Early "Daze" Neil & Crazy Horse with Jack Nitzsche Is a Great Horse Compilation
yes, mostly for hardcore fans
It seems like the only notifications in my inbox that come more often than Democratic Party money begs are Warner Records announcements of new Neil Young Archive releases. It's hard to keep up and so many are so good. Very little filler. There are 198 tracks in the upcoming Archives Vol. III (1976-1987) and I'v been sorting through that, though there won't be vinyl. Understandable!
This recent one deserves your attention if you're a true Neil and Crazy Horse fan. It's the 1968-1969 Horse with Whitten, Molina, Talbot Young and Jack Nitzsche. So pure. The gatefold says most of it, what's in the grooves the rest!
The tube overdrive, crisply delivered in 4/4, guitar, bass, piano delivering a holy racket of fuzz fun. There's are unreleased studio versions of "Wonderin'", "Come on Baby Let's Go Downtown", "Helpless", "Look At All the Things"", "Down By the River" and a mono mix of "Cinnamon Girl" including a guitar outdo not on the LP version, all sounding great, "mastered from original analog tapes", which is not 100% clear but you won't care because the sound is pure whatever the mix down was. There's an unreleased stereo mix of "Birds", the mono mix of which was the "B" side of "Only Love Can Break Your Heart". That's seven of the ten but that's enough to get the picture!
Pure rock'n'roll, so crisply delivered. A dying art form that's deceptively simple yet requires serious discipline to get right. Maybe that's why it's not being done anymore. Regardless, this set distills Crazy Horse down to its essence and for some reason of all of the recent Young Archive releases, it's the one that's spent the most time on my turntable (Neil's is a Technics SL1000R by the way).
Even if you have a wall of Neil, or especially if you do, this is good one not to be missed. Visit the Neil Young Archives.