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: Quite Simply, This is a Truly Remarkable and Dazzling Achievement
Hit: 5 Stars
If one were to look at Neil Young and what he accomplished during the years that Dylan retreated into obscurity, the result would be a peek at what may arguably be the most prolific singer-songwriter in history. While the sixties saw Dylan produce a remarkable string of landmark albums starting with "The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan" all the way up to "Blonde on Blonde," the late sixties to early seventies saw Neil Young take Dylan's place, opening with a remarkable self-titled solo debut album, and following it up with the stunning "Everybody Knows This is Nowhere", "After the Gold Rush," "Harvest" and "On The Beach", the latter being arguably his greatest, and perhaps one of music's most personal and remarkable achievements. As well, there were probably a host of songs made during that period that to this day he has not released. The speed at which Neil Young's creative fury was moving is purely witnessed on this live cd. As he announces that he "will be singing mostly new songs tonight,' Neil ventures into many raw cuts of the tracks that would come to comprise these subsequent albums. However, the main, and probably the most pivotal difference between Dylan and Young is in the ability of the listener to enter the song. Where Dylan is without a doubt the songwriting genius of our time, and simply one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century in any form, his songs are art, to be placed on a wall and admired, pondered and looked upon from afar. Neil, on the other hand, allows the fan to enter into every song, almost allowing the fan to swear that the song was written about them. Neil Young has been quoted as saying something of this sort: "Of course, the songs are about me, but why should I exclude everyone else from them?" Indeed, when Neil shares his music, he is true to his word. In this intimate concert with Neil Young, one feels as if they are sitting right there on the stage with him; while listening to the experiences of his journey, he always allows the possibility that you have experienced them with him.Free Music Review: Superb concert capturing an artist at his creative peak...
Hit: 5 Stars
Neil Young's 40 year career has had its high points but, while his songwriting skills shine through a great deal of his huge output, 1970 & 1971 were something special... and this brilliant live album shows why. Confident, controlled, clearly completely at home as the only man on the stage and with a string of new songs to showcase - many of which would become "Harvest" classics - this is "unplugged" music at its very best, beautifully sung & played and enhanced by crystal clear recording & engineering. And, unlike many live albums, his between song reflections and introductions add real depth & interest to the performance to produce a wonderfully effective record of what it must have been like to be there. Breathtaking stuff and an absolutely superb CD...
...and then there's the DVD. Don't think that this is a "normal" video of the concert, because it isn't... what it is is some fairly reasonable but shaky hand held film of several of the tracks interspersed with grainy film clips of Neil Young's ranch and a lot of even grainier "filler" shots of spinning tape recorders and dark silhouettes of him hunched over his piano. Intriguingly atmospheric in parts but all very odd, particularly as the BBC has an excellent high quality video, recently aired on UK TV, of him playing a shorter version of the Massey Hall concert only a month later that's not available on DVD. If this is intended to be, as it says on the liner notes, part of a "definitive" collection of his career then why not dosh out the dough and include the much, much better BBC video here, which is, after all, the most obvious place for it? Ah well, at least the other items on the DVD - including a great deal of memorabilia, videos of two tracks filmed several months later and an extensive interview with Neil Young about the period, filmed in 1997 - are genuinely interesting. But that's the man for you... brilliant (CD) and frustrating (DVD).
Free Music Review: A cd for all music lovers, not just Neil Young fans
Hit: 5 Stars
Up to about 1985 I bought Neil Young on vinyl. I have nearly every "official" LP - Springfield, CSN&Y, with Crazy Horse and, of course, solo. I just counted the Young cds that I have purchased since 1985. There are sixteen of them. Surprisingly, although I am obviously a great admirer, I do not consider myself a huge "fan." Interspersed between his classics are quite a number of pretty awful records. So why buy another recording, particularly one with all familiar material? Simple answer - it is fantastic.
Although I have always preferred substance over sound I have to acknowledge how remarkable this thirty-six year old concert sounds. There is only Neil and his guitar or Neil at the piano. As I listen to this cd it is as if I am sitting in an acoustically perfect room with Mr. Young perched on a stool just a few feet in front of me. However, pristine clarity is worthless if the performance and the material are not up to scratch. On both scores this concert is a huge winner. I really don't think that Neil Young has ever sung so beautifully. His acoustic guitar playing is a revelation. Young is so famous for his incendiary and slightly sloppy (it is what makes him so endearing!) electric offerings that we forget how gifted a folk stylist he is. Rather than the usual inanities spouted by folkies between songs Neil's introductions are wry and interesting.
Nearly all of the material is familiar to all but the most casual music fan. However, much had yet to be recorded. Accordingly, these new songs sound totally fresh. The famous electric rockers, Down by the River, Cowgirl and Ohio are surprisingly effective. How many artists can strip their hard-rocking concert showstoppers down to vocals and guitar and lose absolutely nothing in the process?
This is not just a cd for Neil Young fans. It is for everyone who loves music.
Free Music Review: Another piece of the Neil puzzle.
Hit: 5 Stars
I've been totally immersed in Neil for a few months now. Mainly "On The Beach" and "Tonight's The Night". So when I read this was coming out I was more than excited, I actually tried to take the day off of work to run out, buy it, and listen to it. What's amazing is that Neil already has such history, we all have our favorite albums, we all have our opinions on "Harvest", and now "Massey Hall" changes everything. It should immediately jump into the pantheon of his best albums, no matter which ones are your favorites. Also, no matter what you think of "Harvest", love it or hate it this gives a new perspective on the album. If you've read "Shakey" like I am now you already know a lot of the details of his recording process during this time. But the songs here and the things Neil says between songs give us greater insight into "Harvest" and what he was thinking at the time. You realize that the songs would have been just as good as they're presented here. You realize that the songs only sound the way they do on "Harvest" basically just by happenstance. He happened to be going to Nashville to do the 'Johnny Cash Show" so he hooked up with some musicians there, and we was going to England to do a BBC show and added the London Symphony Orchestra. The sound quality is of course incredible. You can hear the echo in the Hall, Neil's voice reverberating beautifully throughout the place, you can feel Neil hitting those steel strings of his acoustic guitar with all his might on the rising chorus of "Old Man". The DVD is wonderful too. If you're a huge Neil fan like me any footage audio or visual from this era is incredible. Some have complained the concert footage is grainy and that the camera work is shaky, to me it's basically a documentary of the concert. It's interesting too to see the actual old man from "Old Man" as well. Any fan of good music should buy this immediately.Free Music Review: The bare essentials
Hit: 5 Stars
Much of the music of Crosby, Stills, and Nash thrived beautifully from the presence of three (or four) amazing voices and layering of rich acoustic and electric guitar work. The music of Neil Young was always the odd man out with that quartet. It isn't that the presence of CSN damaged Neil's music but the simple fact is, Neil Young's songs never needed three voices, layered instruments, or overdubs. In fact, the power and beauty of his songs seems to emerge with more emotive force the more you peel off those layers. This famous bootleg-turned-CD offers brilliant proof of that. Some of the most powerful song performances of Neil Young's career are in this concert and it consists entirely of one voice and one instrument (guitar or piano). That happens to be the perfect set of ingredients for a Neil Young song. The lack of harmony and accompaniment actually reveals the stark power of Young's compositional skills and the poetry of his lyrics better than any of the studio work he did as part of the famous CSNY super-combo. As much as I have always loved "Harvest" this performance actually strikes me as a peek at "Harvest as it was meant to be." Songs like 'Old Man' and 'Needle and the Damage Done' have always been beloved as solo acoustic numbers. But to hear 'A Man Needs a Maid' with the orchestration stripped away is a revelation I never expected as the song becomes more beautiful and powerful with less embellishment. Anyone who values Young as a performer would naturally seek out any live recording they can get. But those who are more enamored with his songwriting should also seek out this CD because if anything, the simplicity here shines a brilliant light on his compositional skils. I hate seeing people label certain things as a "must have" but to anyone who loves the music of Neil Young, this CD ... well, it is.