A Question on Neil Young's Product "Quality"

Neil Young's COASTAL film soundtrack 
 (Click photo to enlarge)

Discussions of the COASTAL soundtrack have raised questions on Neil Young's product "quality".

As background,  Neil Young's COASTAL film soundtrack vinyl & CD product have been withdrawn from sale on Greedy Hand due to errors in the album’s production and mastering process. In addition, after a series of glitches, the soundtrack is now streaming on NYA.

A comment by Old Black on a message received when ordering  COASTAL soundtrack:

"I regret to inform you that Neil Young has discovered an audio glitch on the cd and has therefore requested that we put an immediate halt to all shipments, and also issue an immediate recall on any stock that remains at retail."

The latest episode comes after various past struggles with quality, such as the Rust Bucket DVD issue or  BBC 1971 DVD reissue,  But as The Flying Scotzman points out, is this really production and mastering issues or simply poor quality control allowing bad product to go to production?

Other fans have in turn pointed out that’s unfair, as not all these issues are equal. Why? Because while most were errors in quality control, others were deliberate creative decisions.

The Rust Bucket dvd re-think, for example, was a separate issue to some of the recent QC issues. The mix was not a mistake, as such, but an intended effect by Neil — and one with good thinking behind it. 

(To clarify, the first Rust Bucket dvd featured an remastered version of John Hanlon’s flagship master mix for the CD version. The fairly aggressive remaster for the dvd involved John’s mix being made narrower, louder, and given a treble and bass boost. This was an attempt, perhaps only partially successful, to more thrillingly simulate the excitement of the authentic live sound. The second edition dvd restored John’s unedited mix.)

But despite being an intentional production choice, the first Rust Bucket does in hindsight feel like a pivotal project — a turning point of sorts:

It was around this time Niko Bolas took over from John Hanlon. (This is perhaps relevant, or perhaps merely coincidence. Niko has certainly done great work with Neil before, even if his preference for drums over guitars is perhaps less suited to Neil’s electric work than Briggs’ and Hanlon’s guitar-centric approach.)

 As Scotsman concludes: "And is it asking too much to expect Neil’s record company to play a role in actually checking the product works as intended (and meets even a minimal-viable standard of quality) before putting it on sale?". No, not at all.

Neil Young: Coastal

Directed by Daryl Hannah

Quality issues aside, the concert film COASTAL was a joy to experience in theaters with friends and new acquaintances. So one can only hope this all resolves swiftly so that the wonderful soundtrack can be properly experienced and enjoyed.

Lastly, we can only add that Neil Young's product quantity has been staggering over the recent years.  Definitely not an excuse, but it's not surprising when one declares "open the vaults" that there are faults.

To quote Neil himself: "Quality: Whether You Want It or Not".

Occupy Audio: Neil Young is "Angered By Today's Sound Quality"Jonathan Demme and Neil Young
Slamdance Festival 2012, Park City, Utah

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Neil Young, Stephen Stills "Light Up The Blues" Concert + "Coastal: The Soundtrack"

Light Up The Blues Concert 
 (Click photo to enlarge)

Neil Young and Stephen Stills "Light Up The Blues" benefit concert will be held at The Greek Theatre in Los Angeles on April 26.

This is the seventh "Light Up The Blues" benefit concert in aid of the organization Autism Speaks, which supports people with autism and their families.

In addition to Stephen Stills and Neil Young, Billy Idol, Linda Perry, Cat Power, Christina Applegate and Stephen Stills' sons Chris Stills and Oliver Stills will perform. The evening will be hosted by Stills and his wife Kristen. 

Neil Young's "Coastal"

Directed by Daryl Hannah

In other Neil news, Neil Young's documentary film "Coastal" hits theaters on April 17.

In "Coastal," Neil Young's wife Daryl Hannah documents her husband's solo tour of open-air theaters on the American West Coast in the summer of 2023.  The film premiered at the Woodstock Film Festival last year. From press release:

"Embark on a journey with unconventional musician Neil Young in this personal, intimate documentary as he travels the coast supporting his latest solo tour. Directed by renowned filmmaker and Young's wife Daryl Hannah, Coastal offers a behind-the-scenes look at this unvarnished individualist returning to the stage after the Covid pandemic - from his everyday observations on the tour bus to his candid, dry wit in interactions with audiences. The insightful film also features songs rarely or never played live before, performed in stunningly beautiful theaters."

A release on DVD/Blu-ray or as a stream on NYA is also planned.

Also, a 2nd live album of the Coastal tour "Coastal: The Soundtrack" arrives April 18th. on CD, vinyl and as a download.

The album contains eleven songs from the documentary "Coastal". Four of the eleven songs can already be found on the 2024 album "Before + After", which also contains live recordings from the Coastal tour at the time. 

N & D

Here's a solo electronic version of "Vampire Blues". 

 

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Cameron Crowe on Neil Young's "Almost" "Almost Famous" Scene

"How music shaped Cameron Crowe’s life, from Tom Petty to Almost Famous" | Q with Tom Power

 

Here is an interview with Cameron Crowe discussing the film "Almost Famous" and Neil Young's "almost" scene.

From "How music shaped Cameron Crowe’s life, from Tom Petty to Almost Famous" | Q with Tom Power:

Cameron Crowe on Neil Young's "Almost" "Almost Famous" Scene @ ~~24:30.

In 1983, Cameron Crowe (Jerry Maguire, Vanilla Sky, Almost Famous) was an ambitious young music journalist who had just released his debut film: a documentary about Tom Petty, titled “Tom Petty: Heartbreakers Beach Party.”

It aired once on MTV and was never seen again. Now, that lost documentary is arriving for the first time in cinemas. The Oscar-winning director joins Tom to discuss his first film, his early life as a rock journalist, his upcoming Joni Mitchell biopic, and how Neil Young was originally cast in “Almost Famous.” 

More on Neil Young's Deleted Scene in Cameron Crowe's ‘Almost Famous’ Film, which brought great delight in memories of this iconic and essential "time capsule" film. 

"Almost Famous" Film Scene
Tribute to "Time Fades Away" by Neil Young Album Cover

 (Click photo to enlarge)

More on "Almost Famous" Film Soundtrack: Source of “Cortez the Killer” by Neil Young is Unknown.

 

"Almost Famous" Film Soundtrack: Source of “Cortez the Killer” by Neil Young is Unknown

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Inherent Vice Soundtrack: Neil Young's "Journey Through The Past"

Neil Young - Larry “Doc” Sportello (Joaquin Phoenix)
Inherent Vice directed by Paul Thomas Anderson

Neil Young's song "Journey Through The Past" is featured on the soundtrack for Inherent Vice directed by Paul Thomas Anderson.

From "Does It Ever End? - The Sweet Heartbreak of Paul Thomas Anderson’s Inherent Vice" |
Bright Wall/Dark Room by Travis Woods:

Upon its release in 2014, Paul Thomas Anderson’s adaptation of Thomas Pynchon’s neo-noir novel Inherent Vice was met with what might be best described as muted appreciation from the director’s fanbase—with an unruly runtime that stretches past long works like The Master and Phantom Thread and comes within contact-high reach of such epics as Boogie Nights and There Will Be Blood, Inherent Vice, for all its temporal breadth, seemed to say very little with its sybaritic unfurling of Pynchon’s fractal-plotted, shaggy-dog detective story, and when it did say something at all it tended to be in a wistfully depressed mumble rather than amusing stoner giggle, leaving audiences confounded as to what they just watched, and why.

At the exact moment of the film’s halfway point, she reappears in memory—Doc receives a postcard from Shasta at sea, with her sorrowful message of remembrance, of a day with a Ouija Board. “I miss those days. And I miss you. Nothing was supposed to happen this way, Doc. I’m so sorry.” Doc’s memory of that day with the board is perhaps the film’s—and Paul Thomas Anderson’s—most heartrending moment, its central moment, soaked in the sweet melancholy of Neil Young’s “Journey Through the Past” as a younger Doc and Shasta run through rain, searching for a weed connection teased by the Ouija Board. They never found the connection that day, but “that board sure did its work,” drawing he and Shasta close for one perfect afternoon, one perfect memory, kissing and laughing in the rain. The pain of this memory forces Doc to return to that spot where the board sent them, only to find the gilded, spiraling tower of the Golden Fang’s new dental headquarters. Was the postcard a secret message from Shasta, coded in lovetalk, to help him locate and bring down the Fang? Was it simply a note of lovesick regret, and his flash to return to the scene simply a moment of coincidental luck? Is the appearance of the Fang’s headquarters here, where they kissed, some brutal metaphor for time sweeping away their love? Or, like Sortilège, was the postcard quite possibly a hallucination sent forth from some blood-kinked, cell-deprived fold of Doc’s overtaxed cerebellum? What’s real, and what is simple hope? What is a real memory, and what is the fictional story we tell ourselves to survive it?

"We really stole his look from Neil Young circa 1970, with the mutton chops. Some of the wardrobes on Doc are a straight rip of him. I don’t think you can make a movie about this period and this culture without looking directly at him."

-Paul Thomas Anderson pic.twitter.com/jCKaiM0njV

— Bright Wall/Dark Room (@BWDR) April 27, 2019

New today on the site: @aHeartOfGould on INHERENT VICE, "a film that tricks us into settling in for a noir about a man solving a mystery, & instead presents us with a man confronting a melancholy truth: everything—lives, eras, and loves—comes to an end." https://t.co/3PlKAVlnhn pic.twitter.com/875v0vpp4Z

— Bright Wall/Dark Room (@BWDR) April 26, 2019

"We really stole his look from Neil Young circa 1970, with the mutton chops. Some of the wardrobes on Doc are a straight rip of him. I don’t think you can make a movie about this period and this culture without looking directly at him." -Paul Thomas Anderson

"Doc’s memory of that day is perhaps the film’s—and Paul Thomas Anderson’s—most heartrending moment, its central moment, soaked in the sweet melancholy of Neil Young’s “Journey Through the Past” as a younger Doc & Shasta run through the rain..." https://t.co/qRFcSI8iDl

— Bright Wall/Dark Room (@BWDR) April 27, 2019

"When the winter rains coming pouring down"

pic.twitter.com/hRzi8VJVT9

— Bright Wall/Dark Room (@BWDR) April 26, 2019

Inherent Vice Soundtrack
(Please shop locally & independently. But if you can't, we appreciate your supporting Thrasher's Wheat by clicking this link. Thank you!!!)

More on Neil Young's "Journey Through The Past".

Journey Through the Past - Film Poster

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Cover & Track Listing: PARADOX Soundtrack Album - Neil Young + Promise Of The Real, April 20 Release

The soundtrack album for PARADOX, the Daryl Hannah directed Shakey Pictures film featuring Neil Young + Promise Of The Real, will be released on April 20 (420, get it?!).

The "futuristic, free-form frontier tone poem" will premiere at the SXSW Film Festival at the Paramount Theatre, Austin, TX, on March 15, 2018 at 7:00pm.

Track Listing:
1. MANY MOONS AGO IN THE FUTURE
2. SHOW ME
3. PARADOX PASSAGE 1
4. HEY
5. PARADOX PASSAGE 2
6. DIGGIN' IN THE DIRT – CHORUS
7. PARADOX PASSAGE 3
8. PEACE TRAIL
9. POCAHONTAS
10. COWGIRL JAM
11. ANGEL FLYING TOO CLOSE TO THE GROUND
12. PARADOX PASSAGE 4
13. DIGGIN’ IN THE DIRT
14. PARADOX PASSAGE 5
15. RUNNING TO THE SILVER EAGLE
16. BABY WHAT YOU WANT ME TO DO?
17. PARADOX PASSAGE 6
18. OFFERINGS
19. HOW LONG?
20. HAPPY TOGETHER
21. TUMBLEWEED

PARADOX
Director: Daryl Hannah
w/ Neil Young + Promise Of The Real & Willie Nelson

As we reported last month, a new Neil Young film will premiere at the SXSW Film Festival. The film's director is Daryl Hannah and the Producer credits are "Bernard Shakey" and "Elliot Rabinowitz" (Neil & Roberts).

From SXSW Film Festival listing:

Time is fluid in this far-fetched, whimsical western tale of music and love.

Somewhere in the future past, The Man In the Black Hat hides out between heists at an old stagecoach stop with Jail Time, the Particle Kid, and an odd band of outlaws. Mining the detritus of past civilizations, they wait… for the Silver Eagle, for the womenfolk, and for the full moon's magic to give rise to the music and make the spirits fly.

We have a particular interest in the film as we attended the Neil Young + Promise Of The Real concerts in Telluride, Colorado in 2016 where the band performed in full retro Western outfits for the film.

Neil Young + Promise Of The Real
Telluride, Colorado - 9/30/16

Photo by thrasher

More at SXSW Film Festival in Austin, TX, March 9–18, 2018.

More on the dream weekend when Rusties did a take over of a small town ski resort for a weekend for Neil Young + Promise Of The Real concerts in Telluride, Colorado in 2016.

Oh, what a weekend ... probably one of our top Neil and rustie experiences of our lifetimes!

UPDATE:
From Rolling Stone:

So here's what we know about the feature-length directorial debut from Splash/Kill Bill star Daryl Hannah: It's described as both "a whimsical Western" and a "Loud poem"; her significant other Neil Young is in it; he performs in full old-timey frontier guard [sic, garb?] with the band Promise of the Real; Willie Nelson drops by as well; and there are characters named the Particle Kid, Jail Time and the Man in the Black Hat. Everything else is up for grabs, but whether this is a masterpiece or a magnificent, flaming car wreck, the chance of us being bored is exactly zero-point-zero percent.

(Thanks for linkage RS, but AI robot spell checkers are only so useful. We're staying on the human highway.)

Additional Screenings For Paradox: (Thanks Shakeyjrc!!!)

-03/23/18 IFC Center NYC
http://www.ifccenter.com/films/paradox/

-03/24/18 Music Box Theatre Chicago, IL with Neil and Daryl Q/A
https://www.musicboxtheatre.com/films/paradox

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Neil Young's Ragged Glory Sound - Guitar World, October 2009

Neil Young's Rig
(Click to enlarge)

Amongst musicians, many often wonder how Neil Young achieves his unique sound that has been described as like "a jet plane in a thunderstorm".

From Neil Young: Ragged Glory - Guitar World (Guitar World, October 2009) by Richard Bienstock:

At the center of it all is the volatile 1953 Gibson Les Paul goldtop Young calls Old Black. A brutal and battered beast, the guitar is responsible for the legendary gritty tones heard on countless Young classics, including “Cinnamon Girl,” “Down By the River” and “Hey Hey, My My (Into the Black).”

The Les Paul, which features a Bigsby tremolo and a P90 pickup in the neck position, received the black paint job that inspired its nickname prior to being acquired by Young. Since then, it’s undergone several further modifications, including the addition of a “chrome-on-brass” pickguard and back plates, a bridge-position Firebird pickup and a toggle switch, installed between the two volume and two tone knobs, that acts as a bypass. “You flip that,” says Cragg, “and the Firebird goes straight to the amp.”

Cragg installed the Firebird pickup back in 1973. “Originally there was a P90 in there,” he explains. “But in the early Seventies the guitar was lost, and when Neil recovered it a few years later the bridge pickup was gone. He put a Gretsch DeArmond in there for a while, but when I came onboard I replaced that with the Firebird, which has been there ever since. Everyone calls it a mini humbucker, but it’s not. It’s a humbucker, and it’s very microphonic—you can speak into it. It’s really piercing and high and a big part of his sound.”

More on Neil Young's Sound.

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WARNING: Beware Bootleg Vinyl Copies of Dead Man

Dead Man [Film soundtrack]
by Neil Young
(Click photo to enlarge)

It's been called "the best movie of the end of the 20th century."

A word of warning to Neil Young vinyl fans on the Dead Man film soundtrack ...

Hi there,
My name is Josh and I'm a 19 year old student and Neil Young and vinyl obsessive. Over the last couple of years I have been trying to build up a collection of all of Neil's work available on vinyl although I am still short of some of the more expensive items such as Dead Man, Greendale and of course a copy of The Squires' 7 inch which I feel will always be out of my reach!

Anyway, I recently found a copy of Dead Man on vinyl for a bargain price of £60, still a lot of money for a student like me though. I scraped up enough to buy it and it duly arrived a few days later via Amazon. I opened it up, only one insert, strange I thought, then I pulled out one of the LPs and my heart sank. No matrix number!! I felt physically sick once I realised what had happened.

I went online and found a thread dated a week previously on the Steve Hoffman forums which mentioned there are now bootleg vinyl pressings of Dead Man circulating. Sure enough I went on eBay and these things are going for as much as £150!!! A friend of mine, same age as me and also into vinyl (and Neil Young!) saw a copy on a market stall in his town for £15, needless to say he did not buy it. When I first opened my copy I was over the moon, once I found out about it it became a worthless piece of junk.

I have sent information about these pressings to Vapor Records but they have yet to reply, Amazon don't seem interested in the sale of illegal goods (hence why they themselves market the Live in Chicago and Live in San Francisco LPs) but a warning needs to be issued to other fans, I don't want other people getting tricked like me.

The giveaways are:
No matrix numbers on either of the vinyl discs
Only ONE insert, the picture of the boat, the picture of Johnny Depp is not present. I also believe the original LP had the picture inserts as inner sleeves, whereas this bootleg has plain white polylined inner sleeves and the picture is just an insert.

I have done some further research and it appears there are two original pressings. A US one which has a matte cover with 'aged' brown writing, and a German one with a gloss cover and white writing. The bootleg copies the German sleeve (glossy with white writing). It seems these bootlegs have spread west from Germany from what I have read on the Steve Hoffman forums, and it is where my copy came from.

So if anyone sees a Dead Man that's a 'bargain' then steer clear until matrix numbers are known (due to no contact from Vapor Records I do not know what is meant to be written in the dead wax), or the number of inserts.

Thankfully I was able to get my money back, although once more I have no copy of Dead Man on vinyl, and to be honest I am now so worried about buying a copy for fear of getting another bootleg. One UK based eBay seller has sold three copies recently, all for at least £140.

There are also bootlegs of On The Beach and the Eldorado EP circulating.

I sincerely hope Vapor Records can take legal action, that fans will know how to avoid these bootlegs and that maybe one day I can get a genuine copy.

Keep up the great work at Thrasher's Wheat, it's wonderful having daily updates of NY news sent straight to me!!

Many thanks for taking the time to read this.

Kind regards,
Josh

Thanks Josh. What a bummer. Bootlegs of unofficial recordings are one thing, but bootlegs of official recordings are really shameful.

Hopefully, your warning will save others the grief.

Thanks for taking the time to share.

peace

ps - Also, see more on "the best movie of the end of the 20th century" at Dead Man Film soundtrack and Film Director Jim Jarmusch & Neil Young.

Also, preview soundtrack clips here.

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