Tag Archives: Crazy Horse

Neil and Macca

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Speaking of The Beatles. If you haven’t seen it yet, check out the video below, which is a combination of the sublime and the surreal.

Paul McCartney joined Neil Young onstage at his concert in Hyde Park, London, a few days ago for Young’s closing number, The Beatles’ A Day In The Life. McCartney joins in mid-song to pick up the singing on the bit he wrote of The Beatles classic from Sgt. Pepper’s, a song with which Young evidently has been closing recent shows.

The sometimes ragged collaboration finishes with Young literally ripping the strings off his Les Paul and then joining Macca at the vibraphone for a little one-note finale or something like that.


Neil Young Archives: The Concerts

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Three live performances are included in the Neil Young Archives Vol. 1 box set, two of which were actually released in 2008. Of course, that doesn’t include live video footage you can find in hidden tracks and the video log, usually tucked underneath track listing screens, throughout the set.

neil-young-riverboatIf you pre-ordered the set, you also received another previously released concert on DVD/CD, Sugar Mountain Live At the Canterbury House 1968, which I wrote about back in December in this post. Also in that piece, I mentioned a bit about one of the other discs, Live At Massey Hall 1971, which I picked up last year. Live At The Fillmore East 1970 with Crazy Horse and Live At The Riverboat 1969 are the other two performances in the set.

Suffice to say Massey Hall is Young’s best overall performance of these discs. He appears to have fully realized himself as a solo performer by this time despite touring with a rather serious back injury and playing in a brace. But he had found the perfect balance between polished performer and humorous and engaging stage personality.

As is revealed in an Archives meeting elsewhere in the set, he intended to release a live acoustic album from this tour at the time but it was ditched when sessions for the Harvest album began in February 1971. Continue reading Neil Young Archives: The Concerts →

Taking a look into Neil Young’s Archive

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OK, I admit it. I caved. On pre-ordering the first installment of the Neil Young Archive Box Set, that is. I wrestled with this one for a while. And it wasn’t Neil’s testimonial to the Blu-Ray format on his web site that made me more amenable to the lofty prices for this set, which is available in three formats, Blu-Ray, DVD and CD.

neil-young-preview-small1But I figured I would wind up buying it at some point anyways because it covers what I find the most interesting aspect of Young’s career, 1963-1972, and it seems that recently the best prices you can find on new releases are available before they are released. Although I have noticed the prices going down a little on the CD and Blu-Ray sets since I ordered.

Also, if you pre-order it in either Blu-Ray or DVD, you receive a preview disc in Blu-Ray of the first disc in the set, labeled Disc 00 (how high tech!?!),  just the kind of offer for which I’m a sucker.

This set has been in the pipeline for something like 15 years. Ridiculous, isn’t it? In the meantime, Young has refused to re-master any of his early albums, the ones I believe are his best, because he hates the CD format for sound quality almost as much as he hates digital downloads. Continue reading Taking a look into Neil Young’s Archive →