also love Fork in the Road — love Johnny Magic in particular. I’ve never understood why NY fans had such a hate for it.
Neil Innes once said (in character), "I've suffered for my art, now it's your turn.." But, seriously, and it probably is just some kind of failure of mine, I like grim, and as far as the Neilster is concerned "Time Fades Away" is the top of the toppermost for me. Well, make that the Ditch Trilogy. I know I should prefer, I don't know, "Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere", or "Freedom" or "Ragged Glory", or "After The Goldrush", or just about any other record - goodness knows there's more on my shelf than you can shake a s****y stick at. It's the artist's choice, obviously. I'll stick with my crackly TFA LP for now but carry on hoping for a stand alone CD release for the album.
I love Neil. Has there been an artist SO indecisive about their unreleased material? One option is buying the high-res version of TFA and burning it to CD...
I think Times Fades Away is a fascinating album, but mostly (as Neil evocatively put it) as a "documentary" of how he "lost it for a while". And I think Tuscaloosa goes even further than Time Fades Away. Don't Be Denied (written shortly after Danny Whitten's death) is slowed down to a really chilling funeral pace, and musically the rest of Tuscaloosa is mostly detached and tuneless; more so than Time Fades Away. Part of the impact is that even the folky songs like Heart Of Gold are sung in a slurred and starkly dis-interested tone. Most of it sounds one step away from that moment later in the tour where he just gave up the fight against circumstances, mid-song, and left the venue. And it's all part of the album's strange appeal. I think Tuscaloosa is a lot like Muddy Track in some ways (and to a lesser extent, Mountaintop). Where the whole point is not musical brilliance but the opposite: to see how they are coping (or not coping) with a situation where absolutely everything is going wrong.
I certainly felt that way with Mountaintop — made me cringe so many times; if I didn’t know a record came out of the sessions I would have thought Neil was going to abandon the sessions.
My sense watching Mountaintop wasn’t that things were unusually acrimonious or going off the rails — it was more along the lines of feeling that the extraordinary access DH enjoyed along with Neil’s utter lack of vanity meant we were seeing the kind of stress and pique and temper that we would see at any high-stakes album recording sessions if allowed to watch it, warts and all.
Oh yes, I have that, which makes it even more silly that Neil won't release the thing on a regular official stand alone CD for old and crotchety people like me who spend their miserable lives complaining that he won't release it on a regular stand alone CD. There's a gap on my shelf that needs filling. I mean, it's not like it's "Dylan" (and even that one got a stand alone CD over here). Oh, and "Journey Through The Past" too, while we're at it....
bandit is one of my favourite songs on greendale. the live version today was disappointing, but i don’t think that was neil’s fault. the crowd were rowdy, and the air canada centre isn’t the best location for an acoustic only song. he should have at least had drums on it, and i think the guitar should have been properly mic’ed up. oh well!
I thought it was a good version that worked well in the solo arrangement, even though the crowd were noisy. He's using his guitar's internal pick-ups on this one, which tends to sound punchier and clearer than a mic, and less prone to feedback in a concert environment. Neil sometimes has a mic positioned in front of his acoustic on stage, but even then most of the sound usually comes from the guitar's pick-up system at shows since 1978. There's a cut short version of Bandit from Atlanta where Neil loses patience with the crowd's chattering and compares it to Las Vegas.
What got lost in that “Bandit” version is the gut punch of the detuned low E string - it just didn’t have enough impact in the recording, esp. coming through my computer speakers. I still remember (and feel) how that note cut through and reverberated across the crowd when I saw the Camden show. Definitely a highlight from the night and a much needed “intimate” interlude in the midst of all the weirdness before and after that tune.
"Bandit" will always sound somewhat wrong live. For the album they constructed a box of some sort that Neil sat in to enhance the reverb and echo of the detuned guitar.
Yes. The studio Bandit is a NYCH classic and the detuned guitar is a big feature. Also, Neil’s double tracked in places vocal.
For me, the definitive released version of Bandit is the live version on the Vicar Street DVD. I prefer his detuned Martin (tuning is double dropped D, but everything further dropped two whole steps to Bb) rasping away in the pin-drop silence, as he mutters along and then soars ethereally on the choruses. For me, the studio version with the reverb, drums and double-tracked vocal is a bit too cluttered in comparison. In either version, though, imho, it’s the best song he’s written in the past 20 years.
I understand you. Is this grim that makes me love the Ditch albums so much. And the music, of course.
Johnny Rogan (Sixty To Zero, p.711): "Several hundreds unreleased compositions are logged in Neil Young ' s official Archives".
I may have mentioned this before, but the catalogue which forms the heart of NYUA lists the following: - Some 180 unreleased titles which are either definitely written by Neil Young or which are songs written by others but performed by him in a “leading” or “major supporting” role, not for example as a minor supporting guest during someone else’s performance. (There is however a subjective grey zone here and the differentiation is often open to discussion.) - Around 30 unreleased songs from the period up to early 1966 which are, on the "evidence", likely to be songs written by Neil The "evidence" is that, despite quite a lot of research, I have not been able to trace a song of that name from before or around that period which he might have been covering. If they are not i fact written by him, then they are at least covers which he definitely performed. - More than 250 covers of other artists’ songs which he performed in his early years in Canada and which have not been reworked since. I cannot now remember if Johnny Rogan had access to the old archives, but in any event he is well informed. In any event, knowing how song writers work, I am sure there a lot of songs no one has ever heard at all. Whether there are recordings is quite a different matter, quite possibly, even if they are only "home" tapes like Will To Love. But tantalisingly there may still be the odd hidden gem waiting to be discovered. SugarMtn.org by the way only lists 92 unreleased songs but then it does not list covers.
i'm really uninterested in the live Greendale set. I saw 4 shows on that tour and had a blast each time. watching the live cuts on NYA, it really hits me as "you had to be there". I find myself like most of the audiences I was in...GET TO THE ENCORE!!
That's the best thing about these releases, it's coming across the song that we've never heard of before, and being blown away by it.
