Neil Young - The third decade and a half

[MK]

A "Decade III" compilation similar to the first "Decade" would be very useful. It conveniently begins with his return to Reprise, too. Ain't gonna happen, though.

Anyway, you might as well burn it yourself, Neil's CD's get a little louder the same time he (or Tim Mulligan, his mastering engineer of choice) got into HDCD, but most of them seem to sound MUCH better than contemporary CD's. He doesn't fall prey to the ultra-sharp, square-wave sound that most CD's circa 2000 have.

Reading the Morthland biography, I started compiling some stuff.

First CD, "This Note's For You." Mastered by Doug Sax, recorded in digital, it does have the 'digicrap' sound (Morthland calls it that), but that's mostly production. Kind of slick and sterile, there are audience bootlegs from this era that sound so much better, musically speaking. Still good for that one title track which got a HILARIOUS music video spoofing Michael Jackson, Eric Clapton, and Whitney Houston's TV commercial productions at the time.

Next two are the bomb, "El Dorado" foreign EP and "Freedom." Doug Sax mastered both, both digitally recorded, but sound REALLY good, better than any digital recording I've heard from the same time. In terms of songwriting, arguably the best of the third decade. ESSENTIAL.

"Ragged Glory" is where Mulligan gets on, I think, and masters the rest. The production is drier than "Freedom," total garage-rock, raw and sloppy, allowing even the last bit of distortion to die out. Arguably the best album of the third decade based on performance and sound alone. ESSENTIAL.

"Weld" supposedly is better on the laserdisc, but I haven't heard it. The mixes on the CD are murkier because Neil remixed it due to tensions with David Briggs, who mixed the LD. Neil admits he messed up. Still, the CD sounds good. A GREAT live set.

"Harvest Moon" was made because Neil had some really bad tinnitus from touring. Makes you wonder how he can be so caught up with sound if his hearing's so damaged? So he did this acoustic album. I like five songs from it, the first two cuts, the title cut, "One of these Days," and the epic closing cut.

The title track to "Philadelphia" is great, too bad it didn't win an Oscar. Bernie Grundman mastered it for CD (a none Neil release) and it's VERY dynamic.

"Sleeps With Angels" is underrated and somewhat forgotten. A grungy, oppressive-sounding, harrowing album with some funny moments for levity.

"Mirror Ball" is where HDCD begins, I think. Not big on Pearl Jam fan, but "Downtown" and "I'm The Ocean" are great, the two I kept.

"Broken Arrow" has a bonus cut on the vinyl version, so I've heard. I thin it's called "Interstate," it's supposed to be good, but I don't have it. I heard it's on a CD single, too. The CD has a few great cuts. "Big Time," "Loose Change," and "Music Arcade" I kept. Morthland said it would've been a great Ep, I would agree.

That's about it for the third decade. After that, there are a few live albums, a soundtrack, etc. but I wasn't terribly interested in them. I did check out "Silver and Gold," and the two best songs are two lost classics, the title track and "Razor Love," both originally written in the 1980's and even performed in the studio, but those earlier versions are still unreleased. "Good To See You" is a nice, tossed-off number they played a lot on the radio, so I kept that, too.

I also checked out "Are You Passionate?" which Tim Riley of NPR liked but I really hate it. It sounds like Neil's totally exhausted as an artistic force. If he retired after this one, I wouldn't have been surprised. Cool that he got the Stax players, and they work up a nice groove on a few cuts, but his singing, the songs themselves, feh. I kept one track, "Goin' Home," which is also the only one with Crazy Horse. They played this live before it ever showed up on record. Not a classic, but pretty hard-rocking stuff.

Still on the fence about "Greendale."

[lukpac]

Anyway, you might as well burn it yourself, Neil's CD's get a little louder the same time he (or Tim Mulligan, his mastering engineer of choice) got into HDCD, but most of them seem to sound MUCH better than contemporary CD's. He doesn't fall prey to the ultra-sharp, square-wave sound that most CD's circa 2000 have.

I'm thinking it has to do with the HDCD encoding - when I was comparing Buffalo Springfield Again, the new CD (HDCD) was almost exactly 6dB louder than the old one, as if things were shifted by exactly one bit.

"Harvest Moon" was made because Neil had some really bad tinnitus from touring. Makes you wonder how he can be so caught up with sound if his hearing's so damaged? So he did this acoustic album. I like five songs from it, the first two cuts, the title cut, "One of these Days," and the epic closing cut.

I don't claim to be an expert (but I play one on TV), but IIRC, the problem with tinnitus isn't so much *losing* your hearing, but rather experiencing discomfort/ringing with loud/certain types of sounds.

http://www.bixby.org/faq/tinnitus/discover.html

Tinnitus can be described as "ringing" ears and other head noises that are perceived in the absence of any external noise source. It is estimated that 1 out of every 5 people experience some degree of tinnitus. Tinnitus is classified into two forms: objective and subjective.
...
Hearing loss, hyperacusis, recruitment, FMS, and balance problems may or may not be present in conjunction with tinnitus.

[Rspaight]

Still good for that one title track which got a HILARIOUS music video spoofing Michael Jackson, Eric Clapton, and Whitney Houston's TV commercial productions at the time.

The extended live version of this track on "Lucky Thirteen" is excellent.

Next two are the bomb, "El Dorado" foreign EP and "Freedom." Doug Sax mastered both, both digitally recorded, but sound REALLY good, better than any digital recording I've heard from the same time. In terms of songwriting, arguably the best of the third decade. ESSENTIAL.

Agreed. "Freedom" is my favorite NY album, and one of my favorite albums period. The songwriting is consistently inspired and fresh -- there are very few "generic Neil Young" tracks here.

"Ragged Glory" is where Mulligan gets on, I think, and masters the rest. The production is drier than "Freedom," total garage-rock, raw and sloppy, allowing even the last bit of distortion to die out. Arguably the best album of the third decade based on performance and sound alone. ESSENTIAL.

Agreed again. A completely different album than "Freedom," but successful in its own right. IMO the songwriting is a bit lazier -- "White Line" sounds just like dozens of other Young tracks, and "Days That Used To Be" is a naked rewrite of "My Back Pages." But the point is the noise blitz, and that's just fine.

"Weld" supposedly is better on the laserdisc, but I haven't heard it. The mixes on the CD are murkier because Neil remixed it due to tensions with David Briggs, who mixed the LD. Neil admits he messed up. Still, the CD sounds good. A GREAT live set.

I've got the LD -- if you're curious, I can attempt an audio "rip." I've got an LD player with a digital out -- I have no idea if it'll work, but I can try. Worst case, I can capture it analog. (Maybe we can work a trade -- that for the "Eldorado" EP, which I never was able to justify paying $30 for.)

You forgot "Arc."

(BTW, I saw this tour, with Social Distortion and Sonic Youth opening. It kicked ass. My creative writing professor never forgave me for skipping class to go see it, but fourteen years later I know I got more out of that concert than his class. Sorry, prof.)

"Harvest Moon" was made because Neil had some really bad tinnitus from touring. Makes you wonder how he can be so caught up with sound if his hearing's so damaged? So he did this acoustic album. I like five songs from it, the first two cuts, the title cut, "One of these Days," and the epic closing cut.

I like this record, but find I don't listen to it much. I actually like the subsequent "Unplugged" better (that's another one I need to rip from LD -- I never got the CD).

"Sleeps With Angels" is underrated and somewhat forgotten. A grungy, oppressive-sounding, harrowing album with some funny moments for levity.

IMHO, this is the last great Neil Young album. "Change Your Mind" sounds like an outtake from "Ragged Glory" (and might be one for all I know), and it's full of good songs, even though they tend to sound alike. (Is there a difference between "Train Of Love" and "Western Hero"?)

"Mirror Ball" is where HDCD begins, I think. Not big on Pearl Jam fan, but "Downtown" and "I'm The Ocean" are great, the two I kept.

"I'm The Ocean" is a fantastic track (the iPod just dug that up yesterday in the car, actually). Can't help but wonder what it would have done commercially if Epic had allowed Reprise to call it a "Neil Young/Pearl Jam" album like they'd wanted to, since Pearl Jam was so huge at the time (between "Vitalogy" and "No Code", IIRC). I love the muscular sound of this record, but the songs are hit-and-miss.

"Broken Arrow" has a bonus cut on the vinyl version, so I've heard. I thin it's called "Interstate," it's supposed to be good, but I don't have it. I heard it's on a CD single, too. The CD has a few great cuts. "Big Time," "Loose Change," and "Music Arcade" I kept. Morthland said it would've been a great Ep, I would agree.

Yeah, probably so. I ended up selling this because it was just *so* tossed-off and sloppy, even by Crazy Horse standards. I honestly don't remember a thing about it. I stopped buying new NY albums after this until "Greendale," which I haven't yet warmed up to after a few listens. It's not bad, but it hasn't grabbed me.

Ryan

[J_Partyka]

"Broken Arrow" has a bonus cut on the vinyl version, so I've heard. I thin it's called "Interstate," it's supposed to be good, but I don't have it. I heard it's on a CD single, too.

Yes, it is on a CD single, and I have it (I think "Big Time" is the "A-side"). It's one of my favorite lesser-known Neil songs, though IIRC I actually may prefer the live take found on the Rock 'n Roll Cowboy bootleg set. I think it definitely would belong on any kind of Decade III comp.

[Dob]

Next two are the bomb, "El Dorado" foreign EP and "Freedom." Doug Sax mastered both, both digitally recorded, but sound REALLY good, better than any digital recording I've heard from the same time.

I'm not a huge Neil Young fan -- the only albums I have are Decade and Freedom -- but I remember being so knocked out by Crime In The City when I heard it on the radio that I had to pick up the album. I listened to Freedom about a week ago (for the first time in many months) and it really is a solid album from start to finish. I agree that it has good sound.

[krabapple]

I love 'Don't Cry' -- that was back when Neil was crediting THE VOLUME DEALERS for production, wasn't he? Cheeky monkey ;>

Crime in the Streets is also brilliant.

But Harvest Moon is probably my favorite 'third decade' Neil. What a lovely album.

[Rspaight]

I love 'Don't Cry' -- that was back when Neil was crediting THE VOLULME DEALERS for production, wasn't he?

Yes, and yes.

That part in "Don't Cry" where right in the middle of the song he howls like someone attached his amp to his gonads, and then unleashes an incredible feedback solo... it doesn't get any better than that.

Ryan

[Ess Ay Cee Dee]

I've pretty much given up hope that NY will ever release any more decent music. After wasting my money on crap like Road Rock Vol. 1 and Are You Passionate?, I said "NO MORE."

That said, I agree that Freedom and Ragged Glory are remarkable albums.

[MK]

Yeah, "Crime In The City (Sixty To Zero)" is also a great cut, but the 1988 LIVE renditions with the Blue Notes are even better. There's two in particular that are great. I'm having trouble finding it (that's what I get for slacking off on labeling CD's), but one's a really long version, supposedly the longest, with all the verses, a better acoustic performance, and the other is not quite as long but is a ROCKING electric version, AMAZING. Morthland even talks about it in the book. For some reason, it's the only electric arrangement ever recorded for this song, every other live boot has the acoustic arrangement, albeit with extra verses.

They're all audience recordings, decent quality, but you know Neil's got multitrack recordings of them, sitting in his f***ing vault.

"Greendale" has at least a few good-to-great songs, I really like "Bandit" and the opening track. I don't know why Pancho was relegated to keyboards, which he doesn't even play that much. It's definitely the best Neil album in a long time, at least since "Sleeps With Angels."

[MK]

"Broken Arrow" has a bonus cut on the vinyl version, so I've heard. I thin it's called "Interstate," it's supposed to be good, but I don't have it. I heard it's on a CD single, too.

Yes, it is on a CD single, and I have it (I think "Big Time" is the "A-side"). It's one of my favorite lesser-known Neil songs, though IIRC I actually may prefer the live take found on the Rock 'n Roll Cowboy bootleg set. I think it definitely would belong on any kind of Decade III comp.

Would you be interested in trading for that one song, "Interstate," like a flac or shn of that song (or a good 192 kbs, stereo mp3)?