NEIL YOUNG ARCHIVES BOX: IT'S REALLY HAPPENING

you can listen to the entire Sugar Mountain show on NPR
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=97253221

yeah, listening now ... sounds great. neil is kind of chatty cathy on this one. lots of interesting versions of springfield songs and stuff from the first solo record.

does he really come up with winterlong out of the blue like that on stage?

ha, i could be wrong, but I think that maybe "Winterlong" is even older than that ... like one of his earliest songs? would be impressive though if that was just an off the cuff riff ...

Archives Vol. 1 : not January 27th. What a surprise.

Instead: new album, Toast

http://www.rollingstone.com/rockdaily/index.php/2008/12/04/neil-young-therell-never-be-another-crazy-horse/

"It’s old, so it doesn’t really matter when it comes out." heh heh. This Sugar Mountain live disc is great, anyway. And TOAST sounds interesting! When is he going to put out a Tonight's The Night era concert, for god's sake?

It was recorded in the same place where Coltrane was recorded, so there’s a lot of heavy stuff in there.

"Toast" was recorded in Rudy van Gelder's studio? Or is Neil sitting on a long-delayed Trane tribute album?

"It’s old, so it doesn’t really matter when it comes out." heh heh. This Sugar Mountain live disc is great, anyway. And TOAST sounds interesting! When is he going to put out a Tonight's The Night era concert, for god's sake?

You know what would be a surreal release? A double/triple LP from the Tonight's the Night tour of England, featuring both the opening act (Eagles) and Young. I can only dream.

at least Neil's saying it will come out on CD, if it comes out before the end of time (necessary caveat since it's Neil)

here's the info on TOAST -- not sure what Coltrane would've recorded in San Fran, but who knows?
In 2000, Crazy Horse was in San Francisco, south of Market street, at an old studio called "Toast." Coltrane had recorded there, among many other jazz greats, known and unknown. The Dot Com boom was happening and buildings were being bought and turned into lofts or torn down completely and rebuilt. New money was everywhere. Toast was a target. The place was a little run down and sort of on its last legs.
To a man, if you asked Crazy Horse about these sessions, you would learn that it was a depressing atmosphere and things were not going well. The band recorded there for months and came up with very little. Nothing, other than one song, "Goin' Home" was ever finished. But a lot was started. Several of the songs written at Toast showed up on the "Are You Passionate" album with Booker T. and the MGs. But that album met with mixed reaction.
Now, years later, John Hanlon, the original co-producer with Neil, is at work mixing all of the Toast material. Many songs share a bluesy, jazz-tinged vibe as a common thread. Three solid rockers are interspersed in the mix. Other songs are long with extensive explorations between verses, a Crazy Horse trademark, kind of like a down-played Tonight's the Night, except these songs deal directly with love and loss, not drugs. The ambient atmosphere, foggy, blue and desolate, pervades many of the tracks, if not all, with Tommy Brea's muted trumpet and dusky male and female counter-part BGs occasionally surfacing from Poncho and Ralph on one side, Nancy Hall and Pegi Young on the other. A cool and sleepy lounge piano rises in the fog occasionally.
The result of this is perhaps one of the most under-estimated and deceptive Crazy Horse records of all time, with many songs originally discarded, and then re-recorded with Booker T. and the MGs. The original performances now surface again through a foggy past. Like an abstract painting, lyrical images of a love lost and maybe even destroyed forever just refuse to die, creating a landscape littered with half-broken dreams and promises.
"Toast" is coming, a dark Crazy Horse classic for the ages. This first NYA "Special Edition" is the beginning of a new series of unreleased albums.

will be cool to see what comes out of the "Special Edition" NYA things ... "Homegrown" finally? "Chrome Dreams"? The second unreleased Trans-style album?

i have a bootleg of what's supposedly the original chrome dreams. it's pretty awesome.

yeah, you can get the best version here: http://qualityboots.blogspot.com/2008/05/neil-young-chrome-dreams-rust.html
maybe better than american stars n bars (which came out in its place ...)
but it is kind of cool that neil is putting out an unreleased record that no one's even heard of, much less bootlegged. I kind of don't think it's going to be as rad as the description above suggests, but it sounds fun anyway.

really loving this Sugar Mtn. release -- definitely a wonderful snapshot of Neil Young before he really became NEIL YOUNG. Will be interesting to see if he continues releasing these "Performance Series" discs. Seems like each one is corresponding to an album
Sugar Mountain = Self Titled
Fillmore 1970 = Everybody Knows ...
Massey Hall = After the Gold Rush
Would be great if he expanded Time Fades Away to go along with Harvest, and yeah, put out a live Tonight's the Night show. And of course, for ZUMA, put out one of those Japanese shows. Those are incredible.

I wanted it to have a mode where you didn’t have to watch it, where you could just listen to it, and there’d be like a screen saver thing up there.

^^^^what did I fucking tell you

http://www.highdefdigest.com/news/show/Warner/Music_on_High-Def/Neil_Youngs_Archives_Gets_Date,_Specs/2323

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B001B8PV4U

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41Vr8sVjHZL._SS420_.jpg

Only $323.99 at Amazon!

Looking at this picture makes me wish there was some sort of equivalent Neu! boxset.

Jeez, that thing costs more than the actual Blu-Ray player I'd need to buy to listen to it.

yeah this is ridiculous. But so is Neil.

ok i don't usually use my job to get freebies that we won't probably cover but i may make an exception

Run Time: 1200 minutes

Is it possible to buy the rack in the background?

As near as I can tell, TOAST was recorded at what was once "Coast Recorders" in SF, apparently changed to "Toast" sometime down the line.

Date: 22 September 1965.

Place: ‘Coast Recorders’, San Francisco CA.

Ensemble: John Coltrane Quartet: John Coltrane soprano sax, tenor sax, McCoy Tyner piano, Jimmy Garrison bass, Elvin Jones drums,

Recording:

Recording Engineer:

Alternative Issues:

Recent Available Issue: John Coltrane Quartet, Coltrane The Classic Quartet - Complete Impulse Studio Recordings, Impulse! IMPD8-280, Disc 7;Impulse!, A9225, for this item.

1. Joy (12:10)

http://neilyoungarchives.warnerbrosrecords.com/

but also http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2009/jan/16/neil-young-fork-in-the-road

"The video – clearly a webcam recording of Old Shakey chomping on an apple, mouthing along, cotton buds in his ears – doesn't inspire much confidence. A few minutes in, he sings about blogging. Later in the video he plays air guitar as a flat-screen TV seems to be repossessed."

LOL

"A few minutes in, he sings about blogging."

... lol?

cd box set version is pretty reasonably priced :)

would love to see the blu ray thing but not for $300

yeah I'll be getting the cd version, even $200 for the dvd is kinda ridic. I mean how often are you going to want to watch Journey Through The Past? Hopefully I can borrow it from somebody once, but if not, the tunes are where it's at.

yeah, it's not ridiculously priced or anything -- hopefully the book does not take its layout cues from the booklet in the Buffalo Springfield box set ... !

yeah i am bummed they didn't include that but you're right, that seems like something you watch once and never again...

99 for 8 CDs and nice packaging is pretty awesome actually...glad i held out on buying massey hall, though i couldn't stop myself from buying the fillmore gig

xpost: you are going to watch Journey Through the Past exactly once.

xpost: you are going to watch Journey Through the Past exactly once.

and i am apparently posting that twice

feeling glad I didn't buy the massey hall or crazy horse cds, and I think it's pretty lame to include them here.

yeah, I bought a bootleg of Eat the Document a few years back, watched it once, got nauseous, and gave it to my brother. From what I've heard, Journey Through the Past is less worthy.

eat the document at least is kind of beautifully filmed in parts. Journey is just kind of gross and boring for the most part. There's some LOLs in there, but it's pretty tiresome overall.

"Got a pot belly," Young sings, "It's not too big / Gets in my way / When I'm driving my rig."

^^A+

So glad there's going to be a CD-version! If it ever actually comes out. But kinda bummed that I was over-eager and bought the Fillmore and Massey discs.

yeah, well, who could resist? the fillmore and the massey discs are incredible! just irritating that i'm going to pay for them twice ...

I got the Fillmore one on vinyl recently, its great.

fillmore's gotta be one of the top 10 live albums of all time for me.

yeah...cowgirl in the sand is so epic on that

these neil young fans who don't like "fork in the road" are dumbasses, the song is hot stuff. the video's kinda lame in a funny way - OH SHOCKER, NEIL YOUNG FANS - neil thinks videos are a joke? really? you don't fuckin say.

I'm a big rock star
my sales have tanked
I still got you
thanks

i'm still trying to wrap my head around the greendale movie which i saw a few months ago

but honestly i never get mad if neil makes stuff that is really painfully o_O or just bad...that's all part of neil being neil. he's gotta make like 4 weirdo records for every normal-ish "good" one

Greendale's about the same level of quality as the rest of Neil's movie projects.

I find it weird that there are still Neil Young fans who get angry at him for doing weird, inscrutable, fairly half-assed things. This is what he's done his entire career!

I never bought Fillmore and Massey because I knew they were going to be on here -- and i'm getting this as soon as it comes out obviously -- but woah, there is no Canterbury thing on here!

Hadn't bought that yet either ... now I guess I have to, yay!

look I love Neil's half-assed stuff too but writing about blogging...