neil young

Stereogum has a great interview with Poncho.

oh yeah I forget about A Treasure - also a far better document of that era than the actual album

it all started to go south for me (until Freedom)

there were things i liked about life (same thing everybody else liked, basically) and this note's for you, but the real honest-to-god comeback for me was el dorado, the ep that came out before freedom and shares a few tracks with it. that one was a lightning bolt out of fucking nowhere when it came out.

Yeah A Treasure is very good, Christgau's A- rating us actually spot-on. It's by far my favorite release covering the '80s before 1989's Freedom/Times Square/Eldorado sessions.

Well, maybe not "by far," but the only one I like as-is and as a whole.

but the real honest-to-god comeback for me was _el dorado,_ the ep that came out before _freedom_ and shares a few tracks with it. that one was a lightning bolt out of fucking nowhere when it came out.

Eldorado cost me $25 at the time. I've always been fascinated by the choice of formats it was available in. CD-only in Japan (makes sense), vinyl-only in Australia (WTF? OK, Neil).

Yeah, I was ecstatic to find a used CD copy of Eldorado for like 7 bucks at a Half Price Books back in 2019.

xgau:
Eldorado [Reprise (Japan), 1989]
This is certain to become a legend on rarity alone, and if you believe mad guitar is all he's good for, you may even think it's worth a buck a minute at the $25 it cost me. I think it's versions and/or work tapes, with two otherwise unavailable songs and mad guitar that ends too soon. I'm glad to own it. But I get reimbursed. B+ I might have bought if I'd ever seen it (was still kind of a mail order wuss at that point).

I believe it was announced that he was going to reissue Eldorado at some point

(At least still a *living American Rock Star* mail order--er, wimp)

I believe it was announced that he was going to reissue Eldorado at some point

I think I heard that at one point, maybe it will be packaged with Toast.

I know it's not the right timeframe, more of just a joke about how likely it is we will see it soon.

"Cocaine Eyes" always makes my Neil Young top tens.

"Prisoners of Rock 'n' Roll" has become the go-to track, but I dig "Around the World" for its wtf chorus.

“too lonely” on life rocks, iirc

Yeah Eldorado is supposedly getting packaged with some sessions he cut with his SNL band from his Sep. 1989 appearance.

I bought it for like $20-30, then used it and Freedom to re-create Times Square on CD-R, and then sold Eldorado for a slight profit. (I couldn't afford to keep it as a kid, and I preferred to hear the tracks in that context anyway.)

FWIW, the Times Square recording of "Boxcar" is the only cut from that lost album that hasn't been officially released. (A different, later recording was used on Chrome Dreams II.) Had to use a copy of the bootlegged acetate with some pitch/speed correction.

it wasn’t easy to find a copy in the US (and really expensive if you did find it)

i lucked out. my best friend's sister was in japan right after eldorado came out and brought me back a copy. music distribution was weird back then. or maybe it was normal then and it's weird now? either way, i miss it sometimes.

"Cocaine Eyes" always makes my Neil Young top tens.

soooooo good

I do remember seeing it in indie shops back in the mid 90s but it was always $30 but I definitely saw it around

In the picture from the Stereogum piece, is Poncho ... wearing his own Poncho shirt?

https://static.stereogum.com/uploads/2021/03/GettyImages-452070038-1615994314-scaled.jpg

I kind of want one of those!

that's a boss move right there

I do remember seeing it in indie shops back in the mid 90s but it was always $30 but I definitely saw it around

Yeah, I remember seeing it in record shops in Champaign for like $30 back then, but I wasn't yet enough of a Neil completist to shell out that much dough. Of course I saw no problem back then spending the same $30 for those Nirvana bootlegs like Outcesticide, but that's a different discussion lol.

i lucked out. my best friend's sister was in japan right after _eldorado_ came out and brought me back a copy. music distribution was weird back then. or maybe it was normal then and it's weird now? either way, i miss it sometimes.

Stereogum has a great interview with Poncho.

Thanks! It was indeed a great read. And this:

SAMPEDRO: They had a good thing going, but when Danny passed away… it wasn’t like the wheels fell off, but there was a wheel missing. When I came along, I was so excited to be in a band. I brought a lot of energy. At that point in my life, I’d given up on music, even though I had played since I was 11 and moved to Hollywood in 1966 to get in bands and make records. I was 16. I tried hard, but it never happened. I had applied for a job at the post office. I had sold my guitars. I was tired of not having rent money and not having food and living in my truck and all the other crazy things you have to do when you’re broke. Along comes Billy and the next thing I know we’re jamming at his house and I’m meeting Neil Young. Right when I’d given up, I made it.

Years ago, when I found out he had been working full-time on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, I was like WTF, you play with Neil Young, and you want to work for Leno??? That was before I knew what it was really like to be a musician, and to drive the point home, I saw an interview with Branford Marsalis where he talked about quitting the same show as Leno's bandleader. Marsalis's dad told him, "all right, that's fine, but you can't complain anymore!" Like, no matter how much press or respect you get, it doesn't always translate to a steady income, and working for Leno may be awful, but you don't have to worry about the bills ever again if you stick with it long enough. Can't blame a guy for taking it - I've never had to live in a car before, who the fuck am I to judge?

lol at “whoa! that water had tequila in it!”

I'll give Living with War another go, but once through I found most of it to be a B- shrug-of-the-shoulders. "Let's Impeach the President" was a little better than I remembered. Almost every song is very specifically anchored in that W./no-end-in-sight moment (coming out in early 2006, I was surprised to hear specific mention of Obama--well before he announces, almost two years removed from his big speech in 2004); it felt dated to me, which I wouldn't care about if I liked the songs more.

The good news, though, is that I had completely forgotten about "Roger and Out," which I had #8 on my year-end that year and still sounds great. That's the Neil I often connect with immediately: meandering ruminations on the hippie moment. It's not anchored to that moment--he's remembering a friend who died in Vietnam (if I'm hearing it correctly), but it sounds different than every other song on the album. I called it a "miniature 'Cortez the Killer'" in my comment that year; an early draft of "Driftin' Back" works just as well.

"It's not anchored to that moment"--meaning W./no-end-in-sight. I've got a couple of moments circling around each other there.

Picture day for the bus drivers at my elementary school was always a blast pic.twitter.com/1sZVgcdKfS

— Stu (@RandBallsStu) March 19, 2021

What's in your bag, Neil?

his indian rug and a pipe to share, iirc

Mellencamp is all, pff, why are they making me pose with these losers?

iirc, he just got done suckin' on a chili dog outside the Tastee Freez.

Looks kind of like the photographer (who I casually know!) is actually *keeping* him from doing that, and he's growing impatient and hungry. Though it also looks kind of like the other two are just humoring Neil, too. Neil is all "OK, now just one more, maybe with the poncho and leather satchel ..." and John and Willie are all, "lol, this is so Neil of him."

Paul Natkin! Yeah he's been a big part of Chicago's music scene for a loooooong time. I've met him once, good guy.

FWIW, it looks like they’re making new DVDs of Rust Bucket due to the complaints they’ve been getting regarding the audio.

indeed:

https://neilyoungarchives.com/news/2/article?id=Letters-Rust-Bucket-DVD-Audio-first

did anyone else that doesn't pay for NYA get an email from Neil today ("a note from Neil Young") saying

NYA’s Classic tier will continue to provide all of your benefits plus a few extras. The cost remains the same. ($19.99/yr). If that’s what you want, you need to do nothing. Alright!

i'm trying to figure out if i woke up one morning in a gutter with a year-subscription to NYA and completely forgot about it

Yeah, I got that email and I don't subscribe. I'm just on the mailing list.

this is one of those situations where we both end up paying $19.99 and we're not sure why

because what Neil Young cannot know is that yes, I do need to do nothing. Alright!

so.... where exactly do we mail our address + photo of our Rust Bucket DVD ? It doesn't say in that Letter To The Editor reply

Just toss it in an envelope and write "NEIL YOUNG" on the front. It'll get there, like a letter to Santa.

you have to click the stuff that looks like Rust on the side of the NYA file cabinet. click once to raise the corner up, then click that corner to peel the rust off. that opens up the Post Office Neil Oops chamber. I'd give you a direct link, but every single page on the Neil Young website has the same link.

Thanks!

https://i.imgur.com/kLcZVuZ.jpg

What do you call a guy that hangs out with musicians ... (I kid, I kid)

Apparently Neil got vaccinated. I'm trying to work in a joke about the needle and the damage done but it's beyond me.

I'm sure some anti-vaxxer nut has already done that.