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An unofficial news blog for Neil Young fans from Thrasher's Wheat with concert and album updates, reviews, analysis, and other Rock & Roll ramblings. Separating the wheat from the chaff since 1996.
The exhibit display will be well over 175 photographs of the museum, the collection, noted music artists, musicians and related personalities we were fortunate to meet and photograph during the Youngtown period of operation.
Admission is by donation of $5.00, $10.00, or $20.00 at the door.
Come and have some fun and support this most important cause - Mental Health.
One day only! Saturday April 13th at The Lindsay Lounge 10:00am - 5:00pm (Lindsay, Ontario)
For further details contact Trevor "T.R." Hosier @ youngtownmuseum@hotmail.com or 705 340-5550
(and be sure to thank Trevor for supporting the cause and tell him that thrasher sent you!)
All three sets of the Canterbury House show in Ann Arbor, Michigan from
October 16th, 1969 is my favorite Timeline Concert so far.
That is such
a unique one-off evening (i.e. 8, 10 & midnight shows) that were
just months after Woodstock which was also a time period in the midst of
recording Deja Vu and just after the summer when "Everybody Knows This
Is Nowhere" was all over FM radio. As usual, so many new songs and each
show ended with a solo acoustic version of "Country Girl" which
wouldn't be recorded for a few weeks.
In fact, the "Country Girl" recorded at the Canterbury House had extra lyrics that didn't make the cut for Deja Vu.
Rather
brilliant move by the Canterbury House to book two shows at once for
both November 10, 1968, when Neil Young was relatively unknown after the
break-up of the Springfield, and also for October 16th, 1969. Elliott
Roberts was very familiar with the Canterbury House booking team from
the shows done (and recently released) by Joni Mitchell in 1967. The
venue held less than 200 people and was often SRO for acts like Joni
Mitchell, Neil Young, Lowell George/Little Feat, Captain Beefheart, Dave
Van Ronk, Odetta, Doc Watson, Len Chandler, the Jim Kweskin Jug Band,
the New Lost City Ramblers, David Ackles and Steve Noonan. Plus, Ann
Arbor (known as A2 locally) is such a cool place to hang out anyway.
Pretty sure every act that played the Canterbury House was recorded at
the soundboard on reel to reel tape that was state of the art at the
time. A few months after the 1969 Canterbury House show Neil Young
returned to the Detroit area with CSNY for a show at the Masonic
Auditorium.
Here is part of a summary of what happened at the
Canterbury House in Ann Arbor that was written for the University of
Michigan paper, Michigan Daily:
“It was wonderful in so many
ways,” Rubin said. “It was a religious organization first and foremost …
but a lot of the ministers were very progressive so it became a place
where people who were part of ‘the Movement’ gathered and went for
meetings, to hang out, to go to services on Sunday. I am not religious,
and I didn’t grow up Christian but even I went to services. They were
just really profoundly pleasant and inspiring services to go to. Also,
one of Ann Arbor’s first health food restaurants was located as a little
kind of salad bar in the front of Canterbury House.”
Although
Rubin currently still DJs from time to time, she finds the differences
between recorded and live music to be crucial to an audiophile. As you
can tell from recordings such as Neil Young’s Sugar Mountain – Live at
Canterbury House 1968, shows at Canterbury were nothing like the
recorded material from the same artist. They told stories, they had
extended asides, or “raps” as the Young reissue calls them, and they
could converse with the intimate crowds. Rubin said this is where the
beauty of live music rings true.
“Recorded music always sounds
the same, because once it’s recorded, it’s like publishing a book. It’s
codified. It’s there on a page,” Rubin said. “Live music is more
spontaneous. It can vary quite a bit more … And the way sound works
live is very different than the way it works coming off of a stereo or
coming out of speakers … You can feel the air move and you certainly
could at Canterbury House.”
When
asked elsewhere by another reporter why he played the Canterbury House
Neil Young with Elliott Roberts sitting next to him he responded,
“Well,
cause this is a groovy place. It’s got a good reputation and it’s
crowded, really good crowds, and it’s the best place to start, because
the crowd is receptive."
When the single, “Heart of Gold,” was
released the flip side was “Sugar Mountain” that was recorded live at
the 1968 show for the Canterbury House. Must say, in Michigan both
sides of the single were often played because of the local venue.
Those Canterbury House recordings then became almost mythological as
Neil Young’s fame grew over the years.
Thanks Jim for the CotM! So glad Canterbury House made it out of the vaults.
A major interview with Micah Nelson on Neil Young's upcoming “Love Earth Tour”: w/ Crazy Horse where the guitarist, "who cut his teeth on the road with dad Willie, breaks down his journey from loving the band as a kid to actually joining the band.
Rolling Stone: Tell me what Neil Young’s music meant to you as a kid.
Micah Nelson: Neil
was always just kind of this being, this overarching energy in my life,
and that music is always there.
But it would kind of come and go in
cycles. I would sort of venture off into these other worlds, and then he
would come back into my life in these moments that always were so
prescient, so synchronized, and exactly what I needed at that moment to
remind me about rock & roll, and rawness and just honesty and
songwriting and how that transcends everything else in production or
sonics…All that shit.
There’s just something so primal and primitive about Neil, especially
when he is with Crazy Horse. I saw them at Golden Gate Park at the
Outside Lands Festival in 2012, it was a full circle moment and just
sort of a slap in the face. It reminded me what I felt like I’d gotten
too far from.
He said, “Oh, hey, we got Nils back.” So I had already
kind of started learning all Nils parts on guitar and I was like, “Okay,
this is what I’m going to be doing.” And then, “Oh, great, we got Nils.
Okay, cool. He can play all his original stuff.” And Neil says, “Listen
to the Ben Keith stuff.”
I don’t know how to play the pedal steel. I had never played the lap
steel. So I’m like, “Okay, shit, I can probably fake this on my
Telecaster with some delay and a volume pedal.”
So I started learning how to kind of fake the parts and get the spirit
of the parts down. And then once we got there, Bill Asher was tech’ing
at the time and he said, “Hey, I’ve got this lap steel that I made. It’s
got palm benders on it, so it sounds more like a pedal steel. You can
make it bend to the fifth or the fourth or whatever.” I was like, “Yeah,
I’ll try it out.” And that was two days before the show.
I basically spent the next 48 hours learning Ben Keith’s parts on the
lap steel with the palm benders and doing the best I can. And thankfully
this is Tonight’s the Night where the guys making this record
were fucked up out of their head. This is drunk Ben Keith. And so I was
like, “Okay, I can fake this.”
But I also ended up falling in love with that instrument, and it was so
much fun. And this is the story of me and Neil. He pushes me all the
time to be better.
And those types of experiences where you’re under
pressure of making the music as good as it can be, I think have made me a
better musician and a better person.
A new playlist has been added to the Neil Young Archives titled "Long Walk Home" by rustie extraordinaire Omar "Lone Red Rider".
The playlist -- imagined in an alternate universe -- could have been a followup to Neil Young's album Harvest.
Omar "Lone Red Rider" describes the playlist as follows:
NYA is featuring something
new that may be worth listening to!
For a while, there has been a
feature on NYA which allows users to create playlists but those
playlists can not be shared among users. I had created a particular
playlist which I shared on social media and garnered some interest. I
wondered, if I sent it to NYA, would they consider sharing it so
that others can hear it?
Well, I did and they did!
Partly
out of my frustration that the latest batch of NYA outtakes were not
presented in any useful context and also harboring a dissatisfaction
with how post-Harvest era tunes were presented on NYA, I created a
speculative tracklist of what a studio follow-up to Harvest might have
been. I organized it as a vinyl album called "Long Walk Home" and it is
there for all to listen to both on desktop: https://neilyoungarchives.com/playlist?id=P_012 and in the mobile app.
Currently, it seems to work better on iPhones, as long as you update to the latest version of the app.
There,
he shares an early tracklisting of an album called "Last Dance" which
seems to represent an intended studio follow-up to Harvest, recorded
mostly at the end of 1972 with the Stray Gators as they were rehearsing
for their 1973 tour. Here is the running order: Side 1: Time Fades Away,
New Mama, Come Along And Say You Will, The Bridge, Don't Be Denied.
Side 2: Lookout Joe, Journey Through The Past, Last Dance, Goodbye
Christians on the Shore. Of all of those tracks, Don't Be Denied was
never completed in the studio. Hence, the studio album was never
complete. It's been suggested that the album evolved into a mix of live
and studio tracks and then evolved into what we got as Time Fades Away,
effectively abandoning the studio album concept. This is where "Long
Walk Home" enters the picture.
Starting
with the "Last Dance" tracklist, I omitted Don't Be Denied. After this, I
cut "Journey Through The Past" as it was, as Neil referred to it as a
"song without a home". The only studio version we have of it, recorded
in Nashville earlier with the Gators,has a very different feel to it
than the rough and ready tracks done after Nashville. I added in "Letter
From Nam" from NYA Vol2 Disk1 and noticed that I was on the way to
building an album centered on American life and war and politics. From
there, it was not a stretch to add "War Song", the much maligned duet
with Nash previously released as a single. Sonically and thematically it
seemed to fit with this playlist even though it would have likely never
been considered for inclusion on a proper album. Finally I added
"Soldier" from the soundtrack to Journey Through The Past. A classic
Neil song which most of us know from Decade in a shorter version. That
seemed to me to be a satisfying listen of tracks representing a feel and
era.
Some who have heard it appreciate it.
Some have trashed it. That's OK.
The more I listen to it, I can feel
characters come to life in a way that they did in Greendale. Joe and his
pregnant wife Annie. The ne'er do well Bill and Millie who struggle to
get up every monday morning. Religious fanatics and war zealots.
Politicians promising to end wars. It almost feels modern. Actually, it
feels pretty damn contemporary to me. Sure, it's ragged. It risks
falling apart at times. It's ambiguous. But real.
Even
though it was presented as an "alternate history follow-up to Harvest"
it has to be taken as just a fan creation. We won't get the real "Last
Dance" album until Neil decides we will. He actually seems somewhat open
to it based on recent letters on NYA. So let me end with the Twilight
Zone: Imagine, if you will, a phantom collaboration with a hero, across
space and time. I feel honored that NYA has decided to share it with you
and thankful for Thrasher for allowing me to post it here.
Newsworthy?
Enjoy it while it lasts, spartan artwork and all!
Thanks so much for building and sharing Omar "Lone Red Rider"!
Here's the "Long Walk Home" playlist:
Side1:
Letter From Nam
War Song
Come Along And Say You Will
Lookout Joe
Soldier
Side2:
Time Fades Away
New Mama
The Bridge
Last Dance
Goodbye Christians On The Shore
Really cool that NYA Team uploaded and showcased. What an era. Vietnam and Watergate. Deja vu, yet again. Over and over. In these times.