Neil Young - Live at Massey Hall (CD/DVD)
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Free Music Notes for Live at Massey Hall (CD/DVD)
Free Music Review: The genuine article
Hit: 5 Stars
What a remarkable treasure this recording is. I remember sitting in Massey Hall as this unfolded and coming to the realization, that for all his eccentricities, when stripped back down to the seentials, Young is one of the most powerful songwriters in North American music. These songs were what rightfully established his reputation, and from the opening bars of "On The Way Home," it is clear that Young has respectfully mastered the recording so that all these years later, it packs the same emotional punch as it did in the hallowed TO hall.
Massey brought out the best in a lot of performers - Gordon Lightfoot and BRuce Cockburn have seminal outstanding live discs from this venue. For Young, this was a very big homecoming as it launched the next phase of his career, post Crazy Horse and post CSNY. David Briggs had wanted Young to release this instead of HARVEST. I'd have to agree in principle, especially because the HARVEST songs are su much better here than they were on H. "A Man Needs a Maid" and "There's A World" are infinitely more powerful without the LSO strings - an unforgiveable lapse of aesthetic taste. "World" isn't really a very good song anyway, and I'd have preferred the 10 minute self-effacing pillory he does of "Sugar Mountain" from the companion bootlegs to this tune, but still, it holds up better solo acoustically. "Maid" resonates in a way that it never did on HARVEST. The fact that Young was visibly struggling with spinal pain, encased in a brace under his flannel shirt, made the performance all the more harrowing.
"Bad Fog" also comes across more effectively here than on the RED ROCKS Live CD & DVD (nee Friends and Family). Just does. Seems less contrived. "Cowgirl In The Sand" and "Down By THe River" are even better here than on EVERYBODY KNOWS, no small feat. "See The Girl Dance" brings it all to a raucous conclusion. It was a triumphant return to his hometown, and Young delivered a performance that still resonates with power and emotion all these years later.
I would encourage you to get the version withe DVD- Young did a great job assembling what footage he had of the concert and intercutting it with archival home film. It's especially effective. There is also the clips from the Johnyy Cash show on this disc, and it was those clips that launched Young to the forefront of American rock music writers and singers - no longer the quirky or enigmatic odd-man out of Buffalo Springfield or CSNY, Young grabbed a calculating moment to announce his strengths, and again, the performances are rivetting. The quality of the sound throughout is superb.
ARCHIVES ONE is due (persumably) in November. I'd love to see a release of JOURNEY THROUGH THE PAST on DVD, but that's expecting to fly a little too much. That film had a number of dream like and Jungian arche-typal montages that also telegraphed quite a bit about Young and his direction. The film also includes "Soldier", one of Young's strongest philosophical statements, and an astute political observation by David Crosby that is even more disarmingly to the point today than it was in the Nixon years. It would be a timely reminder of values lost to fascism, especially as practiced these days. For now, the brilliance of this release will live a long time in my memory. Thanks, Neil.
Free Music Review: A Wonderful Performance
Hit: 5 Stars
I first encountered Neil Young as a disaffected teenager many years ago. Young offered the perfect sounding board and also the perfect panacea for my (somewhat) tortured soul. It is a testament to the power of Young's music, however, that decades later I still can enjoy these songs not simply as nostalgic traces of my youth, but the works of one of the great folk poetic talents of our time. In the terms of the critical genre, the songs of his early years are hardly "dated." They are still vibrant.
The first album of Young's that I encountered years ago was "Harvest," so it is particularly significant to me, as I am sure to many others who were initially captured by that groundbreaking album, that this concert was recorded shortly before the album came out. A number of the songs from the album appear here in what undoubtedly were one of their first performances: "Old Man," "A Man Needs a Maid," "Heart of Gold," "There's a World," "The Needle and the Damage Done." It is interesting that "Heart of Gold" is performed intermeshed with "A Man Needs a Maid," performed on the piano. The former on "Harvest" is performed on guitar, and it seems after "Harvest" the obvious means of performance, but one wonders whether it was originally composed on piano. Also there's an interested lyrical discrepancy in "Maid": the first chorus refers to a man being "afraid."
Other songs included come from Young's earlier repertoire ("Tell Me Why," "Don't Let it Bring You Down," "Down by the River") or ones that didn't reach vinyl until after "Harvest" ("Love in Mind," "Journey through the Past"). All are compelling performances.
I bought the CD/DVD version (rather than simply the CD) since I generally in the past years have enjoyed viewing concerts rather than listening to studio music. A word of caution here: this is not a professional quality video of the concert. Clearly two cameras were used, and the camera(men/women?) had stage access, but the lighting is poor and the camera work rather amateurish. On a number of songs there are no shots of the performance at all. In some such cases, perhaps because equipment failed, the original producer of this footage took the somewhat whimsical, though at times tiresome, measure of photographing an active tape player on the stool in front of the piano or in the midst of Young's guitars. In other cases we get some footage of Young on his newly purchased ranch. There's also the problem of getting a good face shot of Young (as fans know, he had long hair then that revealed only the center of his face). But all in all I still enjoyed the DVD visuals. There's enough here to get a feel of the live performance.
In sum, a wonderful offering from a music legend. This should be a must purchase for any fan of Young's music
Free Music Review: Album of the Year: 1971 and 2007
Hit: 5 Stars
Before "Harvest" was released in 1972, I had a bootleg of a Neil Young performance at LA's Dorothy Chandler Pavillion, from the same 1971 tour that brings us this record. It had some of best songs from "Harvest," in versions that made the subsequent "Harvest" recording a little disappointing, good as it was. "Old Man" sung solo is a tour de force. "Old Man" with pedal steel guitar, Linda Ronstadt doing backup, and a little banjo plinking out some of the knotty guitar work is...really good, no doubt about it, but somewhat watered down. "A Man Needs a Maid" was plenty spooky on the bootleg; there was no need for the thunderous orchestra crashing down around him. The bootleg also had some songs that appeared on later albums, like "Journey Through the Past," and "See the Sky About to Rain," which came out on "Time Fades Away" and "On the Beach" respectively.
In every case where a song was debuted on this tour and later recorded in the studio, the live versions were better. "Live at Massey Hall" has all the songs I remember from the bootleg, plus several others that didn't make it, but the sound quality here is exquisitely clear and resonant.
Two things are made abundantly clear on this record:
a) 1971 was the very pinnacle of his songwriting. The music he made then was complex yet organic, and combined with the words, extremely dramatic.
b) Neil Young was, and is, a prodigious musician. Sometimes he likes to hide his craft, but here it is on full display. Those incredible guitar lines -- it's hard to believe he's accompanying himself while he sings all this new material perfectly in key, without messing up a word. This guy was no shambling hippy, much as he wanted us to think he was. He was a highly disciplined musician.
This recording is, in a way, the height of the "coffee house" sound, taken to its furthest edges of technical and artistic brilliance. Bob Dylan has never sounded this good live or solo. James Taylor has equivalent chops, but his songwriting doesn't come close. The only possible comparison is Joni Mitchell.
The first Archive release from Neil, the 1969 Crazy Horse show at Fillmore West is a good souvenir for fans of the band-that-almost-was, but after you've heard it a few times, you want to go back to the original recordings he made for "Everybody Knows This is Nowhere." But this CD should reach far beyond Neil's normal fan base. It gives what should be the definitive versions of some of his most popular songs. It is simply the best album of the year so far, and will be hard to beat.
Free Music Review: Simply wonderful.
Hit: 5 Stars
Neil Young has been tantalizing his fans with the release of the Archives project for going on two decades now, starting with the concept of "Decade II" in the 80's. Here we are in 2007 and the time for this glorious unearthing of the treasures in Neil's catalog has finally arrived. Neil will be releasing various live shows under the Performance Series banner, as well as multiple CD/DVD box sets spanning his entire career, both studio and live.
Massey Hall is the second release in the Performance Series (despite its cryptic label of Disc 03). Neil reduces things to their absolute minimum at this gig. Neil's voice, his guitar, and his piano are the sole instruments for the seventeen tracks - his harmonica is nowhere to be found. There are no real guitar solos or significant instrumental breaks.
The effect this has is to bring to the forefront Neil's uniquely powerful voice and his emotion-laden lyrics. He sounds wonderful on this release, and the stripped-down presentation truly makes his songs shine. Like the CSNY live album "4-Way Street," we start off with a lilting version of the Buffalo Springfield song "On the Way Home." Neil intersperses a few other classics in the setlist, such as "Down by the River," "Don't Let It Bring You Down," and a powerfully emotional "Cowgirl in the Sand."
However, this was not a nostalgia show. Ten of the songs were brand-new at the time and had not yet been recorded. To their credit, Neil's audience rolls right along with the unfamiliar new material, granting it a respectful silence and enthusiastic applause at the end of each new number (with the exception of the Canada name-check in "Journey through the Past," which of course gets a response, seeing as how Massey Hall is a Canadian venue). At this point, the famed "Heart of Gold" was almost a throwaway middle section in "A Man Needs A Maid." It's cool to hear Neil start his most famous/notorious song so casually, and the absolute lack of audience response is fun.
The DVD that comes with this version of Massey Hall is terrific. The video footage is dated, but it is undeniably powerful seeing the youthful Neil overcoming the back brace he was forced to wear on this tour and delivering such an incredible set. The disc also contains a wealth of historical information and supplemental video content.
I am thrilled to see Neil's Archives finally unfolding and believe this disc is a sure-fire hit for his current fans as well as being a great blind buy if you're new to Neil and want to give his music a shot.
Free Music Review: Oustanding Solo Performance
Hit: 5 Stars
This is a must have album for serious Neil Young fans. It includes early takes on a number of familiar songs that would become hits later, particularly off of Harvest. The sound quality if excellent, the crowd is enthusiastic, and Neil is Neil. He takes his time and talks with the crowd, telling stories (his inspiration for "Old Man" is a highlight") and switching between guitar and piano. The tracks that would later appear on Harvest are a real treat in their unfinished form and there's a few tracks that end up on later albums like "See the sky about to rain" from the album "On the Beach". He even includes "Ohio" from his CSNY time. The DVD that comes with this version is a mixed bag. The actual concert footage is sparse and there are a number of songs with no footage of Neil playing, but rather montages and still sets from the tour, Neil's home, and various stage settings. But the actual footage is shot on what I'm guessing is old super 8 or another more primitive home video system, so that the footage you watch is actually sped up in order to make up for the missing frames and too synch what you are seeing to the music. It gives it a sort of off-kilter quality that is noticeable, but not necessarily a complete downfall. If you are looking for an hour and half of footage of Neil in a chair playing these songs you will be disappointed. However there are extensive extra features that include live performances from the 70's including the Johnny Cash Show, home footage from Neil's ranch, and footage of Neil going over his archives, plus a lot more. The DVD would probably be enjoyed by long time Neil Young fans but newcomers will be satisfied with just the album which captures a brilliant evening by a very young artist from one of his peak periods of output. The maturity of the artist, in both his performance quality and emotional resonance, is staggering when one realizes he was only 25 at the time of the recording. When you look at the output of contemporary 20something artists, particularly those in the mainstream (which Neil was in during his respective period), you notice a staggering decline in sophistication of song writing, emotional vulnerability, and timelessness, the true marks of a great song. These songs are as good today as they were 30 years ago, as they will be in another 30 years. They show a wisdom and maturity beyond the author's years. Think about that when you're "bringing sexy back" J.T.