neil young

ticketmaster promises i will probably get my money back in 30 days, lord willing

i was hoping this would be my first ny show. ah well.

If Ticketmaster doesn't call the venue. They can process the refund. (You may even be able to do this now.) I learned the hard way when Ticketmaster took back tickets to a repeatedly COVID-delayed show, only to keep the money and falsely claim they must've refunded the money since the tickets were no longer in my account. Credit card wouldn't do anything - after the window for disputes has closed, they said they could do nothing, even if I presented evidence. So I called MSG and they luckily could see EVERYTHING on their system - i.e. they voided the tickets but never sent back payment - so they processed it immediately and said next time call us, not Ticketmaster. As if I needed saying, FUCK TICKETMASTER.

*(Ticketmaster voided the tickets, not the venue)

MSG sounds awesome; who are they?

Madison Square Garden. (They also own the Beacon, Radio City Music Hall and I think a few other venues in NYC.)

Neil's forthcoming science fiction novel update: it's still forthcoming.

https://americansongwriter.com/neil-youngs-sci-fi-novel-and-his-hilarious-response-about-his-ongoing-project/

Crazy Horse - Early Daze is out today, this is some primo shit, lost CH studio album basically

Nice to hear, can't wait to play it.

great ragged vibes, the CH version of "helpless" is excellent

some of the stuff has been in the archives box sets but hearing it all together as one session everything sound very cohesive

In all honestly, I lost interest in the never-ending parade of Young releases a few years ago--I remember when every new record up till the early-'80s felt like an event--but I would buy that early Crazy Horse record. Didn't know they recorded "Helpless."

What's the story re: the CH "Helpless"? In Shakey they mention a 7-minute version that the engineer failed to record. Was that not true, or did they get another take on tape?

Yeah it's weird - maybe they did it again?

Here's the excerpt:

“Young and the Horse cut “Everybody’s Alone,” “Oh Lonesome Me,” “Wonderin’,” “I Believe in You,” “Birds,” an exquisite version of Whitten’s “Look at All the Things,” as well as an epic ballad called “Helpless” that failed to make it to tape. “We were doing it live, everybody playing and singing at once, and we did about an eight- or nine-minute version of it … with a long instrumental in the middle,” Young told writer Jean-Charles Costa. “And the engineer didn’t press the button down. It was much more free than anything I’ve done onstage.”

Any way, Early Daze is excellent, I'm definitely getting it. I've grown to welcome all of these Neil Young releases because for me they simply replaced what generally happens in unofficial channels, and it's not like I complained when I was a hardcore Dylan collector finding "new" bootlegs every week. They're not for everybody and even diehard fans should be discerning enough not to want everything (just as I never bothered with a good number of Dylan bootlegs/archival releases), but I'm glad it's just out there in the best quality possible. FWIW, I gave Fuckin' Up a chance and I thought it was surprisingly good. I didn't realize it was actually a recording of a private concert he did, and in a way it kind of reflects that appeal - it's a one-off that I'm glad I heard (if not witnessed). I'm not sure if I'll ever get a copy, but I'm glad I gave it a good listen all the way through.

this is not that version of "helpless", it's probably an earlier take – it's about 4 minutes. not mindblowing, but pretty nice!

Early Daze is great but it all should've been on Archives Vol 1 ... it basically took Neil 20 years to put together a deluxe edition of Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere. But now we can cobble that together ourselves!

neil is definitely frustrating with how he does stuff but i'm trying to just kick back with it and listen to it as a record and i think as a set of songs it's a great listening experience

it's funny - i'm semi-passable at playing a couple of his tunes. then i went to a recent open-mic and watched someone turf out doing "powderfinger" on acoustic and thought "nope, i'm not ready yet."