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

Tell the RIAA to hold off till 6:00-6:30 tonight.

After The Gold Rush, Harvest and On The Beach are definitely the top three (unless Time Fades Away is amazing, I haven't got there yet)

Well whaddaya know? It is amazing, I'd definitely have it in that top tier. Yet the internet tells me Neil hates it. I need to try and find my copy of Unknown Pleasures when I get home, iirc there's a piece on it in there.

Listening to Time Fades Away in the car on my way to work, I came to the conclusion that it's a good minor album, that I'd overrated it. Lots of solid second-tier songs and a couple that might make the lower reaches of a list ("Don't Be Denied," "Love in Mind").

I want to say it's less that Neil hates it and more that it was mixed live to tape, so that there's no way to re-release it? Here:

Time Fades Away was recorded directly from the soundboard to 16-track using the Quad-8 CompuMix, the unreliable first digital mixing soundboard—against the wishes of producer David Briggs, who referred to it as the "Compufuck" but was forced to yield to the desires of Young. This resulted in a murky-sounding release.

"There were no 2 track masters ever made of this record. The master discs were cut directly from the 16 track masters through the Compumix system. A mix was recorded to a second 16 track machine--we had 2 that would run perfectly together--to feed the variable pitch system of the lathe--but was discarded when we were through. I was the mastering engineer who cut the masters."
—Phil Brown

Because no two-track stereo master tape was ever made as would commonly be done, the album cannot be remastered in a traditional manner. If any new release was to be attempted, a new mix would need to be made from the original multitrack tapes.

yeah he's said he has better recordings from that tour that he can mix to his liking. guess the plan is to include it on the next archives set? whatevs, that remaster that leaked out a while ago sounds great to me. but what do i know.

album i haven't listened to in forever that's better than i remembered: American Stars 'n' Bars. My cassette as a teenager had "Homegrown" at the end of BOTH sides, though, which makes side 1 seem more insipid than it is.

side 1 is kinda slight on that record, but pretty entertaining. hey babe is such a cool, breezy tune.

yeah i think as an adolescent i just had no time for lightweight country genre exercises when "Like A Hurricane" awaited

going through all the albums this week has underscored what hodgepodges most of them are - even if most tracks are associated with a specific band and vibe, that stray outtake at track 7 can be disconcerting. wish neil could be trusted to really make the archives boxes complete and purely chronological, but he wouldn't be neil if he didn't drop the stray track and fiddle with it a little

"Don't Be Denied" is easily top 5 for me.

me as well. it's the only Neil song i can think of that i've sat and played on repeat for like 49 minutes

Yeah I've done that

There's Neil songs you can cue up three times and you're there. Actually, I'm gonna have to be careful to make appropriate adjustments for length - any Neil song sounds amazing when you're into minute nine.

Have you guys heard the live Danger Bird suite that tyler compiled? I could listen to it all day! (I think I did just that at least once)

Demme on his new Neil film--didn't realize this makes four (three full-length, one shawty)
http://www.rollingstone.com/movies/news/q-a-jonathan-demme-on-the-making-of-neil-young-journeys-20120627?cnn=yes

think gratefulbreed.blogspot.com still has Time Fades Away and Chrome Dreams, both in FLAC. Also can't resist linking this one, one more time--Neil w Zep, playing lead alll the way through "When The Levee Breaks":
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qUSj164pwEM&feature=player_embedded#at=11

http://assets.rollingstone.com/assets/images/story/q-a-jonathan-demme-on-the-making-of-neil-young-journeys-20120627/1000x600/main.jpg

christ, dave thomas and rick moranis look old

http://pixel.nymag.com/imgs/daily/vulture/2012/06/26/26-neil-young-jonathan-demme-silo.o.png/a_250x375.png

I count Time Fades Away as major, and I've always preferred it to On the Beach. But "Last Dance" strikes me as a little overwrought now, and that takes up eight or nine minutes. The title song, "Journey," "Love in Mind," "L.A.," and "Don't Be Denied," though, I think those are all great.

i don't think the songwriting is quite as strong on TFA as it is on Tonight's The Night and On The Beach, but the overall vibe of TFA is fantastic.

Songwriting's p strong, and I love the raw toughness--"Last Dance" seems almost Sabbath-y--but there is a bit more filler, and On the Beach's sequencing is just masterful

This has got to be one of the all-time great "what could have been" bands! This 1966 track from the Mynah Birds was written by Neil Young and his college roommate (!) Rick James, who also sang lead (Neil is on 12-string and backup vocals). Also in the band were Neil's future Buffalo Springfield bandmate Bruce Palmer and two guys who were later in Steppenwolf. This was almost a Motown single in 1966, but was pulled at the last minute after James was arrested for going AWOL from the US Navy. "It's My Time" b/w "Go On and Cry" remained in the vaults until it was included on a Motown CD box set in 2006; earlier this year, it finally found it's way onto 7" vinyl for Record Store Day earlier this year.

Check out this fantastic shoulda-been hit!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tQTE8hKvaaI

Time Fades Away is great. "14 Junkies, too weak to work"--what a curtain-raiser! And how else could that album finish with anything but the pile-up of "Last Dance"? (Funny to think it was his sole extended guitar work/wigout between Everybody Knows... & Zuma.*)

I will say that my judgement is biased--this album figured into a handful of major personal events, so I'm not as critical towards it.

*4-Way Street doesn't count.

I like what Time Fades Away kind of has the best and the worst songs of his Ditch trilogy imo, if "Denied" and the title track were on Decade I'd knock it off the must-buy list easy.

I like what Time Fades Away kind of...

Jim Farber reviews Journeys, w trailer at the end, as something called a trailer should be
http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/movies/movie-review-neil-young-journeys-article-1.1104025

"It's My Time" was on my list--excellent mid-'60s bubblesoul-garage. Reminds me a little of the Young Rascals, and a little of that early CCR track, "Call It Pretending."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uk95whbAqbA

Also a bit like the Cure's "Boys Don't Cry"

i don't think the songwriting is quite as strong on TFA as it is on Tonight's The Night and On The Beach, but the overall vibe of TFA is fantastic.

def agree. It's his New Morning.

so the deal with this poll is I can vote for as many songs as I want?

It would work best if you can cut it at 40. The only thing with going beyond is that I don't know how to score it fairly...suggestion?

And the more you vote for, the more points you get?

Yeah...I set it up so that every group of ten extra songs beyond ten got half as many points added as the previous ten. 10 songs = 150, 20 songs = 250, 30 songs = 300, 40 songs = 325. 50 songs would equal 337.5, then it'd get crazy.

yeah I mean I could seriously do a 50+ song ballot but I guess you're saying you'd rather I not do that? w/e I'm happy to cut off at whatever point you please, but leave it open-ended & I'm liable to vote for 100 songs.

ok so I just saw this thread

one week blargh

maybe I'll just submit the tracks from my "headed for the ditch" comp

i still gotta blitz through 79-12...I can do it!

I've found this site helpful as I've been going through his songs:

Neil Young Album Discography

Euler: cutting at 40 would work best for me. I know what you mean--Neil's the only artist where I could list 50 or 60 songs and still be listing things I love and haven't gotten tired of over the years. No one else comes close for me, not the Beatles or Dylan or anyone else. But I think there'd be an imbalance with a lot of 30- and 40-song ballots combined with one twice that size.

I can only imagine how much harder the Zeppelin poll would have been had the band made another decade or two of worthy records.

Hmm, I've never seen this BBC doc: http://www.veoh.com/watch/v18762427aatR8fdb?h1=Neil+Young+-+Don't+Be+Denied

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bYOcKCCr2M&feature=watch_response

I think I'm going to cut it here and do my ballot without hearing Silver & Gold, Eldorado, Chrome Dreams II and a handful of others; tracking them down on youtube is ruining Neil for me.

Just listened to Everybody's Rockin' and listening to Old Ways now, the last of his pre-Greendale full-lengths I hadn't heard. Everybody's Rockin' was kind of fun if obviously slight, but four tracks in, Old Ways seems like the biggest crock of shit he ever put his name on.

also plan to check out that "A Promise" album, though

yeah not much to like about old ways. a promise is pretty enjoyable though.

silver&gold has some classic tracks esp 'razor love'

a promise is pretty enjoyable though.

the live stuff on the second half of Old Ways is such a step up from the first that i believe it

first half is like, Self-Portrait bad

the first half is Waylon Jennings territory (i.e. sentimental and gross)

I think I'm going to cut it here and do my ballot without hearing Silver & Gold, Eldorado, Chrome Dreams II and a handful of others; tracking them down on youtube is ruining Neil for me.

You should at least hear Ordinary People from Chrome Dreams II. A friend of mine once dismissed it as being overwrought and too long but that groove just hooks me.