May You Live in Inneresting Times: The Neil Young Voting Thread (deadline July 8)

songs that I'll rank highly that haven't gotten discussed yet: "Losing End", "There Goes My Babe", "Prime of Life", & "Don't Cry".

& "Razor Love"!

razor love, yeah. that's probably the most recent song i can see voting for.

"Cocaine Eyes" def in my top ten. Looove the Eldorado ep

I love "Don't Cry" and "Eldorado" both for featuring perhaps the loudest guitar explosions of Neil's career.

"Cocaine Eyes" and "Heavy Love" are both great from that EP.

those Eldorado tracks led me into years of alt.country fandom, through Uncle Tupelo, looking for someone else who could sound like Neil did on those tracks. aside from UT here & there, I never found it, & bought a lot of bad records.

I had "Razor Love" on a year-end Top 10, but it won't quite make this list; "There Goes My Babe" will.

I enjoy all these autobiographical posts about where and when you first heard Neil. Here's my own story, which was part of a larger inventory I did of my album collection almost 10 years ago. Neil came towards the end, which was perfect, because everything beforehand had basically been working towards him. He was like the Captain Kurtz of this project.

http://phildellio.tripod.com/records-w3-x-y-z.html

I'd like to find a reasonably priced copy of Life on vinyl, then I'd have all records up to and including Ragged Glory. (Well, I'd still have to buy the Budweiser album. If I found Life, I'd cross my fingers, close my eyes, and buy the Budweiser album.) Of course, I had ample opportunity to buy it at the time, but coming right after Landing on Water, I was really off Neil for a couple of years.

I bought ATGR in '99 and recoiled -- I'd never heard a voice that high singing lyrics which on first listen were so twee. It took RNS, which I bought months later as a second-chance provision, to make me understand the fuss. Buying Zuma next helped.

Bought "Freedom" the day it came out. Who knows how I knew about Neil Young back then, but if I'm being honest I'm sure the five-star Rolling Stone review helped push me in that direction. Back when, iirc, a five star review meant something. In fact, I wonder what the last few five-star reviews were before "Freedom?"

― Josh in Chicago, Monday, June 25, 2012 5:24 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

To put things in perspective, the Who's It's Hard got five stars in 1982. There were many instances of RS giving 5-star reviews in exchange for exclusive access to the bands (and lo and behold, a Who cover story a couple months later). iirc around 1986-87, they abandoned star reviews for a couple of years.

I actually bought After the Gold Rush after seeing that review for Freedom; I thought, better start with the canonical shit, and work up to the later stuff. I appreciated ATGR more than I loved it, and didn't seriously follow up on it until a year later. But Ragged Glory killed me, and I can still hum every single solo from memory. Tonight's the Night soon followed, then Freedom, Everybody Knows, Zuma, and a blinding show in early 1991 that still stands as one of the most intense I've seen, by anyone.

I must be getting old--I am getting old. Alfred's acronyms went right past me (honestly--went to Wikipedia for help). ATGR is Gold Rush to me, RNS is Rust.

I get confused with acronyms too easily with neil, there's SO many albums. Words are more helpful

deep, deep neil fandom began for me with the one-two punch of getting on the beach and the bottom line 74 bootleg all in the space of about two weeks.

got Decade for Christmas one year, probably 1990? my parents were super cool to do that, but it was on one of my friend's tips, so not that cool. that was my in...

clemenza - really liked that Neil piece.

Thanks a lot. Z S mentioned getting drunk to "Albuquerque"; the last couple of years of high school were very much about my friend Steve and I getting high to Tonight's the Night and (David Briggs!) The Twelve Dreams of Dr. Sardonicus.

Aside from the radio, I think my first exposure to Neil in the home was my older sister picking up This Note's For You used on vinyl at a flea market around 91-2(?). I seem to recall she only played once.

I picked up my first Neil cd at the end of '97. I traded Tonic's Lemon Parade and The Police's Every Breath You Take: The Classics (both then recently acquired during my brief 15 year-old idiot's dalliance with not one but two CD clubs) for a used copy of Rust Never Sleeps at CD Warehouse. I didn't quite get the acoustic half of the lp for a few years. After The Who's Meaty, Beaty, Big & Bouncy (bought at that same store) (and also not counting that Police comp), it was one of the first "Classic Rock" albums I owned on CD.

A few months later I was back at the same shop, and I heard Tonight's The Night for the first time as the clerk spun it over the stereo. But I didn't get that on CD till much later, although I did score a nice vinyl copy with the inserts for $1.99 at Half-Price Books in '99 (along with Live Rust for $2.99--I'd be doing good to get both for less than $20 from the same store today).

Neil really locked in for me when I got Decade at the end of '99. Gradually afterwards I picked up the classics, and my interest would be re-sparked by the archive live albums, finally getting cemented inn 2009 by the quadruple-whammy of finally reading Shakey, the release of Archives I, getting downloads of boots from Tyler's blog, and at last getting ahold of Time Fades Away on vinyl ($8, no poster, hissy on the solo numbers). I had a real Neil year then, the music being there for the good and (mostly) bad. As luck would have it, I capped all this by getting to see him live on the "Twisted Road" tour.

Tell Me Why ... this one has been called out yet?

Decade could be the best compilation record ever made. And the really insane thing is, you could make another great double album of songs that didn't make the cut.

Imagine how good you are when songs like Tell Me Why, Don't Let It Bring You Down, Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere, Barstool, Ambulance & Revolution Blues don't make it onto your greatest hits.

^^Not only that, but (as pointed out in Shakey) there was way better unreleased stuff in the vaults.

Kornrulez I think every siingle one of those songs is gonna make my ballot

There's bootleg versions of Homegrown going around, isn't there? P sure I once had the Tonight's the night director's cut at one point.

my neil 'sleeper' = love in mind

was gonna nom 'Albuquerque' as another sleeper too, so glad to see some tru heads repping for it on this thread, ben keith just roools on that track

Voted - 30 songs, all equal points. Getting it down to just 30 was a struggle.

Well Le Noise was totally unexpected. Not sure how great the songs are (though there's one that's definitely making my ballot, and two others that might) but the arrangements are extraordinary. I heard a kick drum once, but is it otherwise guitar-only? Brave move.

Don't even think there's a kick drum on it, tbh.

My shortlist is hovering around 33.

"Love in Mind" is just outside my Top 10--favourite song from Time Fades Away, or at least one of two. It captures that moment perfectly for me. "What am I doin' here?"

I appear to have reached the end of spotify, with nine studio albums plus Time Fades Away still to go. These are my second division albums, all great in their way: Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere, Comes A Time, Trans, Landing On Water, Life, Mirror Ball and Le Noise.

Yknow I'll be the corny sap who says it: Neil Young writes exceptionally romantic love songs.

Pardon My Heart
Lotta Love
Love is a Rose (Linda R version is alright, but his is best)
Harvest Moon
Like a Hurricane

do I have to keep going?

I know there was Stupid Girl (I've never liked that song, and it's not because I'm stupid) and A Man Needs A Maid (and probably others I'm not aware of) but you would have to be pretty myopic to think that either of these songs contained the unvarnished warm heart of Neil Young. He seems so crochety, and probably is, but he has a warm heart.

Listened to Freedom again this morning...I think "Hangin' on a Limb" might make my ballot.

And am I wrong for vastly preferring Freedom to Harvest?

xpost to my earlier Joni Circle Game/Neil Young Sugar Mountain talk - mentioned this to my husband and he remembers hearing a bootleg where Joni talks about it, believes this Sugar Mountain club was in Winnipeg.

Ah - why didn't I go straight to Wikipedia? In a concert at The Paris Theatre in London on October 29, 1970[1], Joni Mitchell, who was already friends with Neil Young by the time he wrote this song, opened her song "Circle Game" with this speech:
Mitchell: "In 1965 I was up in Canada, and there was a friend of mine up there who had just left a rock'n'roll band (...) he had just newly turned 19, and that meant he was no longer allowed into his favorite hangout, which was kind of a teeny-bopper club and once you're over 18 you couldn't get in there anymore; so he was really feeling terrible because his girlfriends and everybody that he wanted to hang out with, his band could still go there, you know, but it's one of the things that drove him to become a folk singer was that he couldn't play in this club anymore. But he was over the hill. So he wrote this song that was called "Oh to live on sugar mountain" which was a lament for his lost youth.He wrote it on his 19th birthday (...) And I thought, God, you know, if we get to 19 and there's nothing after that, that's a pretty bleak future, so I wrote a song for him, and for myself just to give me some hope. It's called The Circle Game."[2]

Anyway.. LL otm about the giant, adorable heart of Neil. I often think of him as another my fathers (my dad is a crazy looking but sweet Canadian folksingin' hippie too, just not famous). Like A Hurricane is an all-time love song imo.

My Two Dads, the musical

And am I wrong for vastly preferring Freedom to Harvest?

No. I always thought Freedom is one of his very best.

yeah freedom is fab. an interesting mix of styles -- sort of seems like a lot of neil's best albums are that way? drawing from a variety of eras and bands. he's so prolific that he can go a couple years, look back at the collection of songs he's written and basically make a "greatest hits" of tunes. Kinda how Rust Never Sleeps / American Stars n Bars / Zuma / Comes A Time / After The Gold Rush are.

One of the best examples of that would have been the original Chrome Dreams. He never released it, but pieces of it surfaced on Rust Never Sleeps, American Stars n Bars, Comes a Time and even Freedom.

Which leads me to Chrome Dreams II. Not one Neil's best albums, but it does contain one song that simply must be heard by everyone on this thread: Ordinary People. 18 glorious minutes of Neil Young at his very best.

Four Dads, Ismael: I have two stepfathers as well as my birth father. :P

a barbershop musical then

Sweeney Todd

Hey LL; Pardon My heart is my favorite song off Zuma. Will make my ballot for sure.

what's the thinking on See The Sky About To Rain? I love the solo piano version on the Massey Hall disc but not as fond of the version on On The Beach.

love both of 'em - the wurlitzer (?) on the studio version sounds perfect to me.

here's a later song i might vote for...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h9oVk1_-_Ck

I like the *sound* of Harvest, but I'm not sure I even own a copy. "Freedom" is as good as his best stuff, afaic.

Speaking of sound, can anyone pinpoint the moment when Neil reversed himself on digital sound? A bunch of his 80s stuff was recorded digitally, he used to talk up his Redwood studios in interviews as "finally going all-digital," and the cover of Eldorado proudly proclaims "A DIGITAL RECORDING." Did it take him x number of records to realize he hated the sound, or was there some specific incident/revelation that sent him back to analog?

Freedom is one of those instance of "return to form" actually being true. such a great record. even when you're sifting through the cliches of Rockin in the Free World, it's hard to deny the genius at work, lots of clever nuances/ambiguities built into it

not sure about the digital/analog timing -- he was heavy into HDCD for a while in the 90s, right?

Yeah, just remembered Broken Arrow has the HDCD logo on the back; but it also had a vinyl-only bonus track.

He was already bitching about digital in the interviews included in Shakey, which were mostly done in '91--'95, and IIRC, most of his new releases and all the reissues/archival stuff since then are HDCDs.

I sent a ballot! 30 songs cuz a 20-song ballot had to exclude my wtf picks.
(did you get my ballot, clemenza?)

I've responded to the eight that have come in so far, so if you didn't hear from me, no.

Unless otherwise instructed, I'll count all "Mr. Soul" votes as being for the original. That's one instance where I'd count the Buffalo Springfield and the Trans version separately. I've received a couple of ballots so far where the voter also had a track or two from Trans. The first was an easy call, because everything was listed chronologically. The second wasn't, so I went ahead and assumed.