Tag: neil young

Show Review: Neil Young & Crazy Horse – Inglewood, CA (10/23/78)

Originally posted on my Substack where you can find images, videos and more goodies.

Neil Young & Crazy Horse
The Forum
Inglewood, CA
1978-10-23

Sugar Mountain
I Am A Child
Comes A Time
Already One
After The Gold Rush
My My, Hey Hey (Out Of The Blue)
When You Dance I Can Really Love
The Loner
Welfare Mothers
Come On Baby Let’s Go Downtown?
The Needle And The Damage Done
Lotta Love
Sedan Delivery
Powderfinger
Cortez The Killer
Cinnamon Girl
Like A Hurricane
Hey Hey, My My (Into The Black)
Tonight’s The Night

From the ‘Rust Never Sleeps’ Tour, one day after the Movie and official release was filmed and recorded in San Francisco, Ca.

Neil Young – guitar, piano, vocals
Frank Sampedro – guitar, keyboards, vocals
Billy Talbot – bass, vocals
Ralph Molina – drums, vocals

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Source:

SBD > ? > CDR > EAC > WAV > TLH > Flac

The Midnight Cafe’s Notes:

I feel like I’m a broken record when I repeat that I have trouble reviewing Neil’s acoustic sets. The thing is, I like them. I like these songs, and Neil plays them well. But they rarely sound all that different to me. Is one version of “I Am A Child” better than another? Probably. If you lined them all up, you could probably pick out some really good versions, but a random listen usually turns up a good one that sounds pretty much like most of the rest of them.

The sound is good, but there is a lot of crowd noise. It isn’t like an audience recording where you can hear some dumbo behind the taper just chatting away, but there is a lot of random clapping and cheering during the acoustic set. It makes me wonder if something was going on onstage or elsewhere. Was Neil or someone else doing something worth cheering for? Or maybe they just really love certain lines in the songs. It is a bit distracting, but not a big deal, really.

I do love when Neil plays piano during the solo sets. He does a very nice version of “After the Gold Rush” here.

“My My, Hey Hey (Out of the Blue)” is good. Neil gets really into this song with some nice guitar work, and then he keeps repeating “Hey, hey, my my…” several times at the end.

The electric set starts with “When You Dance You Can Really Love,” and it is a good one. It has this wonderful little solo. “Welfare Mothers” finds the whole band getting into a rowdy little groove

I love the Crazy Horse sound. When they are good (and they are often very good), they are so loud, raucous, rowdy, and wild. They sound like they could go off the rails at any moment, but they manage to keep the train just on the tracks.

“Needle and the Damage Done” is just Neil again on acoustic guitar, which seems weird. Before the song, you can hear someone – an announcer, maybe; I can’t tell – saying something about getting off the towers. I’m guessing some audience members were climbing on something, causing safety issues. I’m guessing again that this caused Neil to just play by himself for a minute until whatever was going on got cleared up.

“Cortez the Killer” is one of my favorite Neil songs. He’s got a few songs like this where his band will find this groove and then just play it and play it while Neil is laying down big guitar riffs until they transcend space and time. They absolutely nail it here, with the riffs growing bigger and bigger until they just explode. Neil uses a strange kind of clipped vocal that sounds slightly Jamaican for some reason.

“Cinnamon Girl” is loud and ragged and surprisingly short. We get the completed couplet with “Hey Hey, My My (Into the Black” which always rocks. Before the encore of “Tonight’s the Night,” someone- I’m guessing a local DJ comes out and sputters some nonsense about Rust Never Sleeping and how “Tonight is the night,” while also seemingly berating them for not buying that album enough. The song is played pretty darn good, though.

Overall, this is a darn good concert. Turn it up and play it loud.

Show Review: Neil Young – Raleigh, NC (09/13/14)

Neil Young
Farm Aid
Walnut Creek Amphitheatre
Raleigh, NC
September 13, 2014

Setlist:

Intro by John Mellencamp
Heart Of Gold
Comes A Time
talk 1
Pocahontas
Standing In The Light Of Love
talk 2
Mother Earth (Natural Anthem) – with Mickey Raphael
Who’s Gonna Stand Up And Save The Earth?
Rockin’ In The Free World – with Lukas and Micah Nelson

Source:

Lineage: YouTube webcast audio (192 kbps AAC) > Audacity > WAV > TLH > FLAC 6 > foobar2000 > FLAC tags

Review:

In July of 1985, while performing with Keith Richards and Ron Wood at the Live Aid concert designed to help those suffering from famine in Ethiopia, Bob Dylan said something about how he hoped that maybe someone could help out American farmers. Small farms were getting eaten up by large corporations. They were losing their farms to banks.

Willie Nelson, John Mellencamp, and Neil Young took that message to heart, and they organized the first Farm Aid benefit. On September 22, 1985, those three and a host of others performed before a crowd of 80,000 people in Champaign, IL, and raised over $9 million for family-owned farms.

They originally thought it was going to be a one-off. They’d do this concert, help the farmers, and move on. But quickly they realized it was a much bigger problem. They’ve held a concert nearly every year since, raising hundreds of millions of dollars.

I’ve got a lot of copies of various performers performing at various Farm Aids over the years. I more or less randomly pulled this particular show out of a hat.

Since Farm Aid is a big show with a lot of performers, each act doesn’t usually get that long of a time slot to play. This year there were the usual performances by Young, Mellencamp, and Nelson, plus the Preservation Jazz Hall Band, Dave Matthews, Todd Snider, Gary Clark Jr and others. Neil only plays for about half an hour. I don’t have recordings of any of the other performers from this night. I don’t think I’ve ever watched an entire Farm Aid concert. I presume there is some kind of all-star jam at the end, but I may be wrong. Anyway, this is what I’ve got.

Neil mostly plays acoustic and solo. He is in fine form. I mentioned in my last Neil Young review that I don’t really know how to review him when he plays acoustic and solo. He’s fiery and chatty here. He goes on a couple of long rants about politics, voting, how commercial interests are ruining farming, and even names a specific politician from North Carolina. It’s one of those things that works well for this crowd, but after listening to it once, I imagine I’ll be skipping them from here on out.

After a nice intro by John Mellencamp, Neil does some lovely renditions of “Heart of Gold” and “Comes a Time.” Then he has a little chat and moves into what I’d call his Mother Earth section of the show. This begins with a very nice version of “Pocahontas.” Next comes “Standing in the Light of Love,” which is off of Toast, an album I’ve never listened to, was apparently shelved after it was recorded in 2000-2001 for being too sad, and finally came out in 2022 as part of Neil’s Archive series. Listening to it now on YouTube, it seems like a pretty good rocker – not amazing, but definitely enjoyable. But here it just kind of drones on and on.

After that, it’s another rant, and then “Mother Earth (Natural Anthem)” with Mickey Raphael from Willie Nelson’s band helping out on harmonica, and Neil on organ. It isn’t a bad version, but it seems like a strange choice for this crowd. Obviously, it falls neatly into the whole conservation movement theme of Farm Aid, but it is hard to imagine this crowd of thousands who, standing in the weather for hours, and may not be superfans being super pumped to hear a soft ballad with Neil Young playing the organ. But hey, we can hear it in the comfort of our own home, and it sounds pretty good.

“Who’s Gonna Stand Up?” is another odd choice. On his 2014 album Storytone, the song is played with a full orchestra; naturally, here it is completely stripped down. It is another Earthy song with Neil in full rant mode. Coming from a recent album, it does make sense that he’d play it live, but again it seems so strange to me that he’d do it at Farm Aid, when most folks would be pining for his hits. But Neil has always played by his own rules. The crowd does get into it at the end, doing a bit of a sing-a-long with Neil singing “Who’s Gonna Stand Up,” with the crowd finishing the lyric, singing “And Save the Earth.”

The Nelson brothers come out for the last song, “Rockin’ in the Free World,” and it rocks. Neil is a very good guitar player, obviously, but solo acoustic, there is only so much he can do. With more guitars on stage, one person can play rhythm while others solo. A very nice way to end the performance, indeed.

The more I listen to and review these Neil Young shows, the more I realize how much I don’t know about the man or his music. I’ve listened to quite a lot of Neil Young in my day, but the man is so prolific that there is still tons of stuff I’ve never heard. This is a perfectly fine performance. It is mostly Neil and his acoustic guitars, sometimes playing relatively obscure songs. Sometimes he is accompanied by his friends. You gotta dig it.

Show Review: Neil Young & Crazy Horse – Chicago, IL (11/15/76)

Neil Young
1976-11-15
Auditorium Theater, Chicago, Illinois, USA
w/ Crazy Horse

Early Show

Disc 1 (32:01)
01. The Old Laughing Lady>Guilty Train
02. Human Highway
03. After The Gold Rush
04. Pocahontas
05. Too Far Gone
06. The Needle And The Damage Done
07. A Man Needs A Maid
08. Sugar Mountain

Disc 2 (57:01)
09. Country Home
10. Don’t Cry No Tears
11. Bite The Bullet
12. Down By The River
13. Lotta Love
14. Like A Hurricane
15. Drive Back
16. Cinnamon Girl
17. Cortez The Killer(cut)

Late Show

01 Heart of Gold
02 The Old Laughing Lady
03 Journey Through the Past
04 Too Far Gone
05 Give Me Strength
06 The Needle and the Damage Done
07 A Man Needs a Maid
08 Tell Me Why
09 Sugar Mountain

10 Country Home
11 Don’t Cry No Tears
12 Peace of Mind
13 Lotta Love
14 Like a Hurricane
15 After the Gold Rush
16 Are You Ready for the Country?
17 Down by the River
18 Inca Queen
19 Opera Star
20 Eldorado

Tour: 1976 US Tour with Crazy Horse
Band: Crazy Horse, Line Up 3
Neil Young – vocals, guitar, keyboards, banjo, harmonica
Frank Sampedro – guitar, keyboards, vocals
Billy Talbot – bass, vocals
Ralph Molina – drums, vocals

Sources:

Source 1
Early Show Only

Lineage: Audience Master > Unknown generation > DAT > CDR > EAC > xACT 1.5b3 > flac(8)

Source 2
Late Show Only

SBD Recording
Artwork: Front, Back, Front 2

Source 3
Late Show Only

The “Joel Bernstein” 1976 soundboard collection I put up recently was very popular,
so here’s another 1976 soundboard.
I haven’t been at Dime too long, so I don’t know if it was put up recently.
If you missed it before, it’s definitely a keeper.
The sound is really superb.
I beleive this emerged among collectors as a commercial bootleg,
so I don’t know the lineage, but it sounds like it could be straight from the master or very low-generation.
Supposedly several songs were performed after these, but they were not recorded.
This recording was taken from the “Chicago Hurricane” bootleg. There’s a little sound dropout at 2:39 on Disc 1, Track 6, but it’s after the song has ended. This was on my original.

The Midnight Cafe notes:

Out of the four main artists that I used to post about every week, Neil Young is the one I know the least about. Truth be told, I’ve always been more of a Jack of All Trades and an Ace of None than one of those folks who know every last detail of an artist’s career. But I am pretty well versed in Dylan and the Dead and Van Morrison. I love me some Neil Young, but I have to admit I’ve not listened to every record, and I’m pretty hazy about most of his tours.

I mean, I know there was Buffalo Springfield and his tenure with Crosby, Stills, and Nash, and of course Crazy Horse. I also know he’s played with lots of different bands with names like The Ducks and the Restless and Promise of the Real, but I’d be hard-pressed to give you dates on any of those or who was in them. But I’ve definitely listened to recordings of all those guys.

The point I’m belaboring to make is that I don’t know how to put this particular show into any type of context. I believe 1976 is a well-regarded year in Neil Young lore. He did a big tour of Japan and Europe with Crazy Horse in the spring, and a tour with them of the US in the Fall. In the summer, he toured with Stephen Stills, with whom he released an album called Long May You Run, but it ended badly.

This show comes from the middle of his American tour with Crazy Horse. He often did two shows a day on this tour. Each performance began with Neil performing solo on acoustic guitar and sometimes piano, and then Crazy Horse came out for a full electric set.

There is a soundboard recording of the late show, which apparently came from Joel Bernstein, a photographer and producer who hung out with Neil around this time. I don’t know all the details of that. Only audience recordings exist of the early show. I tried listening to the early show, but I couldn’t do it. It isn’t a terribly bad recording; I’ve certainly heard worse, but I just wasn’t in the mood. This is partially because I mislabeled it as a soundboard and was really annoyed when it was definitely not that. But the late show is a true soundboard, and it sounds terrific.

Listening to the acoustic set, I realize I don’t know what to say about it. Neil is in fine form, and he plays the songs well, but they sound more or less as they do on the records. For the most part, he’s not doing anything different with them, and he’s not blowing me away with raw emotion. Don’t get me wrong, they are great. I love these songs, and he performs them well; I just don’t know that there is more to say about them.

It opens with a nice version of “Heart of Gold.” My copy has some digital static a couple of times right at the beginning. “The Old Laughing Lady” is really good with a lovely harmonica bit in the middle. At the very end, Neil starts singing what the setlist calls “Guilty Train,” but I can’t find any information about it. It is just a snippet, really, but all the lyrics websites only list the lyrics, “Guilty train
Don’t whistle my way again,” which is repeated. Does anyone know anything about this song? If it even is a song.

“Journey Through the Past” is a lot of fun with this barroom-esque piano work. Neil switches to the piano or an organ during “A Man Needs a Maid,” and he also blows his harmonica, which gives it a really beautiful, haunting quality. The band comes out on “Country Home,” and they rock. About two minutes into the song, Neil seems to get confused, and he repeats the line “Leave myself behind” a few times. For a moment, the band seems like they don’t know what to do, and then they just jump into a great little jam.

“Lotta Love” is very pretty, but at the end it gets really soft for some reason. “Like a Hurricane” starts off kind of weird. Neil does this intro where he plays really fast and just kind of noodles for a minute, and then it kicks off into the actual song. It is loud and ragged and glorious. In the intro to “Are You Ready For the Country,” Neil says it is their first time playing the song. As it was written in 1972, that seems unlikely. Was he just talking about him performing it with Crazy Horse, or was this really the first time he’d played it live? Is there a Neil Young Base out there with listings of all his live performances? Whatever the case, it is a rollicking version.

“Down by the River” is one of my favorite Neil Young songs. It has an excellent groove, and it is a great launching pad for some classic Neil Young jamming. He does not disappoint this night. One of my favorite parts of the song is after the big jam; he comes back to the first verse singing, “Be on my side. I’ll be on your side,” and he just nails that moment here. From the big rowdiness of that song, he transitions to the subtle beauty of “Inca Queen” with this lovely synth keyboard and some very fine guitar picking. “Opera Star” and “El Dorado” finish us out, and they are rocking.

It is a very fine show overall. Well worth grabbing.

I’m a funny man. When talking about a GarciaLive release, I noted that in order to write more of these music reviews, I was just going to give them one good listen (instead of the three I initially was trying to do) and then just jot down my thoughts. These aren’t intended to be in-depth, full-on reviews, but just thoughts on a show. I listened to this show on my way to and from work, and I made notes whenever a song was good or interesting. The plan was to come home that night and write a review. That was Monday. By the time I got home, I was too tired to talk about anything. Then Tuesday came and Wednesday, and to be honest, I just kept forgetting to write. Here it is Thursday, and I’m finally getting this thing out. I could have listened to the show a couple of more times!

Maybe next time.

Links of the Day: May 4, 2023: Martin Scorsese, Grateful Dead, and Neil Young

Martin Scorsese Found “the Key” to ‘Killers of the Flower Moon’ By Immersing Himself in the World: Collider

Dave McMurray to Release Grateful Dead Tribute Album Featuring Don Was and Oteil Burbridge: Bass Magazine

Martin Scorsese, David Johansen Talk Making ‘Personality Crisis: One Night Only’ Documentary During Pandemic: Variety

The Grateful Dead to share previously unreleased 1973 concerts in new boxset: NME

Neil Young Pays Tribute to Gordon Lightfoot: ‘His Melodies and Words Were An Inspiration to All Writers’: Billboard

Links of the Day: February 17, 2023

Wilco Selling Guitars, Century-Old Organ, and Gear From Their Chicago Studio: Pitchfork

Martin Scorsese ‘Killers of the Flower Moon’ is Still Being Edited: World of Reel

New John Lennon and Yoko Ono Documentary Announced: Pitchfork

Listen to isolated vocals of Tom Petty on ‘I Won’t Back Down’: Far Out

‘Jeopardy!’ Stumped Contestants On A Bob Dylan Question, And Their Guesses Were Truly Disheartening: Uproxx

Neil Young Announces First Concert Since Before Pandemic: Pitchfork

Random Shuffle: (08/08/06) – Neil Young, Wilco, George Jones, U2, & The Grateful Dead

“Rockin in the Free World” – Neil Young
From Freedom

The first time I ever heard this song was on an MTV awards show – I assume the VMAs, but I really don’t remember. It was an amazing performance with Pearl Jam as the backup band. It was really quite incredible watching the grandfather of grunge jamming like it was the rapture along with up-and-comers Pearl Jam (this was the early 90s so PJ was still fairly young as a band). It was, and is, one of my favorite all-time live television performances (Editor’s Note: You can watch that performance here.)

Eddie Vedder sang the verse about the addict mother putting her kid away to get a hit. The kid, as the song says will “never go to school/never get to fall in love/never get to be cool.” At the time I felt those lyrics were staunchly pro-abortion perhaps because the rest of the lyrics have a liberal tint and Eddie is quite outspoken on his pro-choice views. Over time I have come to feel that it isn’t as pro-abortion as it is a condemnation of a country that can allow its poor and downtrodden to live in such a way that they’d abandon their children.

This is not in any way meant as a means to debate the abortion issue. Believe me, I never intend to get political here. It’s just when I hear this song I always think of that performance and Eddie singing those lyrics so passionately.

This is a less fiery, acoustic version. I’ve heard Mr. Young perform this song acoustically much more than electric, which seems strange to me since it works so much better wired up.

Neil gives it his best shot, and the audience obviously digs it, out-blasting Neil on the final chorus.

“Pot Kettle Black” – Wilco
From Yankee Hotel Foxtrot

Have I mentioned I completely adore this entire album? For ages and ages, I had heard about the album and the whole back story about their record label dropping the band because YHF wasn’t commercial enough.

Ultimately I didn’t actually listen to the album until several years later – last year to be precise. I got a copy of the album and listened to it pretty extensively while on a train through the north of France. Turns out YHF is the perfect album to listen to while on a train in France. Watching the picturesque landscape roll by as Jeff Tweedy and company gently rock is just about as perfect as it gets.

This is a great mid-tempo number that conjures up images of rolling hills, tiny towns with their high church towers, and lots of gorgeous French trees.

“White Lightning” – George Jones
From Super Hits

After listening to countless youngsters with their super-loud car stereos roll by, an old roommate, and good friend proclaimed that he too was going to buy a souped-up stereo, but instead of whatever hip-hop record that was currently a hit, he was going to play some George Jones. He never did buy that stereo, but the idea always brings a smile to my lips.

I know this ode to bootleg liquor because of an East Tennessee band Robinella and the CC String Band. They have a great version on their first album. Robinella’s beautiful, country-changed voice is much more appealing than old Georges, and I love George Jones. Maybe it is George’s rather embarrassing drunkenness over the past few years that makes me prefer this song sung by another. It’s kind of like listening to “Cocaine” by Eric Clapton, knowing he doesn’t play the song anymore since he’s drug-free.

Ah, it’s a good song, and George does a good job of making it fun and silly. But a smooth female voice will always win with me.

“New Year’s Day” – U2
From War

Does Epic Rock get better than this? From the thundering bass to the Edge’s screaming guitars to the haunting, mysteriously political lyrics this song single-handedly solidifies U2 as a great rock band, never mind their dozen or so other great songs. It also makes me forgive them for their excesses and rather suckiness of the last several albums.

One New Year’s Eve my brother swore up and down that VH1 would surely play this song as the clock struck 12. They didn’t, but we sat staring at the TV hoping to hear the song and prove him right. The clock kept ticking and we wondered if they had played it an hour earlier for Eastern time, or would play it later for Mountain and Pacific. I’ll never forget the awkwardness of not only wanting to hear a great song but to prove my brother right. He was so sure they would play it that I felt bad for him when they didn’t.

Funny how songs evoke such memories.

“Brown Eyed Woman” – Grateful Dead
From Dicks Picks 7

During my months in Abilene, TX a liquor store used this song in the background for their commercials on David Gans’ Grateful Dead Hour.

One of Robert Hunter’s great western lyrics. He has this amazing ability to represent the mythos of the old west, while still hitting on contemporary themes. This is a pretty straight-up live version, which is to say it’s rather great.

Neil Young – Silver and Gold

neil young silver and gold

Neil Young’s first acoustic album in seven years, Silver and Gold sounds shamefully thrown together. His last acoustic effort (not counting the MTV Unplugged release) Harvest Moon is one of my all-time favorite albums. There is some lovely songwriting in there, with some nice backup singing by the likes of James Taylor and Linda Ronstadt. It was a throwback to Young’s most successful album, Harvest. And it sounded marvelous.

In the time between Harvest Moon and Silver and Gold, he released some seven albums. He paid tribute to Kurt Cobain, rocked live with Crazy Horse, recorded with Pearl Jam, and wrote the soundtrack to a Jim Jarmusch film, all of which were pretty ragged, electric, and very loud.

I was very excited to get some more acoustic Young, but find myself disappointed with this release. That’s not to say it is a bad album, for there are several really good tunes here. The opening track, “Good to See You“ is a fun, jaunty little thing. His ode to his first band, “Buffalo Springfield Again“ is a great deal of fun, and makes me wish that band really would get back together, though I’ve never been much of a fan.

It is when Young decides to sing a ballad that things get difficult here. Eight of the ten tracks on the album are slower numbers. With the exception of “Silver and Gold“ (a song I included in my wedding reception music) and “Razor Love“, the slow songs are boring. There is nothing to set them apart musically, and the lyrics don’t say anything particularly moving.

It is an album worth buying for the standout tracks. But you would be better off importing those tracks onto a mix tape, or your iPod and then selling back the album to someone else.