Oceanside-Countryside: Another Neil Young Album in The Pipeline

Oceanside-Countryside
"The hand written title seen above is found on the timeline in March 1977, where it will soon be replaced by original album art."
via Neil Young's Archives (NYA) Times-Contrarian

Way back in 2010, we posted on some rather hugely significant Neil Young news concerning Archives Volume #2 and the NYA Special Release Series:

The NYA team, headed by Will Mitchell and Hannah Johnson, is digging through material supplied by numerous sources, including newspapers, writers, fans, bootleg audio collectors and photographers (special thanks to photographer/collector Joel Bernstein). Much work has been done and there is much left to do. Using the template designed by the late Larry Johnson, the whole team is pushing forward.

Special thanks to audio engineers John Nowland, Tim Mulligan and the team at Redwood Digital for the unbelievable amount of work that has been accomplished so far. Volume 2 promises even more content than Volume 1, with many unreleased tracks.

Four unreleased albums from this period are being rebuilt and will be available in the NYA Special Release Series. Chrome Dreams, Homegrown and Oceanside-Countryside are the three unreleased studio albums. Also from this period is the unreleased Odeon-Budokan live recording produced by David Briggs and Tim Mulligan.

These albums initially will be released in vinyl from analog masters as they originally were created for that format. So now is the time to get your new phonograph player. The new players, built with today's technology, are exceptionally good.

So here we are 8 years later and it looks like a Oceanside-Countryside album release may just happen.

Oceanside-Countryside were the solo recordings before Comes A Time, recorded at The Triad studios, Florida. Reprise advised Neil to add more instruments on it. Eventually released songs included were "Lost In Space" and "Pocahontas".

via Neil Young's Archives (NYA) Times-Contrarian

Neil writes on Neil Young's Archives (NYA) Times-Contrarian that Oceanside-Countryside "... was a record that I felt really good about. It was quite a personal record, mostly acoustic songs with no bass or drums."

While no definitive track list is confirmed, Thrasher's Wheat readers have a "99%" hunch.

OCEAN SIDE:

SAIL AWAY
MY MY HEY HEY (OUT OF THE BLUE)
SHOTS
CAPTAIN KENNEDY
LOST IN SPACE
OCEAN GIRL (Live)
MIDNIGHT ON THE BAY (Live)
POWDERFINGER (Acoustic)
COAST LINE
LITTLE WING

COUNTRY SIDE:

HUMAN HIGHWAY
MOTORCYCLE MAMA
RIDE MY LLAMA
THRASHERS (Live)
THE WAYS OF LOVE (Live)
COMES A TIME
TOO FAR GONE
ALREADY ONE
THE OLD HOMESTEAD (Studio live)

To which Archives Guy commented: "Don't know who your 99% source is but they aren't even close. I'm sittin' here looking at the master tape reels and am pretty sure they tell the true story."

So, there you go. Use disCERNmnet, as always.

How about this track list?

Country Side:
The Old Country Waltz
Country Home
The Old Homestead
Hanging on a Limb
White Line

Ocean Side:
Midnight on the Bay
Ocean Girl
Big Waves
Through My Sails
Evening Coconut

Also, in other NYA Letters to the Editor , Neil writes about a flood coming down the pipeline. (thanks Babbo B.!)

Odeon Budokan is coming, Alchemy triple vinyl "could be" next year, Homegrown "is in the wings," Toast is complete except for videos, a Ducks release is in production, the 1974 Bottom Line concert is a "borderline recording" that "may be released in some special way but not as a full recording," Boarding House audio/video is being reviewed along with a full Greendale show, with 1995 Dublin footage being prepared for a Hearse Theater screening, and ORS box sets will continue.

In reference to the original Tonight's The Night raps, "Those tapes were on the floor for a while in Zeke's room. We have them, maybe they will come out. Now's the time." In response to a LTE question about Austin City Limits '84: "I was pretty out of it for Austin City Limits, not sure it all is good enough."

whew?! We're the lucky ones.

Our longtime friend Lone Red Rider said this last year on Beyond 'Hitchhiker': 15 Archival Neil Young Albums We'd Like to Hear | Rolling Stone:

Well, now we know that Hitchhiker is the first NYAPS-SRS disk. #5 to be exact. Isn't that provocative? Recall all of the speculation of what the NYA-PS disks would be? We can now map out the blueprint of the Archives in NYA-SRS order. I might as well take a first crack at it, here on TW, as it fits with this thread:

#0) Early Daze: Early Crazy Horse materials with and without Neil. A celebration of Danny!
#1) Tonight's The Night: The original unreleased Briggs mix with drunken studio chatter.
#1.5) Human Highway (CSNY). I always doubted there was enough for an album, but Neil has talked about it as a "whole unreleased album"
#2) The stony collection of tracks Neil did after the 1974 CSNY tour (mentioned in one of his books)
#3) Homegrown!
#4) Dume
#5) Hitchhiker
#6) Chrome Dreams (though I wonder if this release was gutted by Hitchhiker)
#7) Oceanside-Countryside
#8) Old Ways (Original 1983 version)
#8.5) Meadow Dusk (sorry, I don't believe in this one)
#9) Time Square
#10) Toast

"Homegrown: Never Known to Fail"
Unreleased Neil Young Album
More on Homegrown and Other Unreleased Neil Young Albums.

Neil Young's Unreleased Songs:
The Unofficial Archive - UPDATE Vers. 5.2

Also, see Neil Young's Unreleased Songs: The Unofficial Archive - UPDATE Vers. 5.2 by long time rustie Robert Broadfoot from Germany.

---

---