Neil Young's "Ditch Trilogy" Poll

I don't go to any of these albums for the guitar playing, unlike some Neil albums

"Time Fades Away", the song, is really great. He's right about time, too. I like "L.A." a lot too but I think it sounds better on some boots of that era.

The versions of "L.A." and "Journey Through the Past" on that 2007 live album blow the album ones away.

The Massey Hall show? Don't think "LA" is on that one.

It was "Love in Mind," my mistake.

The version of "L.A." I'm most thinking of is on the Lonely Weekend boot, January 15, 1973.

is that the solo acoustic version? I like that one, too.

love all three...or love two and like time fades away...but yeah there was a period of time when i listening to like nothing but tonight's the night for like a year it seemed

Tonight's the Night

yeah, tyler, that 1-15-73 show has the usual 1973 structure, and "L.A." is in the acoustic part of the show.

love how the music in "LA" is written like some majestic paean but the lyrics are just snarky putdowns

xpost I think that boot is probably the essential TFA tour bootleg. TTN essential boot = Manchester, UK. And as others have noted above, the incredible OTB show is the Bottom Line one.

yeah, I'm fascinated by those 1973 shows, and you're right, I think: the Manchester show you're talking about is the 11-3-73 show, right?

don't have it in front of me, but yeah, I think that's the one ... there's a part where one of the mancunians yells: "you must be JOKING!" and Neil says: "you might be onto something there ..." the songs aren't as loose/long as some other bootlegs, but they're pretty intense.

yeah that's the boot...it's on the last song, "Don't Be Denied"

I really love that song. Haven't heard the boot, though.

it will be exciting for this era to be mined for the next archives ...

... like, the whole bit about Joni Mitchell at the Tonight's the Night sessions! Weird. And then there's the lost ditch album, Homegrown ...

yeah neil better deliver with this era on the archives.

increasingly i'm feeling REALLY burned by the archives box, especially after the CD and vinyl reissues of the first four albums...and frankly i've gotten better rarities from doom and gloom from the tomb.

ha, thanks, M@tt ...
yeah, i was feeling a little burned recently, too. i mean, i love it, but i can only imagine it being a lot better. i just feel like he *really* should've gone down the route of reissuing the albums separately with a bonus disc of unreleased material + keep releasing performance series things. it actually has gotten me thinking about whether an artist being in charge of his/her own legacy/back catalog is a good thing! because at this point, the Dylan bootleg series is preferable, and Bob doesn't have shit to do with that, I imagine. Other than collecting a check.

tonight's the night > on the beach > time fades away

is the performance series still an ongoing thing? i looooooove the fillmore east album but i haven't heard the others

new performance series is out next week! 1992 Harvest Moon tour ... They've all been pretty great. Massey Hall is essential, I'd say. The Sugar Mtn. disc a little less so, but still awesome.

they are out on vinyl, yes? that is what i want for xmas

i think they are. they might be ridiculously expensive tho

yeah they're like 30 40 bucks each
i like the sugar mountain one more than massey hall, mainly for the stories he tells.

yeah he's pretty chill and funny on the Sugar Moutain disc, whereas the Massey show is more "I am brooding rock god Neil"

i think they are. they might be ridiculously expensive tho

― tylerw, Tuesday, December 1, 2009 1:43 PM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

ha, that is why i am asking for them for xmas!

yeah the sugar mountain one is ridic priced....

the massey hall show is towering IMO, just amazing

I'm a Neil dilettante really-- not long ago all I really knew was Zuma, Decade, Tonight's The Night, Gold Rush and some later smatterings. But Tyler's awesome awesome oddball comps have put me on a big NY kick lately.

So today I sat down and listened to all three of the trilogy in sequence. This is my first time hearing TFA at all and my first time hearing most of OTB.

TFA drags in places but has tremendous peaks in the title track, Yonder Stands The Sinner, Don't Be Denied and The Bridge. OTB has an amazing sound, definitely the most sonically appealing of the three for me, and right now the inscrutable guitar solo on 'Vampire Blues' seems like the best thing ever to me. TTN seems to wear the most masks, with a lightness that conceals real dark shit, the most elusive and I definitely don't 'get it' yet.

Between Beach and Tonight's then, with further listening needed.

These are three of the best records ever made by anyone I don't give a fuck what anyone say. I could listen to "L.A." all day and all night long and not get tired of the hook.

it's really hard for me to make a choice here. i am going for tonights the night cuz it was "albuquerque" which is where i was born and i feel like OTB is getting enuff love on this thread.

TTN is my favorite Neil album, but I have to be in a certain frame of mind to listen to it. OTB I can enjoy almost anytime.

Recently I acquired a crappy rip of TFA, which I hadn't heard in 30 years, and it's been in constant rotation ever since. I wonder why Neil hates this album so much?

Yup, the version of C'mon Baby Let's Go Downtown on Massey is incredible.

All three albums are among Neil's very best and TTN and OTB are utterly esssential, but TTN edges it for me. It's my favourite Neil album period. Somebody upthread commented on what an empathetic album it is, and he's absolutely right. This album is man emotion in rock at its best - a little maudlin, a little drunk, but empathetic and touching. It fuckin' rocks as well. So many bits on this album that just slay me... the way Neil's voice breaks when he sings "Ain't got nothin' but this feeling" in Mellow My Mind; Cryin' Eyes, the bit about watching the skaters in Borrowed Tune (Lady Jane is the tune he took from the Rolling Stones, right? Neil's version is vastly superior); the riff off C'mon Baby; "He tried to do his best but he could not" in Tired Eyes; Nils Logfren's stinging guitar breaks in Speakin' Out; the sense of dread in Albuquerque's chord sequence...

OTB is all kinds of awesome too. Rick Danko and Levon Helm lay down such a tight, tense groove on Revolution Blues, very different to anything they did with The Band. It's a shame they didn't do more with Neil. Danko's bass is incredible - they way he leaps up the frets with those gulping high notes is almost like Holger Czukay, but he also maintains a powerful low end. It's a stunning group performance.

yeah, i hope that some more recordings with Danko and Helm show up on the Archives -- I think there's something in Shakey about at least one unreleased song with Helm on drums.

Oh wow, I'd love to hear that. I should add that Homegrown is great too, although songs like Sedan Delivery definitely benefited from the faster, punked up treatment he gave them on Rust Never Sleeps.

Oh, just looked up Homegrown on Wiki and Sedan ain't on it. I must have a very odd version of Homegrown. Such is the way with bootlegs, particularly ones from Slsk.
Levon Helm is on a Homegrown song called Separate Ways apparently.

I think what you have is "Chrome Dreams" ... "Homegrown" has never been bootlegged, though songs from it showed up on Neil's albums through Hawks & Doves, I think.

and yeah, it's "Separate Ways" i'm thinking of -- a great song that he debuted live like 20 years after he recorded it apparently.

All three of these albums have very distinct strengths for me - Tonight's The Night is the most emotionally raw NY record (that I've heard) and it's the best of the three in terms of sustaining an overall mood (albeit a harrowing one); On The Beach has the greatest variety in terms of displaying Neil's various strengths and it has the highest peaks in terms of individual songs (title track and 'Ambulance Blues'); Time Fades Away strikes the best balance in terms of great songwriting and rough, sloppy playing, plus the live aspect gives it an extra edge - it's also the one I've got heaviest into (for a large part of summer 2008 basically), so it gets my vote.

x-post Yes, you're right. Chrome Dreams it is. I think it has a version of Homegrown on it, hence the confusion.

Time Fades Away is a beautiful artifact. I picked up a VG+ copy for £10 around five years ago, complete with the lyric poster. It doesn't seem to be so highly prized, whereas, before the CD reissue, OTB would fetch around £50. Some great songs too - the Bridge is lovely and Don't Be Denied is one of my favourites.

Feelin left out on all the "second side of OTB" talk. Much as I love the record, I could totally take or leave those last two tracks. I understand that's not a popular opinion tho.

could anyone help a dude find the manchester 73 live boot, as a cursory search of the interwebs has yet to turn up the necessary mp3s

voted Tonight's the Night

as much as i do like most of time fades away, i would really fail to understand someone voting for it over the other two...it's just fundamentally not as good IMO.

Yeah, Time Fades Away is great, it just doesn't have as strong songs as the other two. It's obviously got an incredible vibe, and plenty of wonderful stuff, but it's not a masterpiece like TNT and OTB.

Stevie, if no one's gotten in touch with you, I can probably upload that Manchester show at some point ...

Pls upload it somewhere I can get it too thx!!!

Lemme just wrap up Jazz Week on Doom & Gloom and I'll put it up there ...

much appreciated tyler, thanx!

huh....that's interesting

i think david briggs called it the Compufuck.

I've owned Time Fades Away for a while but last week I saw a vinyl copy in almost perfect shape for $15 and I had to buy it. Very rare for me to do that, but i thought, if nothing else I want to give this record to somebody. And I'm listening now and it's in INCREDIBLE condition, I'm happy when new vinyl records out of the shrink wrap sounds this good. And though it'll always make sense why it's 3rd here, this is a brilliant record. Top, say, 7 Neil for me.

Has its very own Facebook group, just like Danny Whitten would've wanted:

https://www.facebook.com/groups/124529420890827/

ha! (I still joined)

I may too. I've joined Ball Four and general baseball-discussion groups, and also the Christgau-acolyte Expert Witness group (all-Wussy, all-the-time). The problem is I get bombarded via e-mail with notices. I've clicked "notices off" on the drop-down menus, and still I get them.

Where does the version of "Journey Through the Past" in Inherent Vice come from? I'm so used to the original, I thought at first it was a cover, then soon realized it was Neil.

Don't know but there's a previously unreleased version on The Archives Vol 1, maybe it's that one?

Yeah, it's the Archives version.

Then I have it...I should investigate my own records.

how does it differ from the Time Fades Away version? (ps I am not buying the Archives just to find out)

it's a full band version -- an outtake from the harvest sessions. it's great! i actually think that "journey" and the Harvest version of "bad fog of loneliness" in place of man needs a maid and there's a world would make for a stronger album overall. i like the orchestral numbers but they always seem out of place there.

word

Quite a bit different in execution--closer to country?

yeah, kinda breezy

have we done a big NY albums/songs poll, and if not why not, and when?

A World of Constant Strangers: The Neil Young Results Thread