Neil Young On The Beach Reissued On CD

title track really gets me
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CKgj1FNToWY

I need a crowd of people... but I cant face them day to day

Thought this revive would be about: https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/hear-boz-scaggs-cover-neil-youngs-on-the-beach-666042/

incredible album. the first time i heard this i had found a copy on a cassette tape in a thrift store. it had On the Beach on one side and Re-Ac-Tor on the other. i ended up going on tour soon after that and it ended up being the perfect road tunes. just sheer beauty from top to bottom. "Ambulance Blues" is so heartbreaking. An ambulance can only go so fast holy fuck that's a spooky line.

title track is all-time

Is "Ambulance Blues" the Greatest Thing Neil Young Ever Did?

An ambulance can only go so fast

neil has an endless number of lyrics that are sort of banal but also somehow incredibly moving and deep and full of meaning to me

oh yeah absolutely. lots of examples on this album, but the best is obviously from tired eyes: "he tried to do his best, but he could not"

boz scaggs cover is surprisingly good

i love the arrangements on here, all the different instrumental textures that perfectly match the songs. you have your country rock throughout but you also have your stripped down back porch banjo of "For the Turnstiles", the watery tremelo Wurlitzer of "See the Sky About to Rain", that cosmic fiddle in the distance of that final track. Neil invoking some potent atmospheres.

Neil Young – vocals; guitar on "Walk On", "Revolution Blues", "Vampire Blues", "On the Beach", "Motion Pictures" and "Ambulance Blues"; harmonica on "See the Sky About to Rain", "Motion Pictures" and "Ambulance Blues"; Wurlitzer electric piano on "See the Sky About to Rain"; banjo guitar on "For the Turnstiles"; electric tambourine on "Ambulance Blues"

lol electric tambourine?

http://tvmiller.com/images/etambourine_3.jpg

funny what a big deal this coming out on CD was back in the day! tracking down the LP in the early 90s was a formative experience — a friend of my brother's had played it for us, and it seemed unbelievable that something so great could be so (generally) unavailable. definitely made me realize there was a whole world of music that you weren't going to find at the mall.

i found a cd bootleg of this backed with american stars and bars on my 20th birthday, the same day i bought a copy of shakey which has just come out

that was a fuckin’ great day

i listened to that bootleg so much that even now that i have access to pristine remastered on the beach i still expect to hear the bootleg’s needledrop and occasional vinyl pop and crackle during certain parts

dang, that's a nice combo. Stars N Bars rules too.

An ambulance can only go so fast

neil has an endless number of lyrics that are sort of banal but also somehow incredibly moving and deep and full of meaning to me

― The Desus & Mero Chain (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Tuesday, July 10, 2018 10:11 AM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Want to say that line in particular, after listening to “Ambulance Blues” for all these years, hit me like a ton of bricks about a year ago.

funny what a big deal this coming out on CD was back in the day! tracking down the LP in the early 90s was a formative experience — a friend of my brother's had played it for us, and it seemed unbelievable that something so great could be so (generally) unavailable. definitely made me realize there was a whole world of music that you weren't going to find at the mall.

― tylerw, Tuesday, July 10, 2018 7:38 AM (forty-nine minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

god i remember this phenomenal little record store near where i grew up, i stocked up on so many classic LPs in perfect shape. everything was like $4.00, including my copies of all the key Neil Young LPs. I went there and in one fell swoop picked up the ditch trilogy, After the Gold Rush, Harvest, and Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere for maybe $25 plus tax. On the Beach was the real eye-opener. I think its unavailability meant it was overlooked or even dismissed by the mainstream critical community at the time, as was Time Fades Away. I remember so many pieces about TTN but nothing about those. But I remember spinning OTB and thinking what a great LP it was, like a sardonic sun-soaked "Rockford Files with a slightly bummer ending" type work it was, vs the noirish complete bleakness of TTN.

oh yeah absolutely. lots of examples on this album, but the best is obviously from tired eyes: "he tried to do his best, but he could not"

― supreme court justice samuel lance-ito (voodoo chili), Tuesday, July 10, 2018 9:13 AM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this is a great example too

I usually find it pretty bullshitty when musicians say "oh i don't know where my lyrics/music come from, i'm just channeling it from somewhere" but with Neil sometimes I really do believe he doesn't know exactly what his songs are about

I think always explains why Neil can pull such mind-blowing boners when writing lyrics too (like say 90% of the last ten yrs) cuz yeah I think he really is tapping into his subconscious and I can imagine when yr writing you might think "man that line is really banal & clunky but, hey it worked in the 70s!"

I don't trust a lyricist who never produces eye-wateringly bad lyrics every now and again tbh.

For real, you gotta swing for the fences

I read an interview around '90-'91 or so where he was asked about the lyrics to "I Am A Child."

"'What is the color when black is burned'? I don't even know what that means. It's...like a dark grey, I guess?"

lol

I first heard On the Beach my first time in Los Angeles in August 1999. I was out there for my friends’ wedding and after the rehearsal dinner I got extremely drunk then later stoned back in the hotel room where a friend had a bootleg copy on a burned CD. Maybe it was the circumstances, but it had a haunting, profound effect on me, at least the first side did. The second side didn’t have the same impact.

A few years later I found my own bootleg CD with TFA on it as well. It was only after years of listening to it did I realize the second half is the heart of the album.

oh yeah absolutely. lots of examples on this album, but the best is obviously from tired eyes

lol Tarfumes I too distinctly remember that, p sure it was in a Spin profile (by Jimmy McDonough, iirc?) He asked him about a bunch of different lyrics.

Yep, I think that's the one. iirc, in that same interview, Neil said of his artistic comeback, "It's a good thing I didn't get hit by a bus right after Old Ways came out."

Which ... is not on this album
― Naive Teen Idol, Tuesday, 10 July 2018 19:38 (yesterday) Permalink

lots of examples on this album, but the best [is not on this album but] is obviously from tired eyes

can I praise David Crosby for his electric rhythm work on "Revolution Blues"?

Entirely by accident I ended up listening to this album earlier this evening. Yes to praising David Crosby's rhy gtr on "Revolution Blues"! But even more praise for the bass playing, listening to which I found myself thinking, "Is that Rick Danko?" And sure enough, it's Rick Danko!

ilx is a #croz positive space

crozitivity

can I praise David Crosby for his electric rhythm work on "Revolution Blues"?

Rhythm guitar not the guitar solo. He was always a good rhythm guitarist.

yeah, i got that - the solo is obviously neil, i was just taken aback that croz is playing the hairy rhythm guitar

pretty sure Crosby plays rhythm on "Cowboy Movie" which is nice gnarly & chunky

neil has an endless number of lyrics that are sort of banal but also somehow incredibly moving and deep and full of meaning to me

these are all the best lyrics imo

It can change you in the middle of the day

I think the main rhythm guitar figure in Revolution Blues, the spidery, scratchy one, is still Neil. There's another, muddier one behind it that's probably Croz playing chords. If you listen, the main rhythm guitar drops out right before the solo. There's even a little pause where Neil sounds like he's just taking a second to stomp on his pedal. Either way, not knocking Crosby, but I suspect all the more noticeable guitaring is Neil.

i feel like #Croz - If I Could Only Remember My Name is the sister album to On the Beach (at least in my mind)

totally

I'm a vampire baaabe

the sleazy dragging lethargy of vampire blues is so great, like the whole band is fighting its way through tar from start to finish

amazing anti-guitar-solo too

He's one of those rockers of that generation who tried mightily to avoid 12-bar blues, so when he succumbs it's kinda cool.

would love to hear just raw session tape from On The Beach.
crazy that neil has only played "motion pictures" live once! maybe he'll dig it out in boston tonight.

Maybe this is in "Shakey", I can't remember, but is Neil having CROZ playing on Revolution Blues some kind weird twisting the knife cuz weren't CROZ & Stills (and probably half the rock stars in Topanga Canyon circa '69) convinced that they were on the Manson Family hitlist?

I don't know what the fuck about "Revolution Blues" apparently scared Crosby to death – might be coke paranoia.

yeah i think stills and croz went out and bought shotguns or something after the manson killings.

xpost I imagine this line

"Well, I hear that Laurel Canyon
is full of famous stars,
But I hate them worse than lepers
and I'll kill them
in their cars."

wasn't CROZ's fave