Now let's not dwell on the past. It's Music Mondays damn it. Today I want to start a new subfeature of Music Mondays that I will return to from time to time...THE UNRELEASED ALBUM. For some crazy reason, there are plenty of incredible albums that have never come out on CD. Then there are thousands more that came out on CD in 1992 and went out of print a year later. There are a variety of reasons for all this I'm sure. Lucky for me, I have a wonderful USB turntable that easily converts all my records to mp3 or WAV or whatever space eating format I want. Plus, I can fully remaster all the records myself with some convenient audio programs. Now I don't have the time nor the skill to accomplish this, but the knowledge that I can try is a set of warm pajamas in the Tundran winter.
So we begin...with Neil Young's "Time Fades Away." Ah, Jen's favorite artist...Ah, James' favorite... Well fuck that, he's my favorite. I'm sorry if your ears and brains lack the Neil cells... Let's keep it rolling though. I'll rant about James' hatred of good music on a Thoughtful Thursday... So so so a few years back, there would be plenty of other Neil Young records on this list. Perhaps his best album "On the Beach" was never released on CD till 2003. A criminal act by a man who loves to torture his fans. Luckily he took some pity on us and cut the water-boarding. But on this one, he won't budge. Apparently he disowns this album. Let us begin the story. After Neil Young's Harvest came out, people expected a live tour that captured that album's rustic, poppy-folk sound. Instead what they got was a bunch of furious numbers about Neil's childhood, a rocker about smoggy ass LA crumbling into the sea, and many other head scratchers. Mid-tour Neil decided to throw most of these new songs onto an album. He didn't go into the studio and rerecord anything. Just the live versions. But all new songs.
Listening back, it seems a bit odd that fans were taken so aback. Yes there are some out there bangers like "Yonder Stands the Sinner" but then there are typical Neil Young ballads like "The Bridge." And the closer "Last Dance" features Crosby and Nash (thankfully no Stills). Every folkie-hippie fuck likes them. Maybe it's more because of what it started. You see, Time Fades Away was the first album in Neil's "Doom Trilogy." This is a set of three albums (Time Fades Away, Tonight's the Night and On The Beach- fyi On the Beach was recorded third but released second) created on a mix of weed, hamburgers and tequila. They are gut-wrenching records of a man on the brink of insanity. In comparison to Tonight's the Night and to a lesser extent On the Beach, Time Fades Away is quite tame. After all, Tonight's the Night and On the Beach name names, speak very openly about fatal heroin overdoses (Neil's former bandmate OD'd after Neil fired him, as did one of Neil's roadies), and have an all-around madman rambling-quality that could put off quite a few listeners.
But the fact is that in 2008, Tonight the Night is one of Neil's best loved albums. Maybe it's because Time Fades Away sounds so tame in comparison that Neil hates it. It's more raw than Harvest or After the Goldrush but not raw enough. That ambiguous middle ground must be the sound of rusty razors on chalkboards to his peculiar ears. As Neil prepares to release his entire recording output (release and unreleased) on Blu-Ray in the coming years (or decades or millenniums, who knows with this guy. He's been promising it since the 80s) I hope this will actually see the light of day. Until then, get the vinyl and sign the petition.
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