Neil Young's "Ditch Trilogy" Poll

here's the track list

01 borrowed tune (tonight's the night)
02 time fades away (time fades away hdcd)
03 revolution blues (on the beach hdcd)
04 albuquerque (tonight's the night)
05 relativity invitation (journey to the past)
06 love in mind (time fades away hdcd)
07 tonight's the night part ii (tonight's the night)
08 greensleeves (live at the bottom line 1974)
09 ambulance blues (on the beach hdcd)
10 mellow my mind (tonight's the night)
11 l.a. (time fades away hdcd)
12 new mama (tonight's the night)
13 on the beach (on the beach hdcd)
14 tired eyes (tonight's the night)
15 for the turnstiles (on the beach hdcd)
16 yonder stands the sinner (time fades away hdcd)
17 motion pictures (live at the bottom line 1974)
18 soldier (journey through the past)
19 beach boys - let's go away for awhile (journey through the past)

thx bro 4 real

http://www.hulu.com/watch/110736/late-night-with-jimmy-fallon-neil-young-sings-fresh-prince

f u i lol'd :-/

ok that is pretty funny

sendspace dl rates been sucking it lately, so... ditch mix via mediafire, this bummerz 4 U

http://www.mediafire.com/?ym5zemoiwy5

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

thx bro 4 real
--being being kiss-ass fake nice (gbx)

ur welcome, glad ya dig it

Say what you will about Dave Marsh, but this is a helluva review of Tonight's the Night:

"I'm sorry. You don't know these people. This means nothing to you."—Neil Young, in the liner notes.

Tonight's the Night finds Neil Young on his knees at the top of the heap, struggling to get back to his feet. The musical difficulties of last year's On the Beach have been resolved as directly as possible by a return to recording with Crazy Horse and Nils Lofgren, with whom Young recorded his 1970 masterpiece, After the Gold Rush.

Yet even Crazy Horse isn't what it once was: Lead guitarist Danny Whitten died last year of a drug overdose. The track on which he appears, "Come on Baby, Let's Go Downtown," recorded at Fillmore East four years ago, serves as a metaphor for the album's haunted, frightened emotional themes. Musically, Whitten's guitar and voice complement, challenge and inspire Young. The rest of the album strains to keep up.

It does so only occasionally but the effort is almost quixotically exhilarating. The successes—the ironic "Tired Eyes," the deceptively sweet "Albuquerque," the thunderous "Lookout Joe" and the two versions of the title song—are Young's best music since Gold Rush. Lofgren's guitar and piano are forceful and direct, Ralph Molina's drumming apt on both the rockers and the weepers (the latter driven by Ben Keith's steel guitar). Young's playing, on piano, harp and guitar, is simple but constantly charged.

Still, the album shares with On the Beach a fully developed sense of despair: The stargazer of "Helpless" finds no solace here. The music has a feeling of offhand, first-take crudity matched recently only by Blood on the Tracks, almost as though Young wanted us to miss its ultimate majesty in order to emphasize its ragged edge of desolation. "Borrowed Tune," for example, is set against Young's stark harp and piano. The tandem guitar and bass on the opening version of the title song sounds like the crack of doom itself and Young's singing—especially on the concluding version — alternates between sheer panic and awful Old Testament threat. "Tonight's the night," he shouts, threats, begs, moans and curses, telling the story of roadie Bruce Berry, who ODed "out on the mainline." Sometimes it feels as though Young is still absorbing the shock of his friend's death, sometimes as though he is railing against mortality itself, sometimes as though he's accepted it. But never as though he believes it.

More than any of Young's earlier songs and albums—even the despondent On the Beach and the mordant, rancorous Time Fades Away—Tonight's the Night is preoccupied with death and disaster. Dedicated to the dead Berry and Whitten, its cover, liner and label are starkly black and white. The characters of the songs are shell-shocked, losers, wasted, insane, homeless—except for the ones who are already corpses. The happiest man in any of them, the father in "New Mama," acknowledges that he's "living in a dreamland." Ultimately, he too is tracked down by the ghosts from outside as he sits staring out at his frozen lake.

Young is simultaneously terrified by this pernicious landscape and fascinated by the disgust and lust it evokes. The only resolution seems to be ennui and the ritual of the music, which pounds incessantly, until the sanity of everything, including (or maybe especially) the singer and the listener, is called into question. Tonight's the night, all right, but for what? Just another kick?

Searching for a way to make sense of it, a lost Raymond Chandler story, "Red Wind," offers a clue: "It was one of those hot, dry Santa Anas that come down through the mountain passes and curl your hair and make your nerves jump and your skin itch. On nights like that every booze party ends in a fight. Meek little wives feel the edge of the carving knife and study their husbands' necks. Anything can happen." This is desert music, for certain, and the roughest part of the desert at that.

What finally happens, in "Tired Eyes," is material for a novel; in fact, as Bud Scoppa has pointed out elsewhere, the similarity to the plot of Robert Stone's Dog Soldiers — a novel which shares Young's obsession with heroin and the refuse of the war—is startling. "Well, he shot four men in a cocaine deal," Young sings matter-of-factly. "He left 'em lyin' in an open field/ Full of old cars with bullet holes in the mirrors."

The whole album has pointed to this, song after song building the tightness with the endless repetition of phrases—musical and lyric—until the rasp of the guitars on the rockers and the sweetness of the singing on the weepers begins to grate, aching for release. Young's whole career may have been spent in pursuit of this story—remember the sinister black limousines lurking in the shadows of "Mr. Soul" and "Broken Arrow"?—but it is only now that he has found a way to tell the tale so directly.

Much has been made of Young's turn from pretty melodies on the last three albums. On this album, there are hints of the same kind of beauty that, overused, finally bloated Harvest with its own saccharine excesses. "World on a String" and "Roll Another Number" wouldn't have sounded out of place on that album, except that they would have exploded its pretensions.

If the songs here aren't pretty, they are tough and powerful, with a metallic guitar sound more akin to the abrasiveness of the Rolling Stones than the placid harmonies of CSNY. The melodies haven't disappeared (as they seemed to on On the Beach), but they are only sketched in, hints of what could be.

There is no sense of retreat, no apology, no excuses offered and no quarter given. If anything, these are the old ideas with a new sense of aggressiveness. The jitteriness of the music, its sloppy, unarranged (but decidedly structured) feeling is clearly calculated. The music draws us in, with the wonderful guitar line crashing through the ominous "Lookout Joe," with the steel guitar on "Albuquerque," the almost folkish suggestion of melody that drives "Tired Eyes" but—and here is where it is new—it also spits us back out again, makes us look at the ugliness on the surface and beneath it.

Yet the musical change doesn't reflect a similar toughening of subject matter, though that is what the casual listener might think. The tensions have always been there. only they are now unrelieved. To suggest, as some have, that Young's current music is an apology for the sweetness of his success—much less to suggest that he has only recently discovered a world in opposition to the rock scene—is to ignore the bulk of his work. The titles alone tell the story: "Broken Arrow," "Out of My Mind," "Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere," "Only Love Can Break Your Heart" (with no hint that anything can mend it again), even "Helpless." "Ohio," Young's other great CSNY contribution, speaks explicitly of the same horrors: "What if you knew her and found her dead on the ground/ How can you run when you know?" Finally, those four dead in "Ohio" equate directly with the four dead coke dealers in "Tired Eyes": casualties in different battles of the same war.

All of this is half incoherent because all of the names Young could put to it are clichés. It is the measure of Young's achievement that when he sings, so calmly it's spooky, "Please take my advice/ Open up the tired eyes," it brings this message home to us in a new way. Suddenly the evil is no longer banal but awful and ironic, in simultaneous recognition that the advice is silly, or that if taken, it might not help or it might only aid in enlarging the wounds.

Crying over the death of his real and imagined friends, Neil Young seems at once heroic and mock heroic, brave and absurd. Like the best of both, he leaves us as he found us, ravaged but rocking.

DAVE MARSH

(Posted: Aug 28, 1975)

http://www.rollingstone.com/artists/neilyoung/albums/album/197063/review/5940431/tonights_the_night

i just e-mailed that to two of my best non-ILX friends. thanks for the post.

Yeah, Missta Marsh he sure pretty thorough.

Still, as far as Neil's concerned, I'm a Beach boy.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

wow

close!

time fades away really does deserve more than 3 votes imo!!!!

eh, like M@tt said upthread, Time Fades Away is great, but I couldn't imagine voting for it over the other two ...

i've gone through phases...

I kinda instinct voted OTB right off, but an hour and one TFA re-listen later I was ready to finally make the switch. LA and title track were killing me.

I voted Tonight. On the Beach is amazing, but most often I just listen to the 2nd side. Tonight I want to hear the whole thing straight through.

LA is incredible.

results are hilarious. Laughable that 'Tonight's the Night' didn't win this. Absolutely laughable. Hipsters are cute but ultimately there for source of ridicule.

This poll means about as much as the shit I took ... anyway, I'm gonna pour myself a glass of wine and work practice the chords on 'Mellow My Mind' and 'Albuquerque' again, good job on "discovering" 'On The Beach', ILX. My mint LP cost me exactly one dollar from the Reckless Records in Lakeview on Broadway in '96, maybe? nobody cared about that record. anyway, you youngsters are cute

i always liked on the beach but man, tonight's the night is like the royal scam gone darker and more country and minus the humor to lighten the mood and with the added grimness of the fact that the dead guys and the drug burnouts are neil young's personal friends.

right on, Omar ... so true, it's kinda like 'On the Beach' is almost a parody of 'Tonight's the Night' when I really think about it. Like, Neil wanted to self-consciously TOP IT's vibe, or something. Anyway, I love both records, but if you actually look at songwriting and so forth, there is no question that 'Tonight's the Night' was a herculean effort. I mean, yeah it's easy to smoke up and put on 'On the Beach', but come on..

but yeah, this is just ILX stuff, i pay it no mind. everybody knows that 'Tonight's The Night' is the classic Neil LP..

anyway, you youngsters are cute ― Stormy Davis

ya talkin to me?

Stormy's always picking on youngsters!

ol reliable

youngster hipsters like me and scott seward prefer on the beach haha

as do/did i. ha.

Well, Stormy, I don't wanna rain on your parade too much, I enjoy a bit of self-rightousness as much as the next folk, but here goes:

Glad I could skew this towards OTB.

I am not young, I had a cassette copy of that record forever (as well as Tonight's the Night) and had a whole lot of trouble finding a copy of OTB for a reasonable price, but I was certainly no record-hound fanatic or pro, just tried stores for a long time before finding a decent copy to buy (this was 90s pre-internet era). I was listening to Tonight's the Night a bunch right before I saw this poll as well, great great album, but ... I would take On the Beach any day of the week. Just what I would rather listen to if forced to choose. Project upon us OTBers all you will, of course, wouldn't be much fun if someone didn't get all ornery in here. Just wish I could force all music discussions for the next 6 months at least to refrain from the hipster-speak. It's lazy and boring.

http://stuffthatmoves.files.wordpress.com/2009/03/andy_rooney.jpg

^^^ i think he voted for Time Fades Away, btw

Try to get back by eight
(or preferably seven so you can catch 60 Minutes)

i am young and maybe a hipster and my favorite neil album is comes a time so fuck you guys <3

See Stormy, blame us over the hill farts! We suck, not the youth.

I'm grizzled and old (at least here) and voted for On The Beach. It's not like the others suck or something; as I said upthread it's my favorite period of Neil by leaps and bounds.

it's cool guys, like EZ Snappin says above, I adore all of these records. just real cognitive dissonance that OTB wins. I dunno. LOVE it. but it's more of a mind spiel record from Neil than the precise, jaw-dropping songwriting from Neil on 'Tonight's the Night' ( I guess I may be the new Geir, I dunno), however drunkenly delivered .. (oh yeah, this is what makes me *not* Geir in that I am so in awe of Neil's chordal choices/songwriting on 'Tonight's the Night" while simultaneously delivering the whole package as this wasted, drunken romp. I dunno. Nothing can match it's vibe. and OTB really does seem a smidgen mannered, after the initial blow of TNT)

Oh please, fuck this stupid "Tonight's the Night is like a darker Royal Scam" bullshit.

I bought Tonight's the Night having read all the reviews about how brilliant and "harrowing" it was. It is -- but not remotely in any way that you'd expect, and as a result, took me forever to appreciate. There probably isn't a single "tune" on it that's up there with his best. You'd have no idea that the title track became what it did live on Live Rust. Songs that begin promising ("Borrowed Tune" starts off like it's about to be the next After the Gold Rush) end up so bleary-eyed and raw they become something else entirely -- not singer-songwriter intimate, but uncomfortably intimate and borderline embarrassing. As the artwork indicates, it really is some stoned dude on stage saying, "I got somethin' to say..." And so he does.

i don't find anything embarassing on tonight's the night. the songs are amazing, stormy otm pretty much. i like on the beach tho.

i am old btw

child please

xpost

I bought Tonight's the Night having read all the reviews about how brilliant and "harrowing" it was. It is -- but not remotely in any way that you'd expect, and as a result, took me forever to appreciate. There probably isn't a single "tune" on it that's up there with his best.

Jesus.

This poll result is soooooooooo ILM.

Just bought TFA at the weekend - the title track and LA are so great.

I'm arguing on *behalf* of TTN, dude, not suggesting TTN isn't all it's cracked up to be. I just mean that its power isn't so much in its craftsmanship (or what we normally think of as craftsmanship -- melodies, etc.) as much as its blown out aesthetic (which suggests its own craftsmanship, of course). I mean, by comparison On the Beach sounds as if it features Tom Scott and Steve Gadd.

OK, I get that.

all three are great records. i'd put time fades away just below tonight's the night for sentimental reasons, and for the sake of objectivity i guess because it was such a personal artistic watershed for neil (no tunes? really?), he followed its reprise-the-opening track gambit on his second overall best album, rust never sleeps, and his comeback album after his bullshit 80s synth drek, freedom. really don't get how anyone could like on the beach even close to as much as the other two, but still it's a great album and a big world out there

Neil Young Recordings

App made by Jack M. Clark using Gift Creator

1. Choose a gift to send:
(click on images to view full size)

Hawks And Doves

sent: 365

Live Rust
sent: 368

Rust Never Sleeps
sent: 860

Comes A Time
sent: 470

Decade
sent: 444

American Stars'n'Bars
sent: 249

Long May You Run
sent: 595

Zuma
sent: 598

Tonight's The Night
sent: 560

On The Beach
sent: 1,069

Time Fades Away
sent: 346

Journey Through The Past
sent: 220

Harvest
sent: 1,357

Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere
sent: 704

Neil Young
sent: 446

2. Now pick friends to give it to

You can't argue with science

surely those results have more to do with OTB previously being way more UNAVAILABLE than any of those other ones

Not when applied to Facebook apps.

x-post

facebook users harbor pent-up demand for an album that's been widely available for 6 years now

i don't get it! what does this app do?