neil young

uuugh, i can't even read the news without signing up for a neilyoungarchives.com account?

neeeeeeeeeeeeeeil

lol yeah ... i can't even copy and paste the story!
here's the blog post about the blog post: http://neilyoungnews.thrasherswheat.org/2018/02/vinyl-is-king-says-neil-young.html

but it seems like the good news is that neil is committed to releasing physical product? i had a sinking feeling that he was going to be like "here's homegrown, available for premium level subscribers in hi-rez only mwahhahaha!"

pono fomo?

ha! yes.

HAPPY PARADOX SOUNDTRACK DAY EVERYONE!!!!

hmm...we're starting with....an almost identical version of "Show Me" off Peace Trail

classic neil

movie's streaming on netflix now too omg

okay now we got some formless jamming going on while people randomly yell "HEY!" over the track, digging this

pls to continue liveblogging this

and now....an instrumental version of "Show Me" that lasts one minute

now some solo neil electric just going "bum bum" on one note over and over and then some feedback

now a little porch pickin song with someone who's not neil singing "digging in the dirt/that's our way of life" that's a minute and a half long

these recurring instrumental thingys are called "paradox passage 1" etc etc....this one literally sound like Neil aimlessly playing acoustic on the couch while watching TV or something, give him a deal with feeding tube!

lol

neil talking to some dude:

"looks like a full corn moon"

"yeah, a full barley moon"

"a magic time"

lol yes

now another cover of a song he just released in 2016 - "Peace Trail", again almost identical so I guess if you wanted Neil to re-record that album with a worse drummer you are in luck!

what's the level of bongo content here

haha definitely some bongo action in the mix!

like this is fine but Peace Trail is his best thing in recent memory specifically because of the vibe of Keltner's odd/cool approach to drums on that record and the weird use of autotune

next up....Pocahontas! starting out with some pipe organ noodling...there was just some live applause but sounded fake (maybe?)....this is basically him doing Pocahontas just like he did the doomy pipe organ version of Like a Hurricane on Unplugged

now some solo neil electric just going "bum bum" on one note over and over and then some feedback

gonna be honest, this is like the platonic ideal of electric neil to me

okay applause at the end this is def actually a live cut

now....Cowgirl Jam....running time 10:35!

yeah i think some of this is live stuff drawn from either the desert trip fest or the telluride show?

cowgirl jam is, as you'd expect, them jamming on the cowgirl in the sand changes....

like this is good, but again fucking #bongoalert, someone toss this hippie

this is obviously neil jamming electric so it's got a certain quality but i swear promise of the real is basically like "damn dogg u ever wish crazy horse had edie brickell and the new bohemian's rhythm section??"

damn ok they got into it around 7 minutes...

neil jamming electric is one of the pure sounds of music

agreed, i could listen to him play electric guitar probably from now until the end of time tbh

i love the way his tone has, like, corroded over time

"what was good"

"yeah that was good"

"lets go over here and smoke a beer"

"sip a joint"

low-key nice little cover of "angel flying to close to the ground" with (assuming) PoTR dude singing, actually very sweet little cover, standup bass, mandolin and acoustic guitars

i swear promise of the real is basically like "damn dogg u ever wish crazy horse had edie brickell and the new bohemian's rhythm section??"

this brutally otm own has forever ruined neil and the real, thx ums

haha yes, so good

we interrupt this paradox live blog

https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-3cDLsAlH6YU/WrQuE55WYII/AAAAAAAAN1A/2UTc5QxaX4IzkiSXsnj7vvJTqNHCZP0WgCLcBGAs/s1600/roxy-marquee.jpg

paradox passage 4 - literally 14 seconds long and maybe not even that many notes on acoustic guitar

now...the "digging in the dirt" song is back and longer, i see now the previous version that was 1:30 was "digging in the dirt (chorus)", so basically neil did a reprise of this song before the actual song appeared?

paradox passage 5, acoustic noodling...."i was just out there takin a leak...think i heard the call of the silver eagle"....

running to the silver eagle super big japanese taiko type drum circle tom toms...big electric riff almost bo diddley....harmonica wailing...huge sounding tribal drums this is pretty cool

neil did a reprise of this song before the actual song appeared?

classic neil

it's a paradox

next up..."baby what do you want me to do"

half-assey bluesy acoustic shuffle jam on what google tells me is a jimmy reed song that elvis and albert collins also did

paradox passage 6: foghorn of feedback for 17 seconds

"Offerings" 50 second song with fingerstyle and harmonica, sounds like the intro to a song off Prairie Wind, stops at 50 seconds

"How Long?" --- 2:26 of rawly recorded delta blues fingerstyle with the PoTR dude singing...almost sounds like an instrumental outtake off A Letter Home, it's actually the blues song "Further On Up the Road" that Clapton did (i'm sure it's a cover of someone)

"Happy Together" sounds like a field recording of them walking (there's footstep sounds and they are kinda out of breath")...cover of the Turtles song

Tumbleweed...the last song...some more acoustic strumming BUT WAIT...suddenly we are transported to the land of oz! all of a sudden it's super lush strings and harp and flute like we went to heaven...or the album storytone at least...

then it goes back down to ukelele, version of the song from storytone...
actually i looked it up on youtube outside of the weird transition this actually IS "tumbleweed (solo)" from storytone as far as i can tell

and um...

that's it?

You know an artist is good when Harvest Moon receives 0 votes

well.

this is, at least on my one listen, by far the least essential most half-assed thing Neil has ever done by a wide margin. (and yes i realize that's not a small statement)

but yeah as shitty as anything he's ever done has been, there doesn't seem to be any reason for this to exist

perhaps it will make more sense in context of the film, though i suspect it will make even less sense

we're about two years from Neil putting out albums of music that is nothing but reprise versions of songs he'll never release.

i think that poll i ran a couple years back on 21st century neil young records is already in need of a major update, i was at Amoeba the other night digging into the Neil section and it was 50% Promise of the Real stuff and the covers after awhile all started to look the same.

reprise versions of songs he'll never release.

for a second i got excited about this, thinking Reprise was going to issue one of his unreleased albums

it's actually the blues song "Further On Up the Road" that Clapton did (i'm sure it's a cover of someone)

Bobby Blue Bland

That's a deliberate tongue twister name, right? Blobby?

hilarious that there's another version of "baby what do you want me to do" here, as though the version on Broken Arrow wasn't more than enough.

He nearly went into it back in 73 during a TTN show, after he made a Jimmy Reed joke and Nils didn't know who he was:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/r8mfpnvqi3u5xg8/NY%2011-20-73%20clip.wav?dl=0

WTF Nils?

yeah it's sorta strange that after hanging around Neil and co. since the Topanga era he never heard Jimmy Reed, haha.