NEIL YOUNG ARCHIVES BOX: IT'S REALLY HAPPENING

wow! is that what all of greendale is like?

if any of you ever saw the wet hot american summer tv reboot (which is way better than everyone says imo), i'm getting heavy Electro/City vibes

Are any of the bootleg series crucial? I like Neil a lot and I've got both the archives and most of the classic era live albums. I'm assuming that the boots are for hardcore fans that don't mind a lot of redundancy.

Way Down in the Rust Bucket for sure

wasn't it a UK gig where he played all of the then-unreleased Tonight's the Night, telling the booing fans he'd play something they'd heard before at the end, and then in the encore played TNT, which he'd also opened with, thus fulfilling the "something you'd heard before" quotient of the set?

LMAO, I would've laughed and enjoyed that as a bold FU.

FWIW, The solo acoustic St. Vicar show for Greendale is wonderful. It really comes together beautifully and it's the one time where I thought the whole concept really flourished. I thought the album with Crazy Horse was okay (initial copies were thankfully packaged with a DVD or the St. Vicar show) and the live shows as seen on the recent Return to Greendale were kind of disastrous, coming off as bloated pretentiousness. But when he kept it simple, just him doing this understated and intimate storytelling, filling in the details between songs, it's pretty great.

I saw the Psychedelic Pill tour, the last with Pancho before he retired - only a handful of classics but the epics from Psychedelic Pill sounded glorious live. One of my greatest concert experiences. Helped that I was very close to stage center and Patti Smith opened with an awesome set (my first time seeing her), but Neil & Crazy Horse's performance alone was pretty much everything I would've hoped for.

Poncho, not Pancho

so there was an initial european run of shows where he played the whole thing over 90 mins.... this was 3 months or so before the album even came out. then he did a world tour with crazy horse, with actors and a painter(?) on stage. i'm totally open to the idea of the solo thing having its own special vibe; but for me as someone who had been listening obsessively to On The Beach, Live Rust, Time Fades Away for 3 or 4 years and was heavily anticipating seeing him live, just getting the greendale thing (and this was without any warning - it wasn't pitched as being that), it hurt me deeply in my heart :'-(

* ^ greendale

after all this talk of neil mixing it up - which he does! - i looked back at the setlists of the 6 times i saw him between 2003-2012... turns out the songs he played most were Old Man, Heart Of Gold and Hey Hey My My - all of which he played 4 out of the 6 times.

...shrug emoji...

it's funny to hear people in here talk about being disappointed by an all-unfamiliar greendale set while i recall being enamoured by an old co-worker's reminisces of seeing one of the time fades away era shows. paraphrasing them: "i was tripping on acid and having a hard time reconciling the boos and angry requests for popular songs with the music they were playing, which i did remember liking even though i didn't know any of it. it all kind of reminded me of "cowgirl in the sand." i was very high, but remember thinking neil was in very poor shape physically. i walked out feeling mildly disappointed."

me listening to time fades away in 2003: golly it would have been neat to be there! lol until you're actually there.

(also 70s neil vs 2000s neil big difference, yes)

(i owned the cd/dvd of greendale for a while and i liked it okay. but yeah: didn't hang on to it. second tier riffy neil and the acoustic versions were a bit trying.)

I've only seen Neil once, at the Hop On The Farm festival shortly after he resumed touring following his aneurysm. It was great - he had an artist onstage painting along on their canvas while the band played, and they did a majestic A Day In The Life, and Neil was feedback-happy and would hammer his guitar into the amp.

Bandit is top tier acoustic Neil

Greendale is Good. I'm not willing to go to bat for it as a masterpiece, but for a late-period (maybe mid-period at this point) experiment from an established, iconic artist, it's pretty impressive. I think I prefer the original solo acoustic performances to the album itself — and it's not like he completely shunned those looking for a "normal concert" on that tour. The second sets were filled with hits, as well as some pretty amazing deep cuts.

I mostly know greendale via return to greendale, which is great imo, just really superb performances.

xp Probably the same with me. If I can count the St. Vicar performance of Greendale as an album, I would say that DVD and Prairie Wind were the two keepers from the '00s (and FWIW Jonathan Demme's Heart of Gold is excellent as well), but at the same time, I wouldn't call either work one of his masterpieces.

the version of Living With War without the choir is worth hearing

Bandit is top tier acoustic Neil

otm, greendale rules!

Yeah, "Bandit" made me a fan of the album. Can't find the video but the audio from St. Vicar is up:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JaflBpAIIxI

This Citzen Cain Jr. Blues album (5/16/74 at The Bottom Line) is freaking savage. Just a guy with a guitar hitting the crowd with classic after classic they've (mostly) never heard before. In Long May Your Run, the crowd laughs at the Beach Boys reference - I imagine in 74 the Beach Boys were kind of viewed by jokes - but I don't think Neil means it as a dig, he's down.

Maybe; the hits collection Endless Summer that went to #1 on the charts and really ignited their commercial comeback, particularly as a concert draw, would be released the next month.

all the neil live acoustic archives series stuff is marred by smug, giggly crowds laughing at odd moments, i think the hippies were just unbearable

1000% sure the "Caroline No" lyric is nostalgic/reverential. Has Neil ever put down another musician by name in a lyric? Probably--drawing a blank. (I know that's there obliquely in "This Note's for You.")

And "Walk On"...but no names.

Does "Hippie Dream" count?

He drops a lot of hints in "Thrasher" and "Hippie Dream".

Neil Young likes the Beach Boys.

Also, since the 2nd Archives came out, it was revealed that he was writing a lot of beachy songs around that time: Hawaiian Sunrise, L.A. Girls & Ocean Boys, Ocean Girl, Midnight on the Bay. Plus touring with a bunch of inflatable palm trees.

Looked up the lyrics to "Hippie Dream"--nothing specific. I mean by name. Like "I hope Neil Young will remember/southern man don't need him around anyhow."

live, neil would sing "the wooden ships — y'know like that song by david crosssssssby wink wink — were just a hippie dream!"

"Cocaine Eyes"

Neil Young likes the Beach Boys.

― tylerw, Thursday, May 18, 2023 6:16 PM (forty-four minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

I wonder if they hold some totemic value for him as avatars of the Southern CA myth that he bought into on some level.

I mean he wouldn't be the first or last of that era's rock ppl to have an admiration for Brian Wilson's songwriting

I haven't found any live acoustic shows that I like all the way through---if solo, the guitar can be so out of tune that even I can tell.

Are any of the bootleg series crucial? I like Neil a lot and I've got both the archives and most of the classic era live albums. I'm assuming that the boots are for hardcore fans that don't mind a lot of redundancy.

― Cow_Art, Saturday, March 4, 2023 4:12 PM (two months ago) bookmarkflaglink

Way Down in the Rust Bucket for sure

― Blues Guitar Solo Heatmap (Free Download) (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Saturday, March 4, 2023 4:13 PM (two months ago) bookmarkflaglink

No names in "Cocaine Eyes" that I can see.

avatars of the Southern CA myth that he bought into on some level.

xxp Live at the Filmore East has my definitive take of “Cowgirl in the Sand”

oh yeah Fillmore East is so crucial I realize I've stopped thinking about it as an Archive release

Buffalo Springfield played like 100 shows with the Beach Boys, Neil was tight with Dennis Wilson for a while ...

looks like he's having the time of his life here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rp97Hijkd10

anyway, i don't think the "long may you run" reference is meant as a "lol the beach boys moment"

and it's a bit sad. i love crazy horse, love the lizard brain caveman energy but there was something about danny whitten version, just having another guy more on neil's level who could push him a bit.

He liked the Beach Boys enough to use "Let's Go Away for Awhile" as the closing theme to Journey Through the Past, and then to put it on the soundtrack album.

archives releases that i most rate: way down in the rust bucket, a treasure, tuscaloosa, tonight's the night at the roxy, and weirdly maybe return to greendale.

also Disc 6 from Archives II, that incredible "Old Homestead" disc - not exactly a standalone but I wish it was

anyway, i don't think the "long may you run" reference is meant as a "lol the beach boys moment"

Agreed! My point was The Bottom Line crowd thinks it is, but Neil is a tru head.

sleeve, I'm sure I listened to Disc 6 at some point, but it didn't grab me as much as Disc 8 (Dume). That one is just incredible to me - I don't think the Powderfinger is better than the released version, but I might like the sound of it better.

But I will listen to Disc 6 tonight.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UYbkISdwVYU

Neil was tight with Dennis Wilson for a while

Had a mutual friend with a beard, I think.

epic update from Neil about archives vol 3 (now due out next summer it seems ...). Info nabbed from here: https://forums.stevehoffman.tv/threads/neil-young-launches-online-archives-1st-december-2017.688177/page-921

Across the Water, Part 1 and 2: a two disc set ("albums and movies") that represents the '76 tour previously covered by Odeon-Budokan. He mentioned it contains songs from Odeon-Budokan, his shows in Hammersmith, Glasgow, and "somewhere else which I can't remember."

Hitchhikin' Judy: this covers the fall '76 tour ("which was a solo opening and then an intermission and then Crazy Horse'). He wasn't clear on if it contains both the solo acoustic performances and the CH performances, or even if any of the songs that appear on Hitchhiker (or anything else from this era) will appear.

Snapshot in Time: The "audio verite" audio documentary of him rehearsing with Nicolette and Linda before they began recording the songs that are on side B of American Stars 'N' Bars (a version of "Barefoot Floors" is supposed to be one of the tracks here).

Windward Passage: A live album of Ducks songs recorded live in Santa Cruz

Oceanside/Countryside: The album he made before Comes a Time that he recorded solo acoustic before overdubbing additional guitars. There's 12 tracks (of which only "1 or 2 that have surfaced" previously). Many of the original versions of the songs that are on Comes a Time can be found here.

Union Hall: the Give to the Wind Orchestra rehearsal for their show in Miami.

Boarding House 1 and Boarding House 2: now a two disc set, with Boarding House 2 including his session with DEVO that he did in the afternoon before one of his shows at the venue

Sedan Delivery: covers the Rust Never Sleeps period, but "it's different tracks selected from RNS," and it has a "wacky cover."

Coastline: covers the Hawks & Doves and Re-ac-tor era from July 1980-July 1981. It has "a lot of songs on it."

Trans EP and Johnny's Island: another two disc set. The Trans EP will be the vocodor tracks from the album isolated on their own ("it takes you to that place and you stay there").

Evolution: covers Jan 83-Jan 84.

Touch the Night: a compilation of the two shows from Feb 7th, 1984 with Crazy Horse.

Grey Riders: another two disc set that covers June 1984-September 1985.

Road of Plenty: It seems like the focus has shifted to covering the Landing on Water/Life period, based on the tracks Neil mentioned
​
Summer Songs: This closes out the set.

...wow

dang, neil!

thanks for passing that on tylerw! is there anything in there that's particularly unheard or unannounced before? hitchhikin' judy sounds great to me