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Neil Young: Big Change Is Coming
by Doug Collette
Neil Young works in strange ways. That might well go without saying, but it deserves repeating if only because, with the release of a brand-new song with a novel lineup of musicians, the inscrutable singer/songwriter has once more tossed a sharp curveball. “big change is coming" (no caps intentional) may simultaneously delight and confound his loyal fanbase as well as the public at large (see his withdrawal from Spotify in 2022 and, a year later, an open letter ...
Continue ReadingNeil Young with Crazy Horse: World Record
by Doug Collette
In its own peculiar way, World Record is as confounding as the previous two albums by Neil Young with Crazy Horse. Yet it's far more compelling, this despite its comparably impromptu, borderline sloppy nature. This title might be heard as a progression from or an extension of Colorado (Reprise, 2019) and/or Barn (Reprise, 2021, except that the occasionally excessive air of spontaneity that permeates the material and the performances begs the question of how Rick Rubin contributed to this recording ...
Continue ReadingHarvest 50th Anniversary Edition (CD/DVD)
by Doug Collette
To hear and see Neil Young express such deep-seated personal contentment near the end of his film Harvest Time is to understand more fully why he would go to some lengths to curate a box set of the album upon which the movie is based. While some of the content enclosed on the CDs and DVDs in the 50th Anniversary Edition of the 1972 album has been in unofficial circulation for awhile, immersion in the collection vividly depicts the vagaries ...
Continue ReadingThe Book of Neil (Young): How the Godfather of Grunge Became an Influencer of Jazz
by Kelley Suttenfield
As a child of the '70s, Neil Young's music was some of the first I heard played on the radio. Heart of Gold must have been piped into every café, truck stop, and grocery store in Central Virginia, where I spent my formative years. And if you were taking a road trip, scanning the stations meant you could easily hear it multiple times in one afternoon. Astonishingly, it remains his only number #1 hit to this day. Out of such ...
Continue ReadingNeil Young - To Feel The Music: A Songwriter's Mission To Save High-Quality Audio
by Doug Collette
To Feel the Music: A Songwriter's Mission to Save High-Quality Audio Neil Young and Phil Baker 242 Pages ISBN: #1948836386 BenBella Books 2019 In his introduction to To Feel The Music, Neil Young ascertains that the point of decline in the sound quality of modern music began with the compact disc. In his mind and to his ears, that physical manifestation of the advent of digital sound constitutes an abhorrent occurrence for ...
Continue ReadingNeil Young & The Promise of The Real: Earth
by Doug Collette
Ninety-plus minutes of performances recorded live on tour in 2015, then interspersed with sounds of the planet natural (birds and thunder) and manufactured (car traffic and trains), Neil Young's double-CD Earth documents his social concerns and the synergy he's developed with his most recent accompanists, Lukas Nelson and The Promise of the Real. A song selection spanning the rock icon's career, plus one unreleased number (an ode to the weed movement “Seed Justice" was originally and cryptically titled “I Won't ...
Continue ReadingNeil Young: Special Deluxe A Memoir of Life & Cars
by Doug Collette
Special Deluxe: A Memoir of Life & Cars Neil Young 384 Pages ISBN: # 0399172084 Blue Rider Press 2014 It's hard to believe Special Deluxe is written by the same man who wrote Waging Heavy Peace (Blue Rider Press, 2012). Neil Young sounded so selectively obsessive on that glibly titled and not so well-edited autobiography, his focused and conversational writing here, from the very preface on, is the proverbial breath of ...
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