc

Yeah Eldorado is supposedly getting packaged with some sessions he cut with his SNL band from his Sep. 1989 appearance.

I bought it for like $20-30, then used it and Freedom to re-create Times Square on CD-R, and then sold Eldorado for a slight profit. (I couldn't afford to keep it as a kid, and I preferred to hear the tracks in that context anyway.)

FWIW, the Times Square recording of "Boxcar" is the only cut from that lost album that hasn't been officially released. (A different, later recording was used on Chrome Dreams II.) Had to use a copy of the bootlegged acetate with some pitch/speed correction.

it wasn’t easy to find a copy in the US (and really expensive if you did find it)

i lucked out. my best friend's sister was in japan right after eldorado came out and brought me back a copy. music distribution was weird back then. or maybe it was normal then and it's weird now? either way, i miss it sometimes.

"Cocaine Eyes" always makes my Neil Young top tens.

soooooo good

I do remember seeing it in indie shops back in the mid 90s but it was always $30 but I definitely saw it around

In the picture from the Stereogum piece, is Poncho ... wearing his own Poncho shirt?

https://static.stereogum.com/uploads/2021/03/GettyImages-452070038-1615994314-scaled.jpg

I kind of want one of those!

that's a boss move right there

I do remember seeing it in indie shops back in the mid 90s but it was always $30 but I definitely saw it around

Yeah, I remember seeing it in record shops in Champaign for like $30 back then, but I wasn't yet enough of a Neil completist to shell out that much dough. Of course I saw no problem back then spending the same $30 for those Nirvana bootlegs like Outcesticide, but that's a different discussion lol.

i lucked out. my best friend's sister was in japan right after _eldorado_ came out and brought me back a copy. music distribution was weird back then. or maybe it was normal then and it's weird now? either way, i miss it sometimes.

Stereogum has a great interview with Poncho.

Thanks! It was indeed a great read. And this:

SAMPEDRO: They had a good thing going, but when Danny passed away… it wasn’t like the wheels fell off, but there was a wheel missing. When I came along, I was so excited to be in a band. I brought a lot of energy. At that point in my life, I’d given up on music, even though I had played since I was 11 and moved to Hollywood in 1966 to get in bands and make records. I was 16. I tried hard, but it never happened. I had applied for a job at the post office. I had sold my guitars. I was tired of not having rent money and not having food and living in my truck and all the other crazy things you have to do when you’re broke. Along comes Billy and the next thing I know we’re jamming at his house and I’m meeting Neil Young. Right when I’d given up, I made it.

Years ago, when I found out he had been working full-time on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, I was like WTF, you play with Neil Young, and you want to work for Leno??? That was before I knew what it was really like to be a musician, and to drive the point home, I saw an interview with Branford Marsalis where he talked about quitting the same show as Leno's bandleader. Marsalis's dad told him, "all right, that's fine, but you can't complain anymore!" Like, no matter how much press or respect you get, it doesn't always translate to a steady income, and working for Leno may be awful, but you don't have to worry about the bills ever again if you stick with it long enough. Can't blame a guy for taking it - I've never had to live in a car before, who the fuck am I to judge?

lol at “whoa! that water had tequila in it!”

I'll give Living with War another go, but once through I found most of it to be a B- shrug-of-the-shoulders. "Let's Impeach the President" was a little better than I remembered. Almost every song is very specifically anchored in that W./no-end-in-sight moment (coming out in early 2006, I was surprised to hear specific mention of Obama--well before he announces, almost two years removed from his big speech in 2004); it felt dated to me, which I wouldn't care about if I liked the songs more.

The good news, though, is that I had completely forgotten about "Roger and Out," which I had #8 on my year-end that year and still sounds great. That's the Neil I often connect with immediately: meandering ruminations on the hippie moment. It's not anchored to that moment--he's remembering a friend who died in Vietnam (if I'm hearing it correctly), but it sounds different than every other song on the album. I called it a "miniature 'Cortez the Killer'" in my comment that year; an early draft of "Driftin' Back" works just as well.

"It's not anchored to that moment"--meaning W./no-end-in-sight. I've got a couple of moments circling around each other there.

Picture day for the bus drivers at my elementary school was always a blast pic.twitter.com/1sZVgcdKfS

— Stu (@RandBallsStu) March 19, 2021

What's in your bag, Neil?

his indian rug and a pipe to share, iirc

Mellencamp is all, pff, why are they making me pose with these losers?

iirc, he just got done suckin' on a chili dog outside the Tastee Freez.

Looks kind of like the photographer (who I casually know!) is actually *keeping* him from doing that, and he's growing impatient and hungry. Though it also looks kind of like the other two are just humoring Neil, too. Neil is all "OK, now just one more, maybe with the poncho and leather satchel ..." and John and Willie are all, "lol, this is so Neil of him."

Paul Natkin! Yeah he's been a big part of Chicago's music scene for a loooooong time. I've met him once, good guy.