neil young

"If Elvis had lived, all his '80s stuff would have been digital!"

which is probably true

All of his 80s stuff would have been horrible...BUT:

I bet we would have gotten an ill-conceived Elvis Rap song which I am not legit mad doesn't exist.

I'm sorry what's this thread about?

Niko Bolas is a cool name though, admit that.

the elvis rick rubin album might've been pretty good.

and/or elvis' run of 3 of 4 james bond movies.

All Tom Petty on the bass, all Rubin trying to make Elvis do Nick Cave songs.

"Got dammit, this "Tupelo" shit ain't make no sense"

It's a damn shame we got cheated out of the silliness that would likely have been 80s Elvis

i wonder his "Living in America" would have been?

Niko Bolas is a cool name though, admit that.

Sounds like something a smoker would cough up.

def sounds like your drug connect

Niko Bolas sounds like a bad guy in an '80s action movies. Either the actor or the character.

was that the name of Alfred Molina's character in Boogie Nights who's cranking Sister Christian and snorting coke and lighting off firecrackers?

Bass on Don't Take Your Love Away From Me = Kraftwerk's The Model

Loving this.

So I was checking the booklet of the Lucky 13 comp to see if the live versions of "Ain't It the Truth" and "This Note's for You" are the same ones on the new Blue Note Cafe album (they are) and I fell into a Neil Young-obsessive rabbit hole.

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The then-unreleased tracks on Lucky 13 (released in 1993) are listed as "From Reprise Records Neil Young Archives":

Sample and Hold (extended version)
Depression Blues
Get Gone (live)
Don't Take Your Love Away from Me (live)
Ain't It the Truth (live)
This Note's for You (live)

The last two also say "original Blue Note Cafe recordings," which seems to imply that the Blue Note Cafe album was already planned 22 years ago.

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The Lucky 13 booklet artwork features a random list of what are apparently all the songs recorded during the Geffen era, including 27 titles which had not been released as of 1993. 10 or 11 (*) of them have since been released in some form:

Amber Jean*
Beautiful Bluebird*
Big Pearl
Daughters
Farmer's Song
Fingers
Grey Riders*
Hillbilly Band
If You Got Love
Interstate*
Island in the Sun
It Might Have Been*
Johnny (same as "Johnny Magic" from Fork in the Road?)*
Leavin’ the Top 40 Behind
Love Hotel
Nothing Is Perfect*
One of These Days*
Rainin’ In Paradise
Razor Love*
Rock Rock Rock
Silver and Gold*
So Tired
Soul Of A Woman*
That's Alright Mama
Time Off For Good Behavior
Winter Winds / Turbine
Your Love Again

(The Old Ways track "My Boy" is listed as "Mr. Boy," which sounds more like something from the Devo session.)

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The publicity for Blue Note Cafe says that it features seven unreleased songs, which isn't strictly true:

Soul of a Woman (on "A Treasure")
Bad News Comes to Town
Ain't it the Truth (on "Lucky 13"--it's the same recording)
I'm Goin' (b-side of 1988 "Ten Men Working" single)
Crime of the Heart
Doghouse
Fool for Your Love (on "Road Rock")

Meanwhile, they didn't mention "Welcome to the Big Room," which is otherwise unreleased as far as I can tell.

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It's all one song.

yeah, always interesting that the first officially released music from the Archives came out on Geffen! really, Lucky 13 could easily be an 80s disc in Archives, Vol. 4 or whatever.
don't think I've ever heard
Big Pearl
Daughters
Hillbilly Band
Island in the Sun
Love Hotel
Winter Winds / Turbine

and in Shakey it says the original "Razor Love" is the best Trans-style tune Neil ever did.

oh shit you mean that razor love from silver & gold was synth originally? damn i could just hear that in my head

i'm totally getting into this bluenotes thing

i remember being kinda underwhelmed by "ordinary people" when chrome dreams II came out because it was so hyped (whereas "hitchhiker" off le noise totally lived up to the hype), anyway i thought it was kinda a cod-dylan epic as played by the saturday night live band but now I guess i think it's kind of genius even though that description holds true.

yeah, i don't know if ordinary people is a masterpiece, but it's entertaining for sure
"some are saints and some are JERKS!" always makes me laugh.

i was actually listening at the bus stop today to get to my downtown job and the way this ends is the best

"Downtown people
tryin' to make their way to work
some are saints and some are jerks
everyday people
stoppin' for a drink on their way to work"

then he just exclaims:

"ALCOHOLIC PEOPLE!"

*guitar solo*

i dunno it's great like he's cheering on alcoholics keep up the good work

also after making such a big deal about not taking endorsements in "This Note's For You" he gives Michelob free product placement in the lyrics

haha, yeah -- "the michelob night," there's a phrase that could only have been written in 1987-88.

Maybe also thinking of Michelob Jazz Night or Nights, a great late 80s jazz-meets-rock TV series (L. Cohen with Sonny Rollins, awes; Nick Cave showing his ass via pompous "The Mercy Seat," but Charlie Haden had no prob & looked amused; Al Green playing disgusted cowbell at Sun Ra & Arkestra while Syd Straw laughs wildly: nevertheless, sounded great on my audio tape, sorry Al; Miles Davis! But don't think Neil was ever on there, alas).

"the michelob night," there's a phrase that could only have been written in 1987-88.

LOL, so true

On one hand it is totally a cod-Dylan epic, on other, there is literally only one person in the world who could have written it.

It is an amazing bit of world building where he's mixing tiny details "the bartender poured herself another drink, while two drunks were watchin the fight" with these macro descriptions of homeless factory workers living in their old closed down plant and big rich business men selling "guns to the underground".

It isn't a masterpiece but it is SO Neil, it is amazing.

"Gonna take it one day/ one day at TIMMMMEEE!!"

yeah, i think of "ordinary people," "crime in the city" and "eldorado" as all being of a piece, kinda surreal strings of vignettes adding up to ... what exactly I'm not sure, but they're always interesting. they've all got great turns of phrase, odd details, ambiguous ideas.

feel like 'Ramada Inn" fits in there as well

"Freedom" was the first Neil record (tape) I ever owned cuz I loved "Rockin' in the Free World" and while I didn't love everything else on the that record I was obsessed with "Crime in the City" it still might be my absolute favorite Neil tune.

When I saw him with on the "Weld" tour and they did that I was ecstatic

And yeah "Ramada Inn" is totally in this vein, ha that must be the reason I love that song

i guess rockin in the free world might fit in if he had added eight more verses
it's funny i first heard crime in the city on weld, so i was kinda shocked at the mellow rendition on freedom. love any version of the song though, really a weirdly powerful tune.

I love the vers on "Bluenote Cafe" but the rough draft lyrics aren't as good as the "Freedom" vers, esp that second verse which is basically perfection

"Send me a songwriter
Who's drifted far from home
And make sure that he's hungry
Make sure he's alone
Send me a cheeseburger
And a new Rolling Stone."

yes! that verse is amazing -- "what we have got here is a perfect track"

He was dealing antiques
in a hardware store,
But he sure had a lot to hide.
He had a backroom full
of the guns of war,
And a ton of ammunition besides.
Well, he walked with a cane,
Kept a bolt on the door
with five pit bulls inside.
Just a warning to the people,
Who might try to break in at night.
Protection from the people,
Selling safety
in the darkest night.
Tryin' to help the people.
Get the drugs
to the street all right.
Ordinary people.

"Doghouse Dog-House"

"Ordinary people? Neil doesn't know any ordinary fucking people!"

Ha yeah, come off it Neil.

I liked how Keith Richards in his book complained that he was unjustly tried because (paraphrasing) an actual "jury of his peers" would be Jimmy Page.

I cut this record down to 12 tracks but I am digging it WAY more than expected, can't stop playing it

yeah i mean some of it ("doghouse" for example) is clearly stuff that neil wrote in about 5 minutes, but the high points are pretty high

Poll: Doghouse vs. T-Bone

T-Bone easy

kinda surreal strings of vignettes adding up to ... what exactly I'm not sure, but they're always interesting. they've all got great turns of phrase, odd details, ambiguous ideas.And this last is key, where the listener can respond, speculate, delve---or not, but either way, there's no little deposit of easy understanding or "understanding."
Ditto Dylan and Miles at some of their best, but, although I do like some of his (and Dylan's and Miles') blunt points & zingers pretty well also, Monsanto, for instance, wouldn't work at all without the scorched earth/Earth Fights Back sound of most tracks (or the startling respite of "Wolf Moon," and a few other places).
Considering lyrics only, it can be like xgau says, comparing a couple of Randy Newman albums:
Born Again [Warner Bros., 1979]
This has more content and feeling than Little Criminals. But as with Little Criminals its highlight is a (great) joke--"The Story of a Rock and Roll Band," which ought to be called "E.L.O." and isn't, for the same reason supergroupie radio programmers have shied away from it. Hence, the content comprises ever more intricate convolutions of bad taste; rather than making you think about homophobes and heavy-metal toughs and me-decade assholes the way he once made you think about rednecks and slave traders and high school belles, he makes you think about how he feels about them. Which just isn't as interesting. B+

Fortunately, Neil still comes up with the more elliptical lyrics at times, even when he has to dig 'em up (but, come to think of it, what about those oblique scenes from a marriage on Psychedelic Pill...)

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Monsanto, for instance, wouldn't work at all without the scorched earth/Earth Fights Back sound of most tracks (or the startling respite of "Wolf Moon," and a few other places).

just wanna reiterate that this record is really very good and worth yr time, Neil fans

I really like Doghouse!

Really want a live album from the Monsanto tour

#DoghouseDoghouse

just popping in to say that,

I have my friends in the world
i had my friends when we were boys and girls
and the secrets came unfurlled

is such a good lyric.

oh hey, thread-within-a-thread, but what was everybody's first Neil LP?

Mine was Weld. Bought it aged 17 because Pearl Jam, who I worshipped, covered Rockin' In The Free World, and the music press was all 'Godfather Of Grunge' at the time, and so I thought I needed to hear this dude. Bought it on vinyl, played Hey Hey My My (the opening track), and immediately took it back to the record shop because I was convinced that distorted growl of a guitar-sound must've been the result of a mispressing. That wasn't an embarrassing afternoon at all, no sir.

"Cinnamon Girl" was on the mixtape ROCK ROCK ROCK PLAY IT LOUD my dad made for me when I was a kid.

Think the first Neil album I bought was Ragged Glory, prob because I had seen Year of the Horse... Shortly after I got Harvest, Zuma, On the Beach, Freedom, Tonight's the Night and After the Gold Rush for like 5 dollars each in my local cd store - bargain of a lifetime.

I think I will put Cinnamon Girl on the first mixtape I make my daughter. She started dancing to it the other day while I was playing it (she is 18months).

I think I started with Live Rust. The version of "Like a Hurricane" on there still destroys me. (You would think making it twice as long would make it twice as awesome, but Weld proves that ain't the case.)

I got Freedom from BMG in the mail. Though Heart of Gold was one of those songs that really stuck out to me on classic rock radio when I was a little kid.

for me, suddenly my older brother acquired like 10 neil young albums around the time of ragged glory / weld ... i think it was those first few tunes on weld that really blew my mind.