Comment of the Moment: Weld Series + Sneaks Coming to Neil Young Archives

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As the Neil Young news continues to ebb and flow, here is the Comment of the Moment on the post Weld Series + Sneaks Coming to Neil Young Archives.

Our Comment of the Moment is based on a reply to a comment by JormaFan who suggested that the Buffalo 91 show was available on Wolfgangs Vault. Here is the reply by Scotsman:

JormaFan: good point, but I think the shows on Wolfgang's Vault are (mostly) best avoided. They are often soundboard recordings with severe issues. For instance, the Buffalo 1991 show is missing Poncho's guitar on several songs.

That said, those songs aside, the Buffalo Wolfgang recording is reasonable quality compared to most of the others, but still not as enjoyable as a good audience tape from this awesome tour.

I can understand why Neil doesn't want this sort of stuff (unofficial soundboard recordings) out there: it alters the music by excluding instruments and fundamentally changing the mix (a good, *clean and balanced* soundboard recording is an entirely different story, which can often sound great with a bit of polish to add back in the sound of the arena).

Currently the best way to enjoy the magnificent Weld tour, apart from the official release (which in its Young/Talbot mix sounds a lot better than McDonough's Shakey implies) is through the audience videos of shows like Hartford, Uniondale, Atlanta, New York etc. Many of the other shows, such as the first LA Sports Arena gig and Westpoint, also now circulate as very decent audio recordings. Many of these shows feature the most intense versions of Like A Hurricane and Cortez The Killer that have ever been recorded. Neil's lead guitar is off-the-scale.

Excitingly, Neil has multitrack recordings of several of these shows, including some that weren't included on the official album such as Las Vegas and Phoenix.

I think this is the most thrilling Crazy Horse tour of all time. And that's a pretty bold statement. Releasing some whole shows as videos would be a real treat for the fans. If necessary after a few weeks I'll be (politely) pestering Neil and the patient ladies and gentlemen at NYA to make sure they stick with this. Which I'm sure will be about as effective as digging for gold in my back yard, but anyway.

I'm impressed by the way Neil and his crew have approached this website, incidentally. It's taken a long while to get out of first gear. But the rare videos have been excellent, the articles on the Contrarian enjoyable, and overall it feels like he's stuck with it and is now starting to make something special out of it. I was concerned he's spending too much money on it: this of course is none of my business, but it would also be a problem from our perspective because it will limit how long it remains afloat, long term. It's one of those things I want to see grow and develop, not be abandoned the moment the wind changes. I think there is so much potential. And if he does come through with all these projects this year then we are really in for some treats.


Scotsman.

Thanks Scotsman. The days of relying on bootlegs for unreleased gems looks to be rapidly receding -- which is good thing. All solid points on the face melting-ear-splitting WELD tour. This could be where a definitive audio/video comp finally arrives.

More on Weld Series + Sneaks Coming to Neil Young Archives.

Big Neil Young News day yesterday:
- Weld Series + Sneaks Coming to Archives
- Creativity Update: "Canary" - Fiction Novel by Neil Young
- Neil Young Endorses Bernie Sanders for President + Trashes Facebook, Again | NYA https://t.co/qaIh1Gejq3
---@NeilYoungNYA #NeilYoung pic.twitter.com/2wA287BiB3

— ThrashersWheat (@ThrashersWheat) March 10, 2020

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