NEIL YOUNG ARCHIVES BOX: IT'S REALLY HAPPENING

it's these things
http://doomandgloomfromthetomb.tumblr.com/post/104317711/more-bad-news-neil-young-in-the-1980s-vol-2
http://doomandgloomfromthetomb.tumblr.com/post/101626891/bad-news-neil-young-in-the-1980s-vol-1

The audio format is a good idea, and more power to him...but "Neil Young says this audio format is sonically superior" is right up there with "mastering personally overseen by Pete Townshend." In other words, someone who's spent decades playing loud, and is pushing 70, maybe doesn't have the hearing to be the go-to authority on this kind of thing.

he blames the mixing sessions for arc/weld for permanently damaging his hearing, appara

I blame Neil for supporting too many stupid audio/video formats. Just remaster your fucking albums, you knob.

Yeah, Neil's got a history of dabbling with sketchy audio wankery:

Time Fades Away was recorded directly from the soundboard to 16-track using the Quad-8 CompuMix, the unreliable first digital mixing soundboard—against the wishes of producer David Briggs, who referred to it as the "Compufuck" but was forced to yield to the desires of Young. This resulted in a murky-sounding release.

There were no 2 track masters ever made of this record. The master discs were cut directly from the 16 track masters through the Compumix system. A mix was recorded to a second 16 track machine--we had 2 that would run perfectly together--to feed the variable pitch system of the lathe--but was discarded when we were through. I was the mastering engineer who cut the masters.
—Phil Brown[citation needed]

Because no two-track stereo master tape was ever made as would commonly be done, the album cannot be remastered in a traditional manner. If any new release was to be attempted, a new mix would need to be made from the original multitrack tapes.

Nice new interview w/Poncho over at Rolling Stone. Includes this set of nuggets:

RS: Neil brought you guys back into the studio in 2000 to cut an album called Toast. What happened there? It never came out.

P: Everybody got sick. (Laughs) We were recording the album and really playing pretty good. Then we went on this tour of South America right in the middle of it. One of them was Rock in Rio. It was a huge amount of people, like 300,000 or something. The audience was going wild and it really inspired us. We did "Like a Hurricane" and they were humming the melody the whole time like a soccer chant. It just blew us away. I looked over and saw Neil and he was gone. He just threw his head up in the air and was just playing guitar. It was gigantic. All of us remember it.

Then we came home and went back into Toast. Everything we tried to play, we kind of played Latin style. [Laughs] We got confused down there. I don't mean we didn't know how to play our instruments or we didn't know what we were doing or Toast is shit, but all of a sudden we were going in different directions. We just weren't in the same place as when we left. We kept playing and recorded some things, but it just didn't work out.

RS: I spoke to Neil about five years ago and he was super excited about Toast. He said he had big plans for a release, but it obviously didn't happen.

P: I remember during the making of Sleeps With Angels I found myself in the studio without the rest of the band. All of a sudden, here comes [Warner Bros. Records chairman] Mo Ostin and his son Michael with some other cats. They had nobody to talk to besides me, and they basically cornered me and said, "When are the archives coming out?" He was talking about them coming out that Christmas [of 1994.] I said, "As far as I know, man, he's all over it. He says he's got it ready. It's really coming out." And here we are.

RS: He did finally release that first box set a few years ago, but imagine part two is still a ways away. I feel like he lost interest.

P: Do you think Volume Two will have Bluenotes material?

RS: I think that's Volume Three. I think Volume Two will be 1973 to 1979. It's a real big six years.

P: I remember once a long time ago, someone around the studio said there's 154 unreleased songs.

haha, i like that the dude in neil's band has as much of a clue about this stuff as anyone.

yeah wtf he's asking RS what's on Volume 2? lol

Being jerked around on what's happening and when is annoying enough as a fan; can't imagine how much more annoying it must be for a bandmate ("We're going on tour! Wait -- no we're not!")

Yeah, people are making a thing out of Sampedro's "gut" telling him this is the last Crazy Horse tour, but come on, he has no idea.

tbf, "gut" is Poncho's nickname for Neil.

lol

In the Rolling Stone article yesterday about the CSN&Y l974 live record that's coming out Nash said something about knowing Neil but not like having his cell phone number or anything.

Like yr in band with a dude, a band that shares everyone's name, you've played with this guy on his records & tours, but you don't know how to get a hold of him must be kind of weird.

I mean I get not wanting Stills or Crosby have yr number but Nash seems like an ok dude

Yeah, but he's probably too touchy-feely for Neil.

haha yeah. nash is so emo, though... i'm sure he could get in touch with neil pretty easily if he reallllly wanted to. but it would be weird to be so tied up with the guy and not have any say in the relationship.

I dunno, I've heard Crosby & Nash say stuff like this for a long time, I bet Neil probably is pretty hard for them the get a hold of...tbf he seems to have a really weird relationship with the whole CSN&Y thing

in shakey he tells stills via tour bus CB radio that he's not showing up to the next date they are driving to

It was the 70s equivalent of breakup by text message.

Pretty sure Archives II comes out next week.

archives II is going to be so good.

it came out last week, It was really good. Third one comes out soon. Fourth one will be all electronic. Fifth one he's recording right now. Sixth one is just one 10 hour song.

if archives ii is what archives ii is supposed to be it's going to be the greatest thing ever

I'm going to be sure to buy it in whatever proprietary format that he promises to update but doesn't that he offers it in. Maybe I'll buy two! Maybe I'll buy five and build a little doll hut.

I think Neil was able to build a new barn out at the ranch just using unsold Archives I blurays.

Did he ever keep up with the promised downloads on the first box? I seem to remember hearing about a few tracks coming out, then nothing.

yeah, nothing for about three years?

BD-Live Downloads

"I Wonder" - The Squires – previously unreleased basement rehearsal (Made available around May 1, 2009) (24-bit/192 kHz audio)
Neil Young - Guitar, vocal; Doug Campbell - Guitar; Ken Koblun - Bass; Randy Peterson - Drums
"Here We Are in the Years" - Neil Young – unreleased 2009 remix (Made available around July 26, 2009) (24-bit/192 kHz audio)
Neil Young - Guitar, piano, organ, harpsichord, vocal; Jim Messina - Bass; George Grantham - Drums; Also - strings
"Cinnamon Girl" - Neil Young & Crazy Horse - live at the Fillmore East, March 7, 1970 (track left off the Fillmore East NYAPS release) (Made available on or very shortly before Sep. 15, 2009) (24-bit/192 kHz audio)
Neil Young - Guitar, vocals; Danny Whitten - Guitar, vocals; Jack Nitzsche - Electric piano; Billy Talbot - Bass; Ralph Molina - Drums, vocals
"Mr. Soul" - Buffalo Springfield - live at the KHJ Appreciation Concert, Apr. 29, 1967 (Made available on Oct. 5, 2009) (24-bit/96 kHz audio)
Neil Young - Guitar, vocals; Stephen Stills - Guitar; Richie Furay - Guitar; Jim Fielder - Bass; Dewey Martin - Drums
"The Rent Is Always Due" - Neil Young - demo from the Buffalo Springfield box set (Made available on Nov. 2, 2009) (24-bit/192 kHz audio)
Neil Young - Guitar, vocals
"Shakey Pictures Fanfare" - Jack Nitzsche - opening fanfare for all Shakey Pictures productions, along with instructions for a ringtone download (Made available on Nov. 18, 2009) (24-bit/48 kHz audio)
Jack Nitzsche - Composer
"It's My Time" - The Mynah Birds - single A-side that went unreleased until 2006's The Complete Motown Singles, Vol. 6 box set (Made available on Feb. 26, 2010) (16-bit/96 kHz audio)
Rick Matthews - Vocals; Neil Young - Guitar, backing vocals; Bruce Palmer - Bass; Jim Yachemac - Guitar; Rick Mason - Drums; The Temptations - Backing vocals; The Four Tops - Backing vocals
"Go On and Cry" - The Mynah Birds - single B-side that went unreleased until 2006's The Complete Motown Singles, Vol. 6 box set (Made available on Feb. 26, 2010) (16-bit/96 kHz audio)
Rick Matthews - Vocals; Neil Young - Guitar, backing vocals; Bruce Palmer - Bass; Jim Yachemac - Guitar; Rick Mason - Drums; The Temptations - Backing vocals; The Four Tops - Backing vocals
"I Ain't Got the Blues" - Neil Young - unreleased demo (Made available on Mar. 26, 2010) (24-bit/192 kHz audio)
Neil Young - Guitar, vocals
"Mustang" - The Squires – same version as on Disc 0, was used so Neil could include text about the song[9] (Made available on Apr. 28, 2010) (24-bit/192 kHz audio)
Neil Young - Guitar, vocal; Doug Campbell - Guitar; Ken Koblun - Bass; Randy Peterson - Drums

has anyone ever complied those online?

i don't think i've seen them around, though you can get most of that stuff elsewhere?

at least neil is working hard on archives vol II now ... oh wait no he's not, he's driving cross country in his weirdo electric car
http://25.media.tumblr.com/e5dd172829958cac39bd7bd205437274/tumblr_mlf4g3wgj11qzxikdo1_500.jpg

in-dash PONO player in that thing i heard

The Archives are in the trunk.

http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_luzpwvcHR41qlebd0o1_500.gif

i bet if you ran into neil in a parking lot with his car, and asked him about PONO he'd say oh yeah, let me play you something ... and he'd play a Mumford & Sons track.

and it would sound so amazing

in-dash PONO player in that thing i heard

― ums (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Wednesday, April 17, 2013 5:23 PM (36 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Actually, the bus is the PONO player. Hey, you wanted hi-res files. Shit takes up space.

That trunk gif is great, but how did they leave out Ray Liotta?

Good question!

aren't all of those tarantino movies?

Maybe that's it--didn't recognize the bottom three.

the bigger question is why did they include a shot that's not from a trunk

Just to see if you were paying attention, I think.

the version of "birds" on topanga 1 is killing me. the chorus is more devastating with just the solo vocal.

at least neil is working hard on archives vol II now ... oh wait no he's not, he's driving cross country in his weirdo electric car

"hey, let me show off how ecologically responsible I am by traveling cross country in this car that runs on renewable energy. what's that? oh, that's my diesel tour bus."

You'd have figured Willie Nelson had turned Neil onto bio-diesel by now.

or hemp oil.

It's my impression that Pono had sorta replaced the electric car as neils pet project

http://lincvolt.tumblr.com/

Of course, everyone has the right to an opinion, and my opinions, based on real science and scientific research, are always open to attack or misinterpretation. With this in mind, I visited a church in Iowa looking for a sign. I wanted a sign to tell me if I was doing the right thing by campaigning for cleaner fuels and more responsibility with regard to fossil fuel abuse and carbon waste. I drove my car to a little church on a hilltop in the middle of a cornfield. I parked right in front and walked up the steps and sidewalk to the white wooden church, with its impeccably manicured grounds, no litter, completely clean and well cared for. I opened the door, took off my hat and walked in. The church was empty and silent. I looked at the neat rows of pews, immaculate in their order and cleanliness, and imagined the congregation, small as it must be, gathering for worship on a Sunday. In my mind I asked for guidance, something I am not in the habit of doing.
After a few silent and peaceful moments, I turned towards the door, signed the guestbook, Neil Young, California. Then I made a contribution in a small wooden box. As I opened the door and exited the church I put my hat back on and walked along down the perfectly trimmed sidewalk back to the steps I had initially climbed. Looking down at my feet I saw something out of place. A small piece of corn stover, a cob with no kernels left, was there on the step. I felt a rush of something I had not experienced before as I stooped down to pick it up. It was light in my hand and looked exactly like the corn stover I had seen the day before in a laboratory at POET Ethanol where I had gone to learn how Cellulosic ethanol was made. I had learned how this stover was carefully collected, used and managed so enough was left in the field to replenish the soil. I am not a very religious man in the normal sense, but to me this was a sign I felt in my soul, a spiritual feeling that I was doing the right thing. I give thanks to the Great Spirit.” ~ My driver and bff Neil Young.

Moses had a burning bush. Neil had a used corn cob.

http://25.media.tumblr.com/9ce8b2334a3f0212f2969efe74e19459/tumblr_ml7a81Pmmu1qzxikdo1_1280.jpg

When did Neil turn into skinny Van Morrison?