Neil Young's TRANS: An Underrated Masterpiece, or Justly Ignored?

me too! that was a cool comp back in the day esp when that era was largely unknown (to me at least)

it's amazing that the catchy, accessible, occasionally moving (now unintentionally retrofurist) electronic stuff is what people took issue with on this album considering how dire the more traditional stuff is (the first track, my god). if had been all synth based it would be great rather than pretty good

Been saying the same for years. As I understand it, the electronic stuff was recorded first but I don't think there was enough of it for an entire album.

... typographic mistake. The album is actually called TRAINS

i don't think the trad stuff is that bad, but it's obvious the real meat of the album is the trans-ass trans tracks

Like An Inca is great, the rest of the non-electronic tracks not so much

we know you'll be satisfied
when you energize

As stated, the opening track is terrible.

"Hold On to Your Love" is nice though, if a bit wet.

because i love thematically messy albums, i have to say that —while i love trans quite a lot and consider it one of the last hurrahs of truly classic neil— it could be improved by adding 'wanderin' from everybody's rockin' because why the hell not.

the wiki for trans says "After a year of work, the album was mixed in a hurry because Young was eager to go out on tour (documented in the home video Neil Young in Berlin), and a last-minute change in the running order is evident in the inclusion of a song called "If You Got Love" in the track listing and lyric sheet, even though it is not on the album.[3] Portions of several tracks appeared in Young's 1982 feature-length comedy film Human Highway.[11]"

i've never seen human highway, so i'm not sure if this means that portions of songs that were ON trans were featured in human highway or if some of the cut songs were?

I had that Berlin vhs, it’s great - don’t know what happened to it ☹️

Nils Lofgren is wonderfully hamming it up in that Berlin performance iirc

that i know is supposed to be re-released

I rented it from Netflix in the mid '00s.

ha me too. nils' interpretive dancing is unforgettable

I had that Berlin vhs, it’s great - don’t know what happened to it ☹️

Ditto!

if you got love has been bootlegged for ages — kind of a Santana groove meets "Flying On The Ground Is Wrong" haha.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-2xasVHiL6s

The synth "Razor Love" has never shown up as far as I know.

I'm pretty sure the Human Highway film doesn't contain any unreleased Neil songs.

i find this a middling album because it's not cohesive for the reasons as noted by a bunch of people above. although i actually don't mind "a little thing call love" and I love "hold on to your love"

Didn't Human Highway have the Devo/Neil synth version of Hey Hey My My?

I'd consider that a Devo cover with Neil guesting, not an unreleased song?