Oh for fuck’s sake. Looks like the next trickle in Neil Young‘s ongoing Chinese Water Torture unleashing of his archives is something that absolutely no one, not even the most harcore Rustie, wants to hear: the unreleased outtakes of songs from 2000 that eventually made up the worst album in Young’s post-Geffen career, Are You Passionate. The following has appeared on the Neil Young Times:
To a man, if you asked Crazy Horse about these sessions, you would learn that it was a depressing atmosphere and things were not going well. The band recorded there for months and came up with very little. Nothing, other than one song, “Goin’ Home” was ever finished. But a lot was started. Several of the songs written at Toast showed up on the “Are You Passionate” album with Booker T. and the MGs. But that album met with mixed reaction.
Mixed reaction? Really? Wouldn’t “mixed” imply that there were at least a few positive reactions?
Update: Billboard confirms this is not an April Fool’s joke.
More:
Now, years later, John Hanlon, the original co-producer with Neil, is at work mixing all of the Toast material. Many songs share a bluesy, jazz-tinged vibe as a common thread. Three solid rockers are interspersed in the mix. Other songs are long with extensive explorations between verses, a Crazy Horse trademark, kind of like a down-played Tonight’s the Night, except these songs deal directly with love and loss, not drugs. The ambient atmosphere, foggy, blue and desolate, pervades many of the tracks, if not all, with Tommy Brea‘s muted trumpet and dusky male and female counter-part BGs occasionally surfacing from Poncho and Ralph on one side, Nancy Hall and Pegi Young on the other. A cool and sleepy lounge piano rises in the fog occasionally.
Could they make it sound any worse? Yes.
The result of this is perhaps one of the most under-estimated and deceptive Crazy Horse records of all time, with many songs originally discarded, and then re-recorded with Booker T. and the MGs. The original performances now surface again through a foggy past. Like an abstract painting, lyrical images of a love lost and maybe even destroyed forever just refuse to die, creating a landscape littered with half-broken dreams and promises.
Please, Neil, please don’t allow your publicists to refer to things that “just refuse to die.” It invites too many unpleasant suggestions. I love you, Neil, I really do. And I realize that I’m totally enabling you by continuing to buy your albums and by reading your inane posts on your goofy web site. But listen, man, I’ve just about had enough of this shit. Just give me what I want.
Stop fucking around and just release the goddamn Archives already! YOU ARE KILLING ME.
“Toast” is coming, a dark Crazy Horse classic for the ages. This first NYA “Special Edition” is the beginning of a new series of unreleased albums.
No no no no no no no no.
Via percolator.
Unleash the floodgates, Mr. Young, and give us CD versions of Time Fades Away and Journey Through The Past. At this point, screw the archives; just give us those two!!!!
Really, Murph? Neither of those albums are actually very good, despite the myth that surrounds them.
I’d argue that TFA is a classic, but have to agree with you on JTTP. The reason I feel thusly is that these Archives are an unknown quantity, and yes, the wily Canadian has been fucking with us in regards as to whether or not they’ll ever see the light of day. With the so-called “lost two”, we at least know their contents, and on each album, we know that there are a couple of moments that justify their purchase (one moreso than the other, admittedly).
If Neil feels the need to play cat-and-mouse with some dusty reels gathering moss in his vaults, that’s his prerogative, and we can either be enraged that he does or doesn’t release said archives. But with those two, they ought to be legally available. And no, not every previously-released cough of Neil’s needs to be kept in circulation. For me (at this point), I’d be satisfied with the Lost Two.
But I reserve the right to change my mind about all that other stuff.
Here’s my rule: No more stuff from the 80s, 90s, and 00s (new, old, or otherwise) until all the stuff from the 60s and 70s is released.
I was convinced this was an April Fool’s joke, but apparently not.