Neil Young - Neil Young - Acoustic Version (1968)

First off, I want to say that last month when I posted a compilation of Neil Young's three 1969 acoustic Canterbury shows, I used a source that had some problems. Specifically, the bass was way too loud. I was able to find a different source, and I fixed the album. It sounds much better now. It makes a big difference, so I highly recommend you hear the updated version.

Here's the link for that:

https://albumsthatshouldexist.blogspot.com/2021/08/neil-young-canterbury-house-ann-arbor.html

Now, let's get to this album. If you've been following this blog, you may have seen a post I made some weeks back about a relatively new sound editing program called Spleeter. To make a long story short, this program allows one to separate out the different instruments in a song, which previously had been next to impossible for the ordinary person. It doesn't work all the time, but sometimes one can do really interesting things with it.

I'm a particular fan of acoustic music. I've been intrigued by the idea of using Spleeter to remove the bass and drums in songs and thus create acoustic mixes. As I said, Spleeter doesn't work all the time, and I think it's best for songs that are largely acoustic already, but with bass and drums. As an experiment, I thought I could try to create all acoustic versions of albums. The early Neil Young solo albums (1968 to 1972) seem like a good possibility, because he's performed solo acoustic versions of most of the songs in concert anyway, so I wouldn't have to use Spleeter on many songs.

This is the first result of that experiment. Neil Young's first solo album, released in November 1968 and simply titled "Neil Young," has two short instrumentals that are atypical of his usual style, "The Emperor of Wyoming" and "Excerpt from Whiskey Boot Hill." I tried to use Spleeter on them but it didn't sound that good, especially since the songs relied heavily on orchestral arrangements and thus didn't really fit into an acoustic album mode. So I've left those songs off this version.

With the rest of the songs, all but one of them have been performed in solo acoustic mode in concert. Furthermore, excellent sounding versions exist. I used officially released versions of concerts from 1968 or 1969, plus an unreleased version of one song ("Here We Are in the Years") from a pristine 1969 soundboard. I removed the crowd noise at the ends of songs so they'd sound more like studio versions.

Thus, I only had to use Spleeter on one song, "What Did You Do to My Life." Unfortunately, Young has never performed this song in concert. So, using an alternate version released on the "Archives, Volume 1" box set, I removed the bass and drums. I think it sounds pretty good, although some other instruments remain other than just acoustic guitar.

This album was rather short because I didn't include the two instrumental songs. I wanted to add other songs he did from around the time the album was made. It turns out there weren't many because most of his songs up until that point had been associated with his time in Buffalo Springfield (which lasted through mid-1968). The only other song I know of that was being performed by him in late 1968 and didn't appear on a later album is "Sugar Mountain," so I added a version of that at the end.

So here's an acoustic version of "Neil Young." It's not super different, but I think it's a nice listen just the same. At the time, Young was experimenting some with using orchestration, a production style he would soon abandon. So it's especially interesting to hear these songs with that production stripped away.

This album is 38 minutes long.

01 The Loner (Neil Young)
02 If I Could Have Her Tonight (Neil Young)
03 I've Been Waiting for You (Neil Young)
04 The Old Laughing Lady (Neil Young)
05 Here We Are in the Years (Neil Young)
06 What Did You Do to My Life [Alternate Mix] [Edit] (Neil Young) (Neil Young)
07 I've Loved Her So Long (Neil Young)
08 The Last Trip to Tulsa (Neil Young)
09 Sugar Mountain (Neil Young)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16376611/NEILYNG1968cNilYngAcustc_atse.zip.html

There are two versions of the official album cover for this version. One is just a painting of Neil Young's head with no text whatsoever. Probably the record company thought that was hurting sales, because when it was released with a new mix in early 1969, the painting was cropped to make room for Neil Young's name in big letters at the top. I've used the version with text, because I wanted to add some text of my own, "Acoustic Version," at the bottom.