SPECIAL EDITION: 1st Anniversary of Thrasher's Wheat Radio + 20 Years on Rust

Crazy Horse
Berlin - June 2, 2013
Photo by Paolo Brillo
(Click photo to enlarge)
Tomorrow night, Saturday, August 17th at 9:00 PM EST, Thrasher's Wheat Radio will celebrate our 1st Anniversary on WBKM.org.

Our 1st Anniversary broadcast will be expanded to two hours and feature reflections over the past year, as well as, some exceptional live Crazy Horse recordings from 2012 & '13.

So be sure to join us with hosts Tony and Eric as we reel in the year and reminisce over all that is good and celebrate our "Year of the Horse". We'll have some reflections on Neil Young's music and it's meaning in our lives, along with thoughts and memories from the roadtrip to Europe.

We should also mention that we're not just celebrating Thrasher's Wheat Radio, but our 20th anniversary since joining the Rust online community. We've made lots and lots of friends over the years and its been a remarkable journey of technological evolution all held together by The Man, The Myth & The Legend himself -- Neil Young.

So tune in tomorrow night, Saturday, August 17th at 9:00 PM EST, for Thrasher's Wheat Radio's 1st Anniversary program on WBKM.org.

Don't Be Denied!

ps - Thanks to all for supporting Thrasher's Wheat Radio!


Thrasher's Wheat Radio
Tune in on WBKM.org, Saturdays @ 9P EST
Logo design by
Geoff Moore - Silver Moon Graphics
(How To Support Thrasher's Wheat Radio)

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END OF THE LINE (a.k.a The Final 50): Thoughts on Crazy Horse

Neil Young & Crazy Horse - Cologne, Germany, 2013
Photo by Roel @ Rust Radio!
(Click photo to enlarge)
So where does Neil Young & Crazy Horse go from here?

Here are some thoughts from our good friend Mark "Spook The Horse" Golly.

END OF THE LINE (a.k.a The Final 50)

TOUR DATES CANCELLED
August 8, 2013
For immediate release:
Due to an accident involving Crazy Horse, the remaining dates on the Neil Young and Crazy Horse tour of Europe and the British isles have been cancelled. We are sorry for any inconvenience this causes to our fans or the Festivals where we were scheduled to appear. As you must be, we too are disappointed at this unfortunate turn of events.
-- Neil Young and Crazy Horse

…that was that then…. The end of the (Euro) line had just have moved in to view for Crazy Horse….

Already Thrasher’s Wheat has seen a heap of semi-invective directed towards the band, Neil Young, Lookout…take your pick. There’s a lot of frustration and upset out there (not hard to see why really) but this isn’t about that anyway ~ people say and think what they want to, vent their feelings in ever more forthright ways. However accurate or misguided the mounting opinions, thoughts and (whisper it) conspiracy theories may be, we’ll leave those all to one side…

London August 8th

So…. I got off the plane at Heathrow’s T5 after a brief sojourn in to Oslo last night. I’d sent friends a few texts whilst in Norway’s lovely capital and sent one more before heading on to the Underground, mentioning the sublime last 50 minutes of the Spektrum show and just how much I was looking forward to heading to Copenhagen on Monday.

As I emerged from the dank Central Line sauna, my battered Nokia was lighting up with texts in the midst of the back end of another London rush hour. One by one as I opened them, the words “tour off” were the only things to compute in a travel-weary brain.

I made a swift call to someone who’d know, and that momentary sense of dread that something truly awful had unfolded in the 18 hours since they went off stage were swiftly put to bed ~ Poncho had a busted hand ~ so, y’know, that was good-ish news, but it meant that there was now a whole heap of unpicking of travel, hotels and ticket refunds to be sorted, money would be lost and some would come back.

Coming back.

Money coming back.

But are Crazy Horse? Crazy Horse coming back…?

Seven Euro tour shows have gone to the wall, but the early signs are that the four in the US and Canada in late August & early September are still said to be ok. They’ll be honoured. Lucky them…

…for those people who had eyes on Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Germany, Belgium and England the words “oh, that’s a shame” seem almost trite. On the evidence of that final, incendiary, revelatory 50 minutes in Oslo they do make sense. They make one hell of a lot of sense.

That show at the Spektrum on Wednesday night was special. This was Show 9 on “my” Alchemy tour, thousands of miles and thousands of pounds invested in one last hurrah for the Horse ~ starting in Seattle last winter and ending (now) in Oslo ~ and the grand finale was as good as I’ve seen them on this tour. Jeez, it was as good as I have ever seen Crazy Horse…

Everything started off well on the night and progressed, with a typically thundering clip-clop, to something that became more and more out there...there was a funky setlist too (within the, admittedly, restricted parameters of the tour, especially latterly) and although it was a familiar, well-worn (though beguiling) path through to the acoustic set it remains a path like no other.

A lovely long, drawn out "Human Highway" and delicate, fragile, bare bones reading of "Red Sun" were the headline contenders for “moment of Hour 1”, the latter even trumping the ever-stellar "Love & Only Love" and the deafening clamour of tectonic plates pounding and colliding together during "Walk Like A Giant" (Neil, head tossed back, eyes shut, howling whilst he waggled the amp knob hidden behind the mesh on the cartoon Fender stack....on the big screen, Young appeared like some sort of demented, immense rock'n'roll T. Rex ~ a dinosaur indeed in one respect, but not in the regular, “tired old artist” cliché way ~ this was a beguiling and a quite extraordinary sight...and sound).

Typically, there came a momentary Crazy Horse wobble or two through “Hole in the Sky” and then a beautifully harmonic “Singer Without A Song”, as pretty and as sweet as this song has sounded to my ears. Gut-churning, hell-hole deep chords pronounced the (predicted) arrival of “Ramada Inn” and then…. and then, something began to change. Something began to emerge from the shadows to make a really entertaining and a really very good Crazy Horse show in to something just that extra bit special….

Three-quarters of the way through one of the most subdued and melancholy "Ramada Inn" renditions I’ve heard (no bad thing by the way), the dynamic changed. Crazy Horse went from just plain greatness to something that went way out in to another dimension....Poncho and Neil's guitars locked and inter-twined in the most heavenly and divine manner ~ on the big screen you could see that Neil Young had found that special zone that he always bangs on about...blissed out, lost in the moment with his friends ~ the groove was there, right there, in that single capture as the fabled spook began to nestle across the stage like a melodic shroud.

It was the kick-start to something utterly sublime and totally unforgettable...what followed blew me away, expectations confounded once again. Damn, this band keep doing this to me! 63 shows on the register and they do this to me…unbelievable…

Funny, afterwards, talking to my friends Ragnar and Joost (fellow long-time, seasoned NY observers and travellers) we all mentioned, almost as one, just how none of us would ever have thought that "Sedan Delivery" would be the song of the night at any NYCH show…

…but the band fizzed and crackled and exploded through it like a sonic Catherine Wheel ~ a genuinely ferocious assault on the song, and for a few minutes, it felt as though I was as close to capturing a moment in time, fully 35 years ago with the Horse in full '78 “Rust Never Sleeps”-mode, as I've ever seen them. Jaw-droppingly great...fast & furious, Crazy Horse turning back the garage rock clock I guess.

"Surfer Joe" was a fairground colossus, taken around the back of the ferris wheel where he became lean and mean and fist-fight tight machine...while the twin Gibson assault on "Mr Soul" melded and mashed the song in to a psychedelic punk pulp. The solitary encore ("HHMM") was triumphant, victorious and glorious....loud as f*ck....with a nod to JJ Cale as well it seems....the climax hurtling along like a freight train...the song returned to the dramatic conclusion looking suitably (appropriately) brutalised, battered and bruised.

Another gaze up at the big screen ~ there were smiles all round the stage. Four old men. Trusted friends. Wrapped in each other’s arms. Doing what they wanted to do best. With whom they wanted to do it. They had just made one heck of a racket. And for 50 peerless minutes they made the best noise made by man. Ever. The smiles said it all. They had nailed it. And they knew it. They really did....with grins as broad as fjords and a “whoop whoop” they were gone, laughing and joking as they descended the stage.

For the final 50 minutes or so of Oslo, Crazy Horse were the best I'd ever seen them. The best. No question. Unfeasible tight (for them), well drilled and precise in a way that only Crazy Horse can be. This was a band making the most heavenly rock’n’roll clamour ~ shards of sound dropping down from every inch of the ceiling and walls of the hall.

….and then, less than a day later came the texts.

As things began to sink in on the Liverpool Street concourse, the most extraordinary moments of bitter-sweetness came along too….maybe, just maybe, I’d actually just seen the final Crazy Horse show in Europe. Fate often plays a hand (sorry…) in the constant career arc of Neil Young ~ before anyone really knew what was what, I did wonder whether the stable door would be locked and bolted and the key thrown away for good. Out to grass they would go as the pack leader ventured off to pastures new.

…thankfully, as it stands, that doesn’t seem to be so. Interlocken could be the finale and the final farewell. Who knows?

Maybe the studio door will open again and an unparalleled third CH album in a row may come along. Maybe the tour will find extra legs. Maybe, maybe, maybe…

...the general feeling is that most folk will be staggered if they ever make it back to Europe...but with that bittersweet smile creeping back again, at least I can say “I was there” for what may have been the grand exit of the Horse from the European barnyard....

I so hope not.

And, as ever with Neil Young, time will tell.

Mark
NYAS #1098

Thanks Mark!

Certainly hope it's not the end of the line for The Horse. But if it is, what a great ride it has been.

Neil Young & Crazy Horse
Rock in Roma, Italy - July 26, 2013
Photo by Francesco Lucarelli
(Click photo to enlarge)

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Neil Young’s Pono Ecosystem Will Put a ‘Freemium’ on Sound Quality | Evolver.fm

Neil Young on “David Letterman” - September 27, 2012
(Click photo to enlarge)
As we await the next chapter in the Crazy Horse saga, what's going on in Pono world?

Last we checked, the question was Is Neil Young's hi-res music service PONO still a viable technology? Well, that still seems to be the question.

From Neil Young’s Pono Ecosystem Will Put a ‘Freemium’ on Sound Quality | Evolver.fm by Eliot Van Buskirk:

Evolver.fm has learned new details about this promising service, which is expected to launch at some point this year, including which devices it will work with — and how its sound quality will differ depending on which one you use.

The main thing to know here is that only one device will be capable of playing Pono files at their maximum, Neil Young-approved sound quality. You guessed it — this is the Pono player, the yellow thing Neil flashed around on Letterman last year, which, to this former MP3 player reviewer, recalls similarly-triangular iRiver models of the past.

Yes, if you want a Pono file to play properly, you’ll need to play it on the Pono device — no computers, iPhones, Androids, or high-end D/A converters for you (more on that last one later).

However, according to a source with knowledge of the situation, Pono files will play on any digital audio device, just at a lower sound quality (i.e. something like what most of us listen to today). In other words, you should be able to load the songs up on your iPhone — they will just lack the amped up sound that made you go with Pono in the first place.

In that sense, Neil Young and his Pono team have figured out how to do something Spotify did for subscription music, but to sound quality: To make it “freemium.” You might be able to “borrow” a Pono file from a “friend” and play it on whatever you want — but in order to get the top-notch sound quality, you’ll need to play it on a Pono, from what we hear, and you’ll need to be the person who purchased it.

As the article goes on to explore, who is the target market for PONO? High-end audiophiles? Folks who like free music?

Maybe folks who care enough about sound quality to pay but aren't necessarily high-end audiophiles?

And, here's the big question -- will PONO be the platform of choice for The Archives Volume #2?

If so, then the next question will be whether the PONO format will have a legacy similar to the BluRay format and The Archives Volume #1.

And don't anyone ask about the format for The Archives Volume #3!

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Interview with Crazy Horse's Billy Talbot

Billy Talbot & Neil Young
Melbourne, AUS - Mar 13, 2013
via Michael S.J. | Photos of Rusties
(Click photo to enlarge)
An in-depth interview with Crazy Horse's Billy Talbot.

In Norway for Crazy Horse’s Europe tour, Billy spoke of capturing the “juice” of a song, the perfect sound of the “trombonium”, and his appreciation for the great group of players who traveled with him On The Road To Spearfish -- his new new album.

From Jambands.com - Need We Say More? > Features > _On The Road To Spearfish_ with Crazy Horse's Billy Talbot by Brian Robbins:

Jambands.com: When you spend a lot of time standing between Neil and Pancho, somebody has to take care of the bass – and you’re damn good at it in Crazy Horse. But you play a lot of guitar on Spearfish – you have your own thing going on; some really cool stuff.

Billy Talbot: Well, thank you – I appreciate it.

Jambands.com:Did you have one main guitar and amp combo for the sessions?

Billy Talbot: I used a 1964 Stratocaster – it’s beautiful; a great guitar – on most of the tracks except where I’m playing acoustic guitar or piano. I played it through my old 1960s Fender Tremolux amp. On “On The Road To Spearfish” I used my 1968 Les Paul with that same amp.

Jambands.com:How about if we run down through some specific songs?

Billy Talbot: Sure.

Jambands.com: “Empty Stadium” is beautiful, but chock full of ache.

Billy Talbot:(sings) “Sometimes I feel like I’m all alone/In an empty stadium …” It’s that contrast between a stadium that’s full of people celebrating and having a great time and when it’s just big and empty. That’s life sometimes: everything is happening and you’re feeling so … so jolly, so to speak … and then the next hour you’re all alone again. That’s what I’m talking about – feeling those blues in a big, empty space when everything is gone. That’s what I was trying to say with that imagery.

The songs really speak for themselves; it’s hard for me to talk about their meanings … that’s why I wrote them. The feelings are best said in the songs – and for you as a listener, you can conjure up your own imagery.

Thanks Brian!

And here's the video for Billy Talbot's “Empty Stadium” on his new new album On The Road To Spearfish.

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PODCAST: Thrasher's Wheat Radio Hour - Episode #48

Poncho
"Like A Hurricane"
Waldbühne, Berlin, Germany, June 2, 2013
Photo by Paolo Brillo
(Click photo to enlarge)
Here is the latest downloadable podcast for the Thrashers Wheat Radio Hour.

Saturday, August 10, 2013 - “Down on pain street, disappointment lurks” - Remaining Europe tour dates canceled

Thrasher's Wheat Radio Hour - Show #48

[Click link to play or >>> To download, right click on link, save target as, pick destination folder: the podcast will download. Select your preferred MP3 audio player and play file.]

Enjoy!

Also, all previous podcasts archived @ PODCAST: Thrasher's Wheat Radio Hour.



Thrasher's Wheat Radio
Tune in on WBKM.org, Saturdays @ 9P EST
Logo design by
Geoff Moore - Silver Moon Graphics

Thanks everyone for Supporting Thrasher's Wheat Radio! We appreciate you!

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Frank "Poncho" Sampedro Radio Interview - August 3, 2012

Here's an interview with Frank "Poncho" Sampedro, of Neil Young & Crazy Horse.

The interview is from August 3, 2012 with radio station KVSF 101.5, Santa Fe, New Mexico. The DJs are Ira G and Todd Lovato.

In light of recent developments, we found the following comment to be interesting:

“I’m the stick in the mud that doesn’t want to do any other work without Neil.

I just think we have something really special with Neil. We kind of diluted ourselves over the years with trying different projects. A lot of different artists want to work with us, as well. I just don’t want to do that. I think this is special.”

Don't say it's over .

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