Farm Aid, Huntington Bank Stadium, Minneapolis, MN, 9-20-2025, Part 11: Neil Young

We're getting near the end of the albums I'm posting from the 2025 Farm Aid benefit concert. This is the 11th out of 12 albums I'm posting from it. This one is a set by Neil Young, backed by his latest band, the Chrome Hearts.

Young was 79 years old at the time of this concert, and frankly he was looking it, but he was still singing and playing lead guitar very capably. Most of the songs were older classics. However, he played one new song, "Big Crime," which was released in a live version earlier in September 2025. It is a scathing criticism of President Trump's many illegal actions.

This album is 38 minutes long. 

01 talk by emcee (Neil Young)
02 Big Crime (Neil Young)
03 Rockin' in the Free World (Neil Young)
04 Long Walk Home (Neil Young)
05 talk (Neil Young)
06 Be the Rain (Neil Young)
07 talk (Neil Young)
08 Southern Man (Neil Young)
09 Hey Hey, My My [Into the Black] (Neil Young)
10 Old Man (Neil Young)
11 talk (Neil Young)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/aHFCtB3s

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/xqiq9XCMK5KsHct/file 

The cover photo is from this exact concert. 

Neil Young - BBC Sessions, Volume 4: In Concert, Glastonbury Festival, Worthy Farm, Pilton, Britain, 6-28-2025

It's time for me to finally start posting the most wanted performances from the 2025 Glastonbury Festival. Since everything I'll be posting is available with great sound quality because it was broadcast by the BBC, I'll be posting these as BBC albums. In my poll about this festival, the number one most wanted performance was by Neil Young. So here it is.

At the time of this concert, Young was 79 years old. I heard one of his concert recordings from a couple of years prior to this, and that made he concerned that his voice was starting to go. But I'm glad to say he still sings and plays lead guitar like a younger version of himself.

Young, with his latest band, the Chrome Hearts, played no songs from his most recent albums. However, his set wasn't a "best of" either, despite performing for a huge crowd that didn't buy tickets just to see him. He did play some favorites, but he also played some relative obscurities, for instance "Be the Rain" and "Sun Green" from his 2003 album "Greendale." And stylistically, he went from solo acoustic at times to long, jammy full-band songs at other times. All in all, it was a solid show.

This album is an hour and 49 minutes long. 

01 talk (Neil Young)
02 Sugar Mountain (Neil Young)
03 Be the Rain (Neil Young)
04 When You Dance, I Can Really Love (Neil Young)
05 Cinnamon Girl (Neil Young)
06 Fuckin' Up (Neil Young)
07 talk (Neil Young)
08 Hey Hey, My My [Into the Black] (Neil Young)
09 The Needle and the Damage Done (Neil Young)
10 Harvest Moon (Neil Young)
11 talk (Neil Young)
12 Looking Forward (Neil Young)
13 talk (Neil Young)
14 Sun Green (Neil Young)
15 talk (Neil Young)
16 Love and Only Love (Neil Young)
17 Like a Hurricane (Neil Young)
18 Name of Love (Neil Young)
19 Old Man (Neil Young)
20 talk (Neil Young)
21 Rockin' in the Free World (Neil Young)
22 talk (Neil Young)
23 Throw Your Hatred Down (Neil Young)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/bdi3M4vH

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/yrbxyXlVIXDgR8q/file

The cover photo is from this exact concert. 

Neil Young - PBS Soundstage, WTTW Studios, Chicago, IL, 11-17-1992

Here's a "PBS Soundstage" concert performed by Neil Young in 1992.

(By the way, note that for one year, the program used the name "Center Stage" instead of "Soundstage." This is one of the shows from that year. But I'm calling it "Soundstage" to be consistent with all of the other many years of the show.)

Earlier in 1992, Young released the studio album "Harvest Moon." It was billed as a kind of sequel to the mostly acoustic 1972 album "Harvest." Like "Harvest," it was critically acclaimed and sold very well. 

In February 1993, Young put on a concert for the TV show "MTV Unplugged." It was released as a live album called "Unplugged" later that same year. In 2009, an album called "Dreamin' Man Live '92" was released. It consisted of acoustic versions of the ten songs from the "Harvest Moon" album. I think this album is superior to both of those. "Unplugged," while mostly acoustic in nature, was performed by a small band. Young was unhappy with the band for some reason, even doing an entire second concert to try to fix the problems he saw. This is strictly a solo acoustic performance, so obviously there's no band problems here. 

And this is a much longer recording than either "Unplugged" (65 minutes) or "Dreamin' Man Live '92" (56 minutes). He performed nine out of the ten songs on "Harvest Moon." The only one he missed, "Old King," is a kind of jokey song that is no big loss.

This album is an hour and 53 minutes long.

01 talk (Neil Young)
02 Long May You Run (Neil Young)
03 talk (Neil Young)
04 From Hank to Hendrix (Neil Young)
05 Unknown Legend (Neil Young)
06 talk (Neil Young)
07 Love Is a Rose (Neil Young)
08 talk (Neil Young)
09 Pocahontas (Neil Young)
10 talk (Neil Young)
11 Like a Hurricane (Neil Young)
12 talk (Neil Young)
13 War of Man (Neil Young)
14 talk (Neil Young)
15 The Needle and the Damage Done (Neil Young)
16 talk (Neil Young)
17 Tonight's the Night (Neil Young)
18 talk (Neil Young)
19 One of These Days (Neil Young)
20 Such a Woman (Neil Young)
21 Harvest Moon (Neil Young)
22 Dreamin' Man (Neil Young)
23 Natural Beauty (Neil Young)
24 Don't Let It Bring You Down (Neil Young)
25 talk (Neil Young)
26 Mr. Soul (Neil Young)
27 Powderfinger (Neil Young)
28 talk (Neil Young)
29 Sugar Mountain (Neil Young)
30 talk (Neil Young)
31 You and Me (Neil Young)
32 talk (Neil Young)
33 After the Goldrush (Neil Young)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/dCDDc1LB

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/UGEFCg8bA5JTvIG/file

The cover image is taken from this exact concert.

Neil Young - BBC Sessions, Volume 3: In Concert, Glastonbury Festival, Worthy Farm, Pilton, Britain, 6-26-2009

Here is Neil Young's third, and so far last, BBC concert. It's from the huge, annual Glastonbury Festival in 2009.

This was the first and still only time that Young has performed at Glastonbury. However, as I write this in February 2025, it has been reported that Young is scheduled to be one of the headliners in the summer of 2025. (There were news reports that he canceled due to a dispute with the BBC, but then later reports that he undid the cancellation.) So let's hope that later in 2025 there will be a "Volume 4" in this series.

This 2009 concert was not performed with his band Crazy Horse. However, you'd be excused if you thought otherwise, because this was very much in the same rocking mode as his Crazy Horse stuff. Instead, his band was just called his "Electric Band."

This is also a long, complete concert, nearly two hours long. Only some of his songs were broadcast on BBC TV or radio, less than an hour's worth. But somehow the full version was made public with excellent sound quality, so I'm posting all I can.

A couple of months prior to this concert, Young released his latest studio album, "Fork in the Road." He didn't promote it much in this concert, however, performing a grand total of one song from that album, "Get Behind the Wheel." Instead, he did classics from all phases of his long music career, plus a cover of "A Day in the Life" by the Beatles as the final encore. 

This album is an hour and 46 minutes long.

01 Hey Hey, My My [Into the Black] (Neil Young)
02 Mansion on the Hill (Neil Young)
03 talk (Neil Young)
04 Are You Ready for the Country (Neil Young)
05 Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere (Neil Young)
06 talk (Neil Young)
07 Spirit Road (Neil Young)
08 talk (Neil Young)
09 Words (Neil Young)
10 Cinnamon Girl (Neil Young)
11 Mother Earth [Natural Anthem] (Neil Young)
12 The Needle and the Damage Done (Neil Young)
13 talk (Neil Young)
14 Comes a Time (Neil Young)
15 Unknown Legend (Neil Young)
16 Heart of Gold (Neil Young)
17 Down by the River (Neil Young)
18 Get Behind the Wheel (Neil Young)
19 Rockin' in the Free World (Neil Young)
20 talk (Neil Young)
21 A Day in the Life (Neil Young)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/VULQrp4d

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/igfY1KUTrJHXZ6f/file

The cover photo is from this exact concert.

Neil Young - BBC Sessions, Volume 2: In Concert, Phoenix Festival, Long Marston Airfield, Stratford-upon-Avon, Britain, 7-19-199

For a long time, I thought the only BBC concert Neil Young ever performed was a well-known one he did for BBC TV back in 1971. But I recently found this one and a later one. This was performed with his backing band Crazy Horse, so it's very much in rocking mode, except for a couple of acoustic songs, "Heart of Gold" and "Music Arcade."

The concert took place just a couple of weeks after the release of his album "Broken Arrow," the eighth studio album he'd recorded with Crazy Horse. The songs "Big Time" and "Music Arcade" are from that.

Unfortunately, this album is edited down from a concert that was over two hours long. I found an audience bootleg of the full show. I considered adding some songs from it, but I decided the drop in sound quality wasn't worth it. However, I did use it for the little bit of banter before "Cinnamon Girl." According to what I heard on that bootleg, that was pretty much the only banter from the whole concert.

I had some trouble putting this together. While this played on the BBC, apparently different songs were played on different shows. So I had to piece it together from two sources, and then reorder the songs to match the full set list. For most of the songs, there was next to no audience cheering at the ends of songs, because the music was quickly cut off in favor of DJ talking. In fact, "Like a Hurricane" has "[Edit]" in the title because a BBC DJ spoke briefly about a minute or two into the song! (To my surprise, it was none other than famed DJ John Peel, who normally new better than to do that.) So, really all the songs were significantly edited in order for me to add in a decent amount of cheering at the ends. I took what little cheering I could find and repeatedly patched that in.

On the plus side, the sound quality is excellent, despite this remaining officially unreleased.

By the way, that 1971 BBC concert mentioned above has been renamed to "BBC Sessions, Volume 1." If you want the updated version with new cover art and mp3 tags, here's the link:

https://albumsthatshouldexist.blogspot.com/2022/06/neil-young-bbc-in-concert-london.html

This album is 57 minutes long.

01 Hey Hey, My My [Into the Black] (Neil Young)
02 Big Time (Neil Young)
03 Heart of Gold (Neil Young)
04 talk (Neil Young)
05 Cinnamon Girl (Neil Young)
06 Music Arcade (Neil Young)
07 Like a Hurricane [Edit] (Neil Young)
08 talk (Neil Young)
09 Sedan Delivery (Neil Young)
10 Rockin' in the Free World (Neil Young)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/D7U2wVrQ

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/iELuThWh7hO2KG4/file

The cover photo is from this exact concert.

Live Aid - JFK Stadium, Philadelphia, PA, 7-13-1985, Part 5: Neil Young, the Power Station, the Thompson Twins, Eric Clapton, and Phil Collins

This is the fifth part of the Philadelphia portion of the 1985 Live Aid concert. Two more Philadelphia parts will follow.

First up in this part was Neil Young. As I mentioned previously, he would later play a set as part of Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, but first he did this solo set. He did the first couple of songs truly solo, with just his acoustic guitar, but he was in full electric band mode by the last song.

The Power Station was a side band by some members of Duran Duran, with Robert Palmer as the singer. In addition to this set, Duran Duran had their own set later in the concert.

There's not much to say about the Thompson Twins set, except that it's worth noting Madonna joined them on backing vocals on one song, while they also helped with backing vocals on one of the songs in Madonna's set.

Eric Clapton was up next. I watched Live Aid as a kid, and I remember being excited that he played "White Room," which he originally did as part of Cream in the 1960s. He almost never played the song as a solo artist until earlier in 1985.

The final artist on this album was Phil Collins. He played a set early in the Live Aid concert in London, then rushed to a helicopter, flew a Concorde to the U.S., then took another helicopter to the Live Aid concert in Philadelphia, where he played this set. That made him the only person to play both Live Aid shows. He was a busy guy, because he also played drums for Eric Clapton in the set before this one, then later played drums as part of the Led Zeppelin reunion. Unfortunately though, the two songs he played in his solo set in Philadelphia were the same ones he played in London. Apparently this was because he played alone on piano, and those were the only two songs he knew in that format.

Once again, I was able to find some introductions, and only missed the intro for Neil Young this time. Actor Don Johnson introduced the Power Station. Actress and singer Bette Midler introduced the Thoimpson Twins. Music promoter Bill Graham introduced Eric Clapton. Actor Jack Nicholson assisted Midler in introducing Phil Collins.

This album is an hour and eleven minutes long.

097 Sugar Mountain (Neil Young)
098 The Needle and the Damage Done (Neil Young)
099 Helpless (Neil Young)
100 Nothing Is Perfect (Neil Young)
101 Powderfinger (Neil Young)
102 talk (Bill Graham)
103 talk (Don Johnson)
104 Murderess (Power Station)
105 talk (Power Station)
106 Get It On [Bang a Gong] (Power Station)
107 talk (Bill Graham)
108 talk (Bette Midler)
109 Hold Me Now (Thompson Twins)
110 talk (Thompson Twins)
111 Revolution (Thompson Twins with Madonna, Steve Stevens & Nile Rodgers)
112 talk (Bill Graham)
113 White Room (Eric Clapton)
114 She's Waiting (Eric Clapton)
115 Layla (Eric Clapton)
116 talk (Jack Nicholson & Bette Midler)
117 Against All Odds [Take a Look at Me Now] (Phil Collins)
118 talk (Phil Collins)
119 In the Air Tonight (Phil Collins)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15724528/LveAidJFKStdiumPhladlphiaPA__7-13-1985_Part5.zip.html

As with most of the other parts in this series, I divided the cover art into four photos taken at the concert. Neil Young is on the top left, the Thompson Twins are on the top right, Eric Clapton is on the bottom left, and Phil Collins is on the bottom right.

Neil Young - Bread and Roses Festival, Greek Theatre, Berkeley, CA, 10-3-1980

In 1979, Neil Young's musical career was hitting new highs. He released an album of new material, "Rust Never Sleeps," and a live album, "Live Rust." Both sold well and were critically acclaimed. He even was named "Artist of the Year" in Rolling Stone magazine by both readers and critics. But in his personal life, things were not going well at all. His young son Ben had cerebral palsy, and for a few years he spent the vast majority of his waking hours every day just taking care of his son. As a result, he didn't play any concerts between the end of the "Rust Never Sleeps" tour in 1978 and a "Trans" tour in 1982.

But there's one exception right in the middle of that four year gap: he played a single, short concert in late 1980 for the annual Bread and Roses benefit festival. This concert is very interesting for those following Young's career. Not only was it his only concert during that stretch, but his set list is quite unusual for him. The concert took place a few weeks before the release of his 1980 album "Hawks and Doves." That album isn't well regarded in his catalog, and for good reason. It's less than half an hour long, and the first half consists of recordings made in the late 1970s that were rejected from other albums. It was a hastily done contractual obligation album, which made it a big step down from his classic "Rust Never Sleeps" album the year before.

That said, the album does have some good songs in it. It's just that there aren't many songs, period, and it has no flow as an album. Since it wasn't received well, Young quickly forgot all about it. Of the five new songs on it (all on Side B), the only one he's ever played in concert much is "Hawks and Doves." He's played that 39 times, all between 1980 and 1985. He's played "Coastline" four times, and the other three - "Stayin' Power," "Union Man," and "Comin' Apart at Every Nail" - just once each! But all five of those were played at this single 1980 concert. 

But that's not all. He also played a new song that remains officially unreleased. Some call it "Winter Winds" and some call it "Turbine." Hopefully it'll be released someday and we'll get to find out what its name is. It's a nice song, and really should have been included on "Hawks and Doves," since it fits in perfectly with the country style of the other new songs. Additionally, he did another new song for the first time, "Motor City." That one would appear on his 1981 album "RE*AC*TOR."

Young played 11 songs in this concert. Of those, seven were played for the very first time, and none of those had even appeared on record yet! The concert had a heavy country sound, and the remaining songs - "Are You Ready for the Country," "Homegrown," and "Four Strong Winds" - all fit in with that. (He played with the same small band that he'd just used to record the "Hawks and Doves" album, and since they didn't know many of his songs, they played "Are You Ready for the Country" twice.)

I'd long had an interest in this concert since it was so unique in his long career. The problem was, the bootleg I'd heard of it didn't sound very good. But a new version has recently come to light. It's still only an audience recording, like previous versions, but it sounds significantly better. The one flaw it had, in my opinion, was that Young's voice was too low in the mix on most of the songs. So I used the audio editing program X-Minus to boost his vocals. Now, his vocals sound great. Sometimes, the rest of the band is kind of muddy, but at least his vocals sound as good as a soundboard boot. While I was at it, I also cleaned up the recording as best I could, removing some of the "woo-hoos" and shouts during songs.

Admittedly, the concert still doesn't sound stellar. But it's certainly listenable now, if you're a Neil Young fan, and it sounds a lot better than it did before.

The concert is rather short, at only 35 minutes. That's the whole thing, since he was on a festival bill with a lot of other acts. 

Oh, and by the way, I just went through all the other Young albums I've posted and fixed the mp3 tags and the volume balance between songs. (Those are just the solo ones - I still need to tackle the Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young ones.)

01 talk (Neil Young)
02 Are You Ready for the Country (Neil Young)
03 Coastline (Neil Young)
04 Stayin' Power (Neil Young)
05 Winter Winds [Turbine] (Neil Young)
06 Motor City (Neil Young)
07 talk (Neil Young)
08 Union Man (Neil Young)
09 Comin' Apart at Every Nail (Neil Young)
10 Hawks and Doves (Neil Young)
11 talk (Neil Young)
12 Homegrown (Neil Young)
13 talk (Neil Young)
14 Four Strong Winds (Neil Young)
15 talk (Neil Young)
16 Are You Ready for the Country (Neil Young)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16696725/NELYNG1980_BreadRsesFestivlGrkTheatreBerkelyCA__10-3-1980_atse.zip.html

I've only been able to find one photo of Young at this concert. (One can tell others used as bootleg covers and such aren't from the show because they don't have him with a beard, and he wore a beard at the time.) Unfortunately, I'd already used that single photo for the cover of my stray tracks album "Winter Winds." So I've used that photo again here. But the difference is I zoomed in on just his face for the "Winter Winds" cover, whereas this one shows all of his upper body. Furthermore, I added in some artwork taken from the actual festival at the bottom, though I changed some of the white text in it.

Neil Young - BBC Sessions, Volume 1: In Concert, London, Britain, 2-23-1971

These days, as I write this in 2022, there's a lot of excellent officially released Neil Young concert material from the late 1970 and early 1971 time period. If you're a casual fan and have one or more of those, you probably don't need this. The sound quality here is excellent, as is the performance. But it's only 28 minutes long, and all the songs are on most of those official albums. But if you're a serious Neil Young fan, there are very few bootlegs that sound as good as this one does. 

I'm posting it because, like the Carole King one I just posted, I want to get all the "In Concert" albums I have out there, so I can ask help for the ones I still don't have.

There's a website called "Sugar Mountain" (https://www.sugarmtn.org) that aspires to have all the information about the set lists for all of Young's concerts. I looked up this show and discovered that there were some songs that didn't get broadcast. Specifically, he also played:

Cowgirl in the Sand
I Am a Child
There's a Word
The Needle and the Damage Done
Tell Me Why

I suspect that if he played those extra songs, other artists who performed for the "In Concert" TV show around this time also did extra songs. Unfortunately, in Young's case, and most or all of those other cases, the extra songs seem to be lost.

What I find interesting is that, of the songs that were chosen for broadcast, the vast majority would have been unfamiliar at the time. Of course, in 1972, "Heart of Gold" would be a number one song in the US, and his album "Harvest" would sell millions. But that was 1972, and this was still early 1971. "Harvest" wound up getting delayed due to Young getting injured and some other issues. So even if the actual broadcast of this didn't take place until months later, the audience still wouldn't have known most of the songs. Plus, "Journey through the Past," "Love in Mind," and "Dance, Dance, Dance" wouldn't come out until even later. So probably "Don't Let It Bring You Down" would have been the only familiar song! 

UPDATE: On February 10, 2025, I upgraded the mp3 download file. The music is the same, but I changed the album title to "Volume One" after finding another BBC concert he did decades later.

01 Out on the Weekend (Neil Young)
02 talk (Neil Young)
03 Old Man (Neil Young)
04 Heart of Gold (Neil Young)
05 Don't Let It Bring You Down (Neil Young)
06 talk (Neil Young)
07 Journey through the Past (Neil Young)
08 talk (Neil Young)
09 A Man Needs a Maid (Neil Young)
10 Love in Mind (Neil Young)
11 talk (Neil Young)
12 Dance, Dance, Dance (Neil Young)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/5gSEaP9f

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/ZsZv3lny6DjW2Py/file

For this cover, I did pretty much exactly what I did for the cover of the Carole King concert I just posted. This concert also can be found on YouTube. So I took a screenshot from that video for the cover art. For the text, I used the same font and colors as the opening screen of that video, though I added in the red line at the bottom.

In February 2025, I upgraded the picture somewhat with the help of the Krea AI program.

Neil Young - After the Gold Rush - Acoustic Version (1970)

In the past couple of weeks, I've posted acoustic versions of Neil Young's earliest solo albums. Here's the next in that series, tackling his classic 1970 album "After the Gold Rush."

To reiterate what I'm doing here, I've done my best to find solo acoustic versions of each song on the album, and I've repeated the exact song order of the album. (I've also added four songs at the end that weren't on the album, but date from roughly the same time period.) In most cases, I was able to find live versions done in the solo acoustic format. They're either from officially released live albums, or from pristine soundboard bootlegs. 

Either way, I've stripped the songs of audience noise, hopefully making them sound like studio tracks. For some of those, you'll see "[Edit]" in the titles. That's generally because there was a lot of cheering when the song began, and/or when the singing began. In such cases, I was able to find repetitions of the intro chords to get the cheering to go away. With "Southern Man," the first line or two was covered in audience response, but luckily that verse was repeated later in the song, so I was able to patch that in.

The trickier part comes with songs where there's no good live or studio acoustic versions. There are four such songs on this album: "Till the Morning Comes," "When You Dance I Can Really Love," "I Believe in You," and "Cripple Creek Ferry." For those, I had to resort to editing tricks I've learned using the programs Spleeter and X-Minus. X-Minus is particularly good at removing backing vocals, so that's what I used it for here. Spleeter is good at removing the bass and drums, so I used that here too. 

I had to do a lot of finesse work getting those four songs in a listenable state. For instance, I might boost the volume of a word or two that didn't come through loudly enough, due to the program taking the backing vocals away taking some of the lead vocals too. Or I'd patch a line that didn't come through well with that same line repeated elsewhere in the song where it came through better.

The most difficult song, by far, was "When You Dance I Can Really Love." This is a full-on electric song, in contrast to all the other songs on the album, and these programs can only do so much in transforming such songs. To make matters worse, there's heavy backing vocals on all the vocals of the song, which again doesn't match how the other songs on the album are done. X-Minus wasn't able to take all those backing vocals away. So I found a live version where Young did sing solo, and used that to patch in the vocals sometimes. Even then, the last line of each chorus didn't work well, so I kept the backing vocals there.

These albums are an experiment to see how viable making decent sounding all acoustic versions of albums can be. Also, I'm curious to see if people enjoy this sort of thing or not. I plan on making one more, 1972's "Harvest," since that's such a great (and mostly acoustic) album, but I'm not sure beyond that. So please let me know what you think, especially of the songs where I had to resort to some editing tricks.

The original album is 35 minutes long. This acoustic version of just the album songs is 31 minutes long. But since I added four songs at the end, the total is 42 minutes long.

01 Tell Me Why [Edit] (Neil Young)
02 After the Gold Rush (Neil Young)
03 Only Love Can Break Your Heart (Neil Young)
04 Southern Man [Edit] (Neil Young)
05 Till the Morning Comes [Edit] (Neil Young)
06 Oh Lonesome Me (Neil Young)
07 Don't Let It Bring You Down (Neil Young)
08 Birds (Neil Young)
09 When You Dance I Can Really Love [Edit] (Neil Young)
10 I Believe in You [Edit] (Neil Young)
11 Cripple Creek Ferry [Edit] (Neil Young)
12 It Might Have Been [Edit] (Neil Young)
13 Bad Fog of Loneliness (Neil Young)
14 Ohio [Edit] (Neil Young)
15 See the Sky about to Rain (Neil Young)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16696708/NELYNG1970ba_AftrGoldRshAcoustc_atse.zip.html

The official album cover uses a photo of Neil Young passing an old woman on a sidewalk in Greenwich Village in New York City in 1970. Young had the photo "solarized" for the cover, which was kind of an inversion, turning his face black. I've used the undoctored version. Also, Graham Nash was in the original photo, but got cropped out of it (since it wasn't his solo album, after all). I've cropped things to remove some of the space on the left of Young, but managed to keep Nash on the edge of the frame on the right side.

Neil Young - Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere - Acoustic Version (1969)

I just posted an acoustic version of Neil Young's first solo album, 1968's "Neil Young." As I explained in my write-up for that album, I'm experimenting with using the sound editing program Spleeter. I think one of the more interesting things that program can do is remove the drums and bass from songs to make acoustic mixes. With Young's first album, I actually only used Spleeter on one song, since he's performed solo acoustic versions of all the other songs, and I could use them. So I want to post this too, an acoustic version of his second solo album, "Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere," to give you a better idea of how Spleeter is helping my edits.

For 1969's "Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere," Young was backed by the band Crazy Horse, who would occasionally work with him for decades to come. As a result, it had more of a rocking sound than his first album. The album had two songs with long guitar solos, a nine-minute long "Down by the River," and a ten-minute long "Cowgirl in the Sand." "Cinnamon Girl" is a lot shorter, but it has a really rocking arrangement.

Normally, I wouldn't be able to create acoustic versions out of those kinds of songs. I consider Spleeter good for making minor changes, not completely transforming a song. But luckily for this album version, Young came up with solo acoustic arrangements for all three of those songs. So I've used concert versions for those, recorded from 1969 to 1971. In the case of "Cinnamon Girl," he usually played that on guitar, but I used an interesting piano version instead.

The song "Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere" was also payed in solo acoustic style in concert, so I was able to use one of those versions. "The Losing End" was played in solo acoustic style three times in 1969, but unfortunately no recordings of those versions are publicly available. He played the song later, starting in 1973, but generally such versions were done with a band until many years later. "Running Dry (Requiem for the Rockets)" has been played in concert just twice, and that was all the way in 2019. "Round and Round (It Won't Be Long)" has never been played in concert.

For "Round and Round," luckily, Young recorded a solo acoustic demo in 1967, so I was able to use that. But for "The Losing End" and "Running Dry," I decided my best option would be to use Spleeter to remove the bass and drums. So that's what I did, and I think those versions sound pretty decent.

If one replaces the long electric versions of "Down by the River" and "Cowgirl in the Sand" with short acoustic ones, it makes the album significantly shorter. In fact, this version is only 27 minutes long. But it so happens that Young came up with some more good original songs he didn't release at the time, plus two songs that would appear on the 1970 Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young album "Deja Vu." I've chosen to include them here because they were recorded in 1969.

Nearly all these extra songs were performed in solo acoustic mode in 1969, so I was able to use those versions. All of those, plus two more from the main album, are taken from an officially unreleased 1969 Canterbury House concert that is a pristine soundboard. (As I often do, with those and other live versions, I removed the audience noise to make them sound more like studio versions.)

Only one of these extra songs turned out to be a problem for me. I'm referring to "Sea of Madness." This song was performed by Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young in concert a number of times in late 1969, and a version they did appeared on the Woodstock movie soundtrack. However, no studio version was ever released, and Young has never tried the song in concert on his own. It turns out CSNY did attempt a studio version, but it remains officially unreleased. I used Spleeter on that version, removing the bass and drums. 

But in this case, it didn't work so well. The performance is fundamentally a band version, with the organ as the main instrument, and lots of backing vocals (which Spleeter can't remove). Turning that into an acoustic version isn't ideal. I've included it as the last song, so you can choose to keep it, or not.

This album is 46 minutes long. I think it's quite interesting, with significantly different versions for many songs, all in excellent sound quality.

If people like these acoustic versions, I can continue the series pretty easily with acoustic versions of his next two albums, "After the Gold Rush" and "Harvest." But beyond that it's much harder to find good acoustic versions of many songs, so I'm not sure how doable some of those albums would be.

01 Cinnamon Girl (Neil Young)
02 Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere (Neil Young)
03 Round and Round [It Won't Be Long] (Neil Young)
04 Down by the River (Neil Young)
05 The Losing End [Edit] (Neil Young)
06 Running Dry [Requiem for the Rockets] [Edit] (Neil Young)
07 Cowgirl in the Sand (Neil Young)
08 Wonderin' (Neil Young)
09 Everybody's Alone (Neil Young)
10 Dance Dance Dance (Neil Young)
11 Helpless (Neil Young)
12 Country Girl (Neil Young)
13 Sea of Madness [Edit] (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15848224/NeilY_1969c_EvrybdyKnwsThisIsNwhereAcoustc_atse.zip.html

Since I'm making an alternate version of an album, it would be nice to use an alternate version of the album cover. Most of the time, good alternates don't exist. In this case, the cover photo continued onto the back side of the album. I found a version of the back side without any writing on it, so I used that. I added in the text in a different spot, using the same font as the original.

Obviously, Neil Young isn't in the photo. But since the album title is "Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere," I thought it was fitting that he's nowhere to be seen.

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.

Neil Young - Folksinger II (Acoustic Buffalo Springfield Demos) (1966-1968)

Some time back, I posted a Neil Young album called "Folksinger" that mostly consists of acoustic demos he recorded in 1965. I recently decided it would make sense to make another album consisting of acoustic versions of the songs he did while a member of Buffalo Springfield. I've already posted two albums of Buffalo Springfield demos, and many of the exact same performances are on those albums. But some here are not, and anyway, I think it makes for an interesting listen to hear all these versions together.

When I put this together, I removed five songs from the "Folksinger" album that fit better here. So if you have that, I suggest you get the latest version to avoid duplication of those songs. That said, three songs from that album ARE duplicated here - "Nowadays Clancy Can't Even Sing," "Flying on the Ground Is Wrong," and "There Goes My Babe" - because these are different performances. I figure the first two especially are too important as Buffalo Springfield songs not to be included.

The songs are arranged in rough chronological order from when they were first done by Young (with or without Buffalo Springfield) at the time. All the versions are from the 1960s, but some are from a bit later. For instance, the song "Down to the Wire" was played in public by Young only one time in his long career, in a solo acoustic version in 1969. So I've included that, but with other 1966 songs, since that's when Buffalo Springfield recorded their version. Also, the best acoustic version of "Flying on the Ground Is Wrong" I could find is from another 1969 concert, so I've used that, but also put it in with other 1966 songs. I also used a lot of live versions from 1968. (But for all the live versions, I removed the audience noise to make them sound like acoustic demos.)

This year, 2021, I've gained new sound editing capabilities thanks to the new program Spleeter. I've used that here to create mostly acoustic versions of the songs "Sell Out" and "Burned." The sound quality isn't great, since Spleeter can only do so much in removing the drums and bass, but I figure it's good enough for inclusion. Note that these the only actual Buffalo Springfield recordings here. There aren't more because Young's unusual voice was considered non-commercial at the time, so he didn't get to sing lead vocals in the band on many songs.

Thus, a few songs he did during this time period aren't represented here, because there's nothing close to an acoustic version existing, and often no version with him singing lead at all. Those songs are: "Do I Have to Come Right Out and Say It," "Whatever Happened to Saturday Night," and "It's So Hard to Wait." (That last one was co-written by Young and Richie Furay.)

As I said above, I'm not totally happy with the versions of "Sell Out" and "Burned" I created with Spleeter. But I figure especially with "Burned," it's hard to have a collection of Young's songs with the band without that one. Also, we're unlikely to ever hear an acoustic version, since Young never played the song in concert until 2009, and that was with a full band, with his voice significantly changed. This version has a lot of backing vocals and other instruments, but it does sound interesting, in my opinion, without the bass and drums. Although note there are two short breaks with just bass guitar. I kept the bass for those bits, because it sounded weird having silence instead.

Also, this version of "Sell Out" is almost a minute longer than the only officially released version on the "Buffalo Springfield" box set. That's because Young didn't like some sections where he just sang "la la's" instead of words, and edited them out. But a bootleg version with the "la's" is available, so I edited those bits back into the released version, before using Spleeter on it.

Note that "Down, Down, Down" later became one section of the Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young song "Country Girl."

When Young released his "Archives, Volume 1" box set in 2009, he posted some extra performances that didn't make the cut on his website. I've used four of those here: "Runaround Babe," "High School Graduation," "Expecting to Fly," and "Broken Arrow." I've included them here to help bring these rarities more to light. I probably would have used a different version of "Expecting to Fly" since this one has double vocals, and I'd prefer single vocals for an acoustic album, but this version is fine, and like I said, rare.

There are two bonus tracks. There's nothing wrong with them in terms of sound quality. The reason they're bonus tracks is because they appeared on his 1969 solo albums. I plan on making all-acoustic versions of those albums, so you might not want them here and also on those albums.

This album is 45 minutes long, not including the bonus tracks.

01 Nowadays Clancy Can't Even Sing (Neil Young)
02 Flying on the Ground Is Wrong (Neil Young)
03 Out of My Mind (Neil Young)
04 Down to the Wire (Neil Young)
05 Burned [Edit] (Buffalo Springfield)
06 Down, Down, Down (Neil Young)
07 There Goes My Babe (Neil Young)
08 One More Sign (Neil Young)
09 Runaround Babe (Neil Young)
10 Sell Out [Edit] (Buffalo Springfield)
11 High School Graduation (Neil Young)
12 Mr. Soul (Neil Young)
13 Expecting to Fly (Neil Young)
14 Broken Arrow (Neil Young)
15 On the Way Home (Neil Young)
16 I Am a Child (Neil Young)

Round and Round (Neil Young)
The Old Laughing Lady (Neil Young)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16696653/NELYNG1966-1968_FolksingrIIAcoustcBuffloSprngfieldDmos_atse.zip.html

The photo of Neil Young dates to 1967. I don't know the details beyond that.

Neil Young - Canterbury House, Ann Arbor, MI, 10-16-1969 (Compilation)

In the last few weeks (as I write this in August 2021), Neil Young has released an incredible acoustic concert he performed in 1969, but only through his website, neilyoungarchives.com. In my opinion, the recording of this show is one of the best recordings he ever made in his long career, so it's frustrating that it's not being officially released (at least not yet). I want to share it, because it really needs to be heard by lots of people, but I also don't want to take exclusive content from the Archives website. So I decided on a compromise. Young played three sets that night. I'm posting about half of that material here: the second set (which is the longest), plus the three other songs that were only played for the first or third sets. So one gets one version of each unique song played that night.

This show is very unique and special indeed. Young played some acoustic shows up through about February 1969, then switched to playing with Crazy House or Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young for the rest of 1969 and 1970. It was only at the last couple of months of 1970 when he did another solo acoustic tour. So this concert at the Canterbury House in Ann Arbor, Michigan, was the only full acoustic show he did for well over a year and a half during a very crucial part of his career. It took place right in the middle of a CSNY tour. It was professionally recorded, with the possible intention of being released as a live album. However, that never happened, and the show was never even available as a bootleg. 

The version that has now finally appeared sounds fantastic. Young was in top form, both with his musical performance and his entertaining banter between songs. Plus, since this was the only acoustic concert he did for a large portion of 1969 and 1970, many of the songs were very rarely done by him at other times, at least not in acoustic format. For instance, this concert is the ONLY time in his long career that he's ever played his Buffalo Springfield song "Down to the Wire." It's one of just two times he played the cover "Oh Lonesome Me" prior to 2005. It's the first time he played "Country Girl" in public, one of only a small number of times he played it, and this is the only excellent live acoustic recording of it. It's the only time he played "I've Been Waiting for You" prior to 2001, and the only live acoustic version. It's the first time he played "Here We Are in the Years," and the only live acoustic version he's ever done. It's the first time he played "Everybody's Alone" in concert, and one of just of four times he's played it in public. It also was the first public performances of "Helpless" and "Dance, Dance, Dance." I could go on with other rarities, like "I've Loved Her So Long" and "Wonderin'." 

Suffice to say this is a very unique "holy grail" concert for Neil Young fans! It boggles my mind that it hasn't been officially released yet. It may well be that he will put in out as an album soon, in which case I'll take this post down. But until then, you can tide yourself over with this. And if you want to hear the rest, I strongly suggest you sign up for his Archives website. There's lots more exclusive material getting posted there, including many full concerts.

To make this a coherent listen, I put the songs from the third set ("Down to the Wire") and the first set ("I've Loved Her So Long" and "Oh Lonesome Me") at the beginning. Then the entire second set follows without interruption. I boosted the volume of his banter between songs in many cases, since that was rather low in the mix.

This album is an hour and 13 minutes long. 

UPDATE: On October 7, 2021, I updated the mp3 download file. I didn't add or remove any songs. But it dawned on me after listening to this album some more that there was something wrong with the sound, specifically that the bass was way too prominent in the mix. Luckily, this was just with one version, and I was able to find a better version. So I redid the album using a different source. It's a really big sound improvement, so please make sure you have the updated version.

01 talk (Neil Young)
02 Down to the Wire (Neil Young)
03 talk (Neil Young)
04 I've Loved Her So Long (Neil Young)
05 talk (Neil Young)
06 Oh Lonesome Me (Neil Young)
07 On the Way Home (Neil Young)
08 talk (Neil Young)
09 Helpless (Neil Young)
10 talk (Neil Young)
11 Cinnamon Girl - The Loner (Neil Young)
12 talk (Neil Young)
13 Birds (Neil Young)
14 talk (Neil Young)
15 I Am a Child (Neil Young)
16 talk (Neil Young)
17 Everybody's Alone (Neil Young)
18 talk (Neil Young)
19 Dance, Dance, Dance (Neil Young)
20 The 1956 Bubblegum Incident - It's My Time (Neil Young)
21 talk (Neil Young)
22 Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere (Neil Young)
23 talk (Neil Young)
24 The Old Laughing Lady (Neil Young)
25 talk (Neil Young)
26 I've Been Waiting for You (Neil Young)
27 talk (Neil Young)
28 Here We Are in the Years (Neil Young)
29 talk (Neil Young)
30 Wonderin' (Neil Young)
31 Down by the River (Neil Young)
32 talk (Neil Young)
33 Country Girl (Neil Young)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/iDsKw7ir

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/xe0t0inP30fCZW1/file

I made the cover art using a photo of Neil Young from 1969. I didn't see any good color ones of him from that year, so I colorized a black and white one. I used the Krea AI to sharpen it up.

Neil Young - Acoustic Demos (1973-1974)

In November 2020, Neil Young released the excellent box set "Archives, Volume II." I've taken all the songs from that not on his previously existing studio albums and added them to various mid-1970s stray tracks albums I've made. There also are lots of alternate versions of songs from his studio albums that I don't plan on doing anything with. But today, a commenter suggested I should do something with all the acoustic demos he did from 1973 and 1974. I thought that was an excellent idea, so I quickly put this together.

A big reason I'm doing this is because in January 2021, Young posted three acoustic demos on his website, neilyoungarchives.com. They're not available in any form unless you can record them streaming there, which is what I did. I've added those to four more acoustic demos from "Archives, Volume II."

Unfortunately, that makes for a very short album. So I tried to think what else I could add that would fit the format, and that I have posted on another album. I came up with a nice version of "Star of Bethlehem" that Young performed on stage during the Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young tour in 1974. Luckily, this comes from a soundboard bootleg, and he played it solo acoustic. Once I edited out the crowd noise, it sounds just like the others.

I did the exact same thing to "Homefires." Unfortunately, the bootleg recording of that is good, but it isn't as good as the rest. So I've only included it here as a bonus track.

This album is only 29 minutes long, 32 if you include the bonus track. That's pretty short, but everything here is high quality. Hopefully in the future he'll release more acoustic demos through his website, and I'll be able to add some to this.

On a different note, the same time he posted the acoustic demos to his website, he also posted the song "Barefoot Floors." This is an original that was inexplicably left off the box set. I've added that to the "Homefires" album, since that collects songs from that time period not on any other studio albums. If you want that (and it's an excellent song), you can get it here:

https://albumsthatshouldexist.blogspot.com/2020/12/neil-young-homefires-various-songs-1974.html

01 Come Along and Say You Will (Neil Young)
02 Mellow My Mind (Neil Young)
03 Ambulance Blues (Neil Young)
04 Human Highway (Neil Young)
05 Love-Art Blues (Neil Young)
06 Through My Sails (Neil Young)
07 Pardon My Heart (Neil Young)
08 Star of Bethlehem (Neil Young)
09 Vacancy (Neil Young)

Homefires (Neil Young)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16696717/NELYNG1973-1974_AcoustcDmos_atse.zip.html

For the album cover, I really wanted a photo of Neil Young playing acoustic guitar in the studio in 1974. Unfortunately, I couldn't find any such photo. So I decided to create one. I found a photo of him playing acoustic guitar on stage during the 1974 CSNY tour. I used Photoshop to strip out the background. Then I found a totally unreleased photo of a recording studio and put that in as the background. So this is kind of Frankenstein of a photo. I apologize if it doesn't work for you, but I like it.

Neil Young - Shots - Non-Album Tracks (1976-1978)

Note that I've posted this Neil Young stray tracks album already. However, I just deleted that post and I'm reposting it with a new mp3 download file, due to the fact that I've just posted another Neil Young stray tracks album, "Ranch Romances," that significantly changed what's on this one. I want to make sure that the people who downloaded that also download the latest version of this.

Neil Young has long had a habit of writing a song and then not releasing it for years afterwards, sometimes waiting decades. For all of these stray tracks albums, I've imagined that he released his songs in the normal fashion, putting them on an album a year or two later at the most.

A majority of the songs here would be released by Young in different versions years later. "Peace of Mind" was released on the "Comes a Time" album in 1978, just two years after the version here. However, I've included it here because this is a rocking full band version that's very different from the 1978 country version. It's a similar situation with "Hold Back the Tears." That was on "American Stars n' Bars" in 1977, but this is a different version that remains unreleased. "Cryin' Eyes" came out in a drastically different version on the "Life" album in 1987. "Lost in Space" and "Captain Kennedy" were both recorded in 1977, but not released until the 1980 album "Hawks and Doves." A different version of "The Ways of Love" was included on the 1989 album "Freedom." A rocking version of "Shots" was included on the 1981 album "Re-act-or," but this is an acoustic version.

That leaves just "Windward Passage" and "Lady Wingshot" as songs that are still unreleased in any form today.  "Lady Wingshot" is a song about the famous female sharpshooter Annie Oakley, by the way. This version of "Windward Passage" sounds great, and comes from a soundboard, but it got cut off before it ended. However, I faded it out at a point where I feel it sounds finished.

There's at least one more unreleased original song from this time period, "Bright Sunny Day." Young only played it one time in concert, in 1978. Unfortunately, the bootleg recording of it sounds terrible, so bad that I couldn't even bear to include it as a bonus track. But if you're curious, you can find it on YouTube. 

Chances are, if and when "Archives, Volume III" is released, we'll find out about other unreleased songs or versions. For instance, it's known the song "Unknown Beauty' was first written around 1978, but wasn't released until the "Harvest Moon" album in 1992.

1978 is not just the chronological end of this album, it was the end of an era for Young. He had two hit albums in 1979, "Rust Never Sleeps" and "Live Rust." But they were recorded in 1978. He didn't play any concerts or do any studio recording in 1979 at all, because he'd given birth to a child with cerebral palsy, and taking care of him would end up taking 15 of more hours of his day, every day, for the next few years. So Young's 1970s flood of songwriting creativity ends in 1978. In my opinion, it would take him a long time to fully get his groove back.

For the bonus track, I've added another version of "Windward Passage." That's because the version I put on the album sounds great since it's from a soundboard bootleg, but is incomplete at about four and a half minutes long. The bonus track version is compete at over eight minutes long, but it comes from an audience bootleg that still sounds decent but doesn't sound as good. Personally, I prefer the shorter version, not only for the sound quality but because I feel the extra four minutes don't do much anyway. Here you can take your choice. (By the way, I tried to merge the two versions together, but I couldn't get that to work, due to different pitches and tempos and so forth. If anyone else can, please let me know.)

01 Shots (Neil Young)
04 Lady Wingshot (Neil Young)
05 Windward Passage [Instrumental] (Neil Young & the Ducks)
06 Cryin' Eyes (Neil Young & the Ducks)
07 Country Home (Neil Young)
07 Lost in Space (Neil Young)
08 Captain Kennedy (Neil Young)
09 Hold Back the Tears (Neil Young)
10 Peace of Mind [Electric Version] (Neil Young)
10 The Ways of Love (Neil Young)

Windward Passage [Instrumental] (Neil Young & the Ducks)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16696729/NELYNG1976f-1978_Shts_atse.zip.html

The cover art photo comes from a Crosby, Nash and Young (no Stills!) concert in Santa Cruz in August 1977. I cropped the photo so that Crosby and Nash aren't included.

Neil Young - Ranch Romances - Non-Album Tracks (1976)

I'm finishing sorting out Neil Young's prolific mid-1970s songwriting burst. I just posted "Dume" to gather the rest of his stray tracks from 1974 and 1975. This album gathers most of his 1976 stray tracks. I will follow this with a revised version of "Shots" to collect the rest of 1976, plus songs from 1977 and 1978.

Neil Young wrote so many excellent songs in the mid-1970s that he didn't know what to do with them all. There were numerous "lost albums," meaning albums he considered but ultimately didn't release. "Homegrown" is one such 1975 album that was finally released in 2020. "Hitchhiker" was a proposed 1976 album that was released in 2017. But there were more. Around 1976, "Mediterranean," "Chrome Dreams," and "Ranch Romances" were all titles that were considered. I have no idea what the actual song lists were for any of these. I've simply taken the stray tracks from early to mid-1976 and gathered them here. I could have easily chosen another name, but "Ranch Romances" appealed to me. If anyone knows more about these proposed albums and which songs exactly were supposed to be on them, please let me know.

I've already posted a series of albums in which I maximized the number of Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young songs and albums. For these albums, I'm doing the opposite, imagining that Young put out all his songs on his solo albums shortly after he wrote and recorded them. As part of that, I'm acting as if the Stills-Young Band album "Long May You Run" next happened. I've included four songs from that - "Let It Shine," "Midnight on the Bay," "Fountainbleau" and "Ocean Girl" - but only "Ocean Girl" is the exact same version as the one on that album.

I've been able to update my Neil Young stray tracks albums due to the release of the "Archives, Volume II" box set in late 2020. But note there are a number of previously unreleased alternate versions on there that I'm not including on any of these albums. Also, the material from that ends in mid-1976. The impact of that here is that I presume a version of the still unreleased song "Evening Coconut" will appear on "Archives, Volume III," whenever that comes out. For now, we have to make do with this slightly rough bootleg version. It's the exact same situation with "Sad Movies," except the song quality of this bootleg version is excellent.

The song "Campaigner" first appeared on the 1977 best of compilation album "Decade." It turns out that version was the exact same version on "Hitchhiker," except that one verse was edited out. I've used the longer version. 

A couple of the other songs here eventually came out on other releases. A live version of "Stringman" was released on the 1993 album "Unplugged." A new version of "Hitchhiker" first came out on the 2010 album "La Noise," then the original 1976 version came out on the 2017 album also called "Hitchhiker."

01 Campaigner [Long Version] (Neil Young)
02 Let It Shine (Neil Young)
03 Sad Movies (Neil Young)
04 Midnight on the Bay (Neil Young)
05 Stringman (Neil Young)
06 Fontainebleau (Stills-Young Band)
07 Evening Coconut (Stills-Young Band)
08 Ocean Girl (Stills-Young Band)
09 Mediterranean (Neil Young)
10 Hitchhiker (Neil Young)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16696718/NELYNG1976a_RnchRmances_atse.zip.html

At the time Young wrote these songs, he owned a ranch and he was having a lot of romantic trouble, breaking up with his romantic partner of several years, Carrie Snodgress, in 1975. So maybe that's why he wanted to call an album "Ranch Romances." But I found out there were a series of pulp novels in the 1970s called "Ranch Romances," and maybe that played into his thinking. For the album title text, I used the exact font taken from the cover of one of the novels. All the novel covers used the exact same font and style.

As for the cover photo, I found it with a Rolling Stone magazine article about the "Archives, Volume II" box set. It looks like it dates from that time period, but I don't know the exact details.

Neil Young - Dume - Non-Album Tracks (1974-1975)

In 1974 and 1975, Neil Young arguably hit his peak as a songwriter. It wasn't just that the songs he wrote were so good; it's that there were so many of them as well. In 1975, he released the studio albums "Tonight's the Night" and "Zuma." We can discount "Tonight's the Night" because it actually was recorded in 1973. But there was another excellent 1975 album that he sat on until 2020: "Homegrown." On top of that, I've posted another album of excellent songs that could have been released in early 1975: "Homefires." Then, on top of that, there's this album, which mainly consist of outtakes from the "Zuma" sessions. So even with "Tonight's the Night" put aside, that's the equal of four studio albums of excellent songs all from the same year!

A year or two ago, I had already posted a couple of albums of his mid-1970s, which I called "Deep Forbidden Lake" and "Let It Shine." I'm deleting both of those today because they're being replaced by four albums: "Last Dance," "Homefires," "Dume," and "Ranch Romances." If you've downloaded those in the past, I highly recommend you get rid of those. They're obsolete thanks to "Archives, Volume II" released in late 2020, with many previously unreleased songs and versions.  

One thing you may notice about the song list below is that many of the songs here have already been released elsewhere by now. For instance, "Deep Forbidden Lake" came out on the "Decade" compilation in 1977. This exact version of "The Old Homestead" came out on the 1980 album "Hawks and Doves." "Bad News Comes to Town" was done in a drastically different big band version on tour in 1988, and then that version was included in the archival release "Bluenote Cafe" in 2015. A different version of "Too Far Gone" appeared on "Freedom" in 1989. A different version of "Hawaii" came out on the archival release "Hitchhiker" in 2017. Finally, different versions of "Ride My Llama," "Powerfinger" and "Pocahontas" were included on "Rust Never Sleeps" in 1979.

The thing is though, all of those later releases could and should have been released in 1975. But there also are a few songs that appear here for the first time, thanks to "Archives, Volume II," such as "Changing Highways," "Daughters," and "Born to Run."

The first five songs here are still from late 1974 recording sessions. The rest were recorded in the May and June 1975 recording sessions that resulted in the "Zuma" album. The "Archives, Volume II" box set calls the disc with these sessions on it "Dume," so that's the name I've given it as well. This is because most of the songs were recorded at a studio in Point Dume, California, near Malibu. (Similarly, "Zuma" is the name of a beach near Malibu.)

By the way, there was one song, "Love-Art Blues," that I had planned to include on this album. But at the last minute, I decided there was room to include it on the previous album in this series, "Homefires." So please redownload that album or you'll miss that song. Sorry 'bout that. Here's the link:

https://albumsthatshouldexist.blogspot.com/2020/12/neil-young-homefires-various-songs-1974.html

01 Bad News Comes to Town (Neil Young)
02 Changing Highways (Neil Young)
03 Daughters (Neil Young)
04 The Old Homestead (Neil Young)
05 Deep Forbidden Lake (Neil Young)
06 Born to Run (Neil Young)
07 Hawaii (Neil Young)
08 No One Seems to Know (Neil Young)
09 Too Far Gone (Neil Young)
10 Ride My Llama (Neil Young)
11 Powderfinger (Neil Young)
12 Pocahontas (Neil Young)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16696723/NELYNG1974d-1975_Dme_atse.zip.html

This album essentially is a companion album to "Zuma," so I wanted an album cover to reflect that. At the Steve Hoffman music forum, I saw someone took some of the extra artwork from the "Zuma" album, inverted the light and dark, and used that as a cover. I don't remember who that way, sorry, but I liked the idea and decided to do the same. I used one main drawing from the "Zuma" booklet, overlaid on the official "Zuma" cover, then added bits and pieces from a couple other drawings. I added Neil Young's name to the upper left corner.

Neil Young - Homefires - Non-Album Tracks (1974)

For a long time, we only had an incomplete picture of the rare and unreleased Neil Young songs from the early to mid-1970s. Now, thanks to the release of his "Archives, Volume II" box set, we have a much more complete picture. Apparently, the only song from that time period that he recorded and remains unreleased is called "Barefoot Floors." 

 I had posted a couple of albums gathering up the stray tracks from this era, as well as a rough version of "Homegrown." I'll be replacing them with better albums. Once I have those posted, I'll delete them as obsolete. (Also, I won't be replacing "Homegrown" with anything, since that's a rare case of an "album that should exist" that now officially has been released.)

It turns out that Young had one album in mind in 1974 to be called "Homefires" and another from around that same time to be called "Homegrown." Don't be confused by the very similar titles, because they were totally different albums (though some of the same songs might have been considered for both). "Homegrown" is now a closed book, since that has been officially released. But "Homefires" remains an open mystery. Young has talked about officially releasing that some time in the future, but so far he hasn't done that. Unlike another album of his I recently posted, "Last Dance," nobody outside his inner circle knows which songs were considered for this album.

So I'm going to use this as a gathering of all his stray tracks from a certain time period, and then I'll call it "Homefires." It's not what he intended, I'm sure, but it'll have to do for now. Certainly, many of these songs would have appeared on the version he intended, since these were the ones he didn't release at the time. Furthermore, they're all really good songs. In my opinion, this album would get a five star rating, along with most of his other early to mid-1970s albums.

This time period, roughly 1974, was a very emotionally troubled time for Young, because his first marriage, to Carrie Snodgrass, was falling apart. One way he coped was by writing more songs than he knew what to do with. At the same time, he was part of a massive Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young tour that summer. A few of these songs ("Traces," "Long May You Run," "Pushed It Over the End" and "Hawaiian Sunrise") were attempted by CSNY, either live or in the studio. 

I've put those on my "alternate CSNY universe" albums, where CSNY actually put out some albums together in the mid-1970s. But that won't stop me from including them here too. Generally speaking, they're very different in these versions. That's especially the case with "Pushed It Over the End." CSNY did a rocking, full-band version of it. But here, Young did it just with solo acoustic guitar.

The vast majority of the songs here were officially released in these versions for the first time on "Archives, Volume II." The exceptions are "Winterlong," which came out on his "Decade" compilation in 1977, plus "Long May You Run" and "Pushed It Over the End." The latter two performances come from his great solo concert appearance at the Bottom Line in May 1974. I've posted the whole thing, which you can get here:

http://albumsthatshouldexist.blogspot.com/2019/03/neil-young-citizen-kane-junior-blues.html

It's officially unreleased now, but apparently Young has plans to release it in 2021 (though we'll see if those come through on time). 

Anyway, the only version I have of those two songs comes from an excellent sounding audience bootleg, but an audience bootleg just the same. That means the audience could be heard from time to time. A particularly annoying aspect was that some people in the audience thought "Long May You Run" was a jokey song (since Young sings about his car), and they laughed from time to time through it. I carefully edited the recording to get rid of the laughing and other noise as much as possible. I made a lot of improvements, but I couldn't completely get rid of all of it. I did the same with "Pushed It Over the End," but I had a lot less trouble there.

"Sweet Joni" was also from a concert recording. But that was a pristine soundboard, and it got released as part of "Archives, Volume II." So all I really had to do there was remove some crowd noise right at the start and end of the song. With that removed, you'd think it was recorded in the studio.

In terms of the song order, because we don't have any proposed song list for this album, I didn't have anything to go on. With a few exceptions, I decided to go with the song order as presented on "Archives, Volume II." All the songs here from that came from the same album, and they flow together well. The main alteration I did was to put "Greensleeves" at the very end. That's a cover of the well-known traditional song, and it just felt right to me to put it last.

Note that although this isn't the exact "Homefires" that Young intended, it holds together very well as an album, in my opinion. In part, that's because the vast majority of it is acoustic, or at least semi-acoustic, so it has a consistent sound. There are no long Crazy Horse guitar jams here. But also, it's almost a concept album, with nearly all the songs relating to his crumbling marriage with his wife. In fact, they were so personal and painful that that's probably the main reason they remained unreleased for decades (and that was the same case with the "Homegrown" songs). 

Even some songs that may not seem thematically related to that, such as "Pushed It Over the End," probably are. (That song deals with political matters, especially the Patty Hearst kidnapping, and personal matters simultaneously.) "One More Sign" actually is a song he originally did in the 1960s with Buffalo Springfield, but it's drastically overhauled with a slow acoustic arrangement, and fits in to the divorce theme. Admittedly, a couple songs don't fit the theme, with "Sweet Joni" especially standing out. But I didn't have a better album to put it on, since it didn't really fit with the previous stray tracks album, "Last Dance."

UPDATE: On January 16, 2021, when I was getting ready to post the next stray tracks album in this series ("Dume"), I realized it made sense to move one song, "Love-Art Blues," to this album. So that's what I did. 

Then, on February 1, 2021, I added the song "Barefoot Floors." This is another excellent Young original. It was inexplicably left off the "Archives, Volume II" box set, but it was streamed on his website neilyoungarchives.com in January 2021.

01 Winterlong (Neil Young)
02 Sweet Joni (Neil Young)
03 Traces (Neil Young)
04 Long May You Run [Edit] (Neil Young)
05 Pushed It Over the End [Edit] (Neil Young)
06 Homefires (Neil Young)
07 Hawaiian Sunrise (Neil Young)
08 L.A. Girls and Ocean Boys (Neil Young)
09 One More Sign (Neil Young)
10 Frozen Man (Neil Young)
11 Give Me Strength (Neil Young)
12 Love-Art Blues (Neil Young)
13 Barefoot Floors (Neil Young)
14 Greensleeves (Neil Young)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16696715/NELYNG1974c_Hmefies_atse.zip.html

Phew! I've mentioned that I had some computer troubles lately. Luckily, I made this album cover just before those troubles. I'm really happy at how it turned out. I searched the Internet for "Neil Young" and "fire," and found this photo of him in front of a fire. I don't know where or when it's from, but it looks like it's from the 1970s.

Neil Young - Last Dance - Non-Album Tracks (1973)

A few days ago as I write this, the Neil Young box set "Archives, Volume II" was released. Man oh man! I've been waiting to hear the songs on that for decades. It sounds just as good as I'd hoped. If you're a Neil Young fan at all, I highly recommend that you get it.

I've already posted a couple of stray tracks albums in the time period covered by the box set, 1972 to 1976. I plan on redoing and expanding that effort, starting here. This one is a bit different than the others I plan on doing though, because Young came very close to releasing an album called "Last Dance" in 1973, and the exact song list is known for it. So this is closely based on that.

Here's a short article from "Uncut" magazine about this lost album:

Neil Young was still laid up at his Broken Arrow ranch, just south of San Francisco, recovering from spinal surgery, when “Harvest” made him the biggest-selling solo artist in the world. During the long months of his recuperation, there had been a growing clamour for him to tour that had gone unanswered, although he knew there were big bucks to be made by everyone after the album’s phenomenal success. His record company had simultaneously been so hungry for a follow-up that in November 1972, they’d released the soundtrack from his unseen film, “Journey Through The Past”. It was a rag-bag of old tracks, studio outtakes, a couple of live cuts, bits of Handel’s “Messiah”, a cover of The Beach Boys’ “Let’s Go Away For Awhile” and only one new song, “Soldier”. Young hadn’t wanted it released at all, but Warners had told him they’d distribute the film if he gave them the soundtrack. They then tried to dress it up as his ‘new’ album, and promptly dumped the film.

The same month, fuming at the label’s duplicity, he anyway started to assemble a large crew of technicians at his ranch to prepare for a three-month, 65-date tour, the largest and longest of its kind to date, which would find him playing nightly to audiences of up to 20,000 people in sports stadiums, basketball arenas, and ice hockey rinks. Also at Broken Arrow were the Stray Gators, the band who’d played on “Harvest”, including veteran Nashville session drummer Kenny Buttrey, bassist Tim Drummond, pedal-steel player Ben Keith and on keyboards Jack Nitzsche, the producer and arranger who’d first worked with Young on his Buffalo Springfield epic, “Expecting To Fly”. They would be his backing band on the forthcoming tour, rehearsals for which were interspersed with recording sessions for the official follow-up to “Harvest”.

Young had already recorded four solo acoustic demos at A&M Studios in LA – “Letter From Nam”, “Last Dance”, “Come Along And Say You Will” and “The Bridge” – and worked up more new songs at Broken Arrow. The new record’s working title was “Last Dance”. 

---

Now, for the first time, the public has all the songs that makes up this album. Instead of releasing "Last Dance," Young decided to release the live album "Time Fades Away" that largely contained the same bunch of songs. However, the tour for that album had lots of problems, and the album itself was problematic. Young was dissatisfied with it and kept it out of print for decades. So it's especially interesting to hear the alternate album for most of those songs, "Last Dance."

In putting this together, I could just make an album that's exactly the songs on the known song list for this album. But I didn't want to do that for my own listening purposes, because two of the songs ("New Mama" and "Lookout Joe") would later go on his acclaimed album "Tonight's the Night," and I don't like having those on both albums. So what I've done is create two versions of this album. One follows the exact song list that Young intended. The other removes the "Tonight's the Night" songs and replaces them with other songs from the time period that fit.

One song I've added is "Letter from 'Nam." This one had been unreleased and even unbootlegged until "Archives, Volume II." However, it turns out to basically be the exact same song as "Long Walk Home" from his 1987 album "Life," so I've added that as the subtitle. I've also added a great acoustic version of "L.A." from the box set, and removed the audience noise as best I could. Furthermore, I've added the exact same version of "Yonder Stands the Sinner" as on the "Time Fades Away" album. I want to include all the "Time Fades Away" songs, but there are no publicly available studio versions of those two songs. Plus, "Yonder Stands the Sinner" was only played a few times in 1973, so the "Time Fades Away" version is the only version with excellent sound quality.

Note that the version of the song "Last Dance" I've included is called "Monday Morning" on the box set. It's drastically different than the live version on "Time Fades Away." It's an acoustic demo, whereas the live version is a rocking version with a band, and is considerably longer. But the words and melody are exactly the same, so I've put "Last Dance" in as the song's subtitle.

When all is said and done, all but two of the songs here are studio versions.  The album is 37 minutes long, which is right in line with the lengths of his albums in that era. I didn't include one new and previously unreleased song played on his 1973 tour, "Sweet Joni." But I plan to do something with it for my next revised 1970s stray tracks album.

Here's the song list for my preferred version of this album. Note that I've added the two "Tonight's the Night" songs on the intended song list as bonus tracks. Both of those come from the live "Tuscaloosa" album, with the audience noise removed.

01 Time Fades Away (Neil Young)
02 Yonder Stands the Sinner (Neil Young)
03 Come Along and Say You Will (Neil Young)
04 The Bridge (Neil Young)
05 Don't Be Denied (Neil Young)
06 L.A. (Neil Young)
07 Letter from 'Nam [Long Walk Home] (Neil Young)
08 Journey through the Past (Neil Young)
09 Monday Morning [Last Dance] (Neil Young)
10 Goodbye Christians on the Shore (Neil Young)

Lookout Joe (Neil Young)
New Mama (Neil Young)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15848399/NeilY_1973_LastDnce_atse.zip.html

Here also is what I call the "exact version" of the album, which follows Young's intended song list exactly. Note though that he almost certainly would have used a full band version of "Last Dance" similar to the live version on "Time Fades Away" instead of the "Monday Morning" demo I used here.

01 Time Fades Away (Neil Young)
02 New Mama (Neil Young)
03 Come Along and Say You Will (Neil Young)
04 The Bridge (Neil Young)
05 Don't Be Denied (Neil Young)
06 Lookout Joe (Neil Young)
07 Journey through the Past (Neil Young)
08 Monday Morning [Last Dance] (Neil Young)
09 Goodbye Christians on the Shore (Neil Young)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15191362/NeilY_1973_LstDnceExactVrsion.zip.html

Although the title and song list for the "Last Dance" is known, I don't know if a cover was ever made for it. So we just have to guess. I've used the cover Young selected for the CD in the box set that largely deals with this time period. But that CD is called "Everybody's Alone." I took some of his writing from the "Time Fades Away" album and replaced the words "Everybody's Alone" with "Last Dance." The cover is otherwise unchanged.

Various Artists - Farm Aid on the Road 2020, 9-26-2020

Here's another recent live stream benefit concert with lots of big names. Farm Aid has been happening every year since 1985, funding a non-profit that benefits Americans with family farms. Of course, the 2020 concert has had to be a virtual event, with artists prerecording their songs from their homes. This is a particularly long concert, almost three hours, after the many cuts I made.

Speaking of those cuts, I didn't cut any of the music. But there was lots of talking between songs, including testimonials from farmers and even some commercials. I cut all that out. Musician Jon Batiste introduced each of the other musicians, and I cut all those intros out too. I also frequently edited down the comments from the artists themselves to the bare bones. My thinking there was I wanted this to be focused on the music, with repeat playability.

In terms of the music, this differs from some other similar benefit concerts during the pandemic in that the big name artists got to play up to four songs instead of just one or two. Neil Young, John Mellencamp, and Dave Matthews all got to play four songs each, and most of the others played two. Willie Nelson and his two sons Lukas and Micah ended the show with eight songs, with them rotating who did the lead vocals. (Particle Kid is the name of Micah Nelson's band.)

the sound is generally excellent. The only exception to that is Neil Young's set. Neil, being weird as he often is, decided to play his songs in a chicken coop in a farm. So there's a lot of ambient noise, especially the clucking of chickens. There was nothing I could do to improve the sound there, but it still sounds okay.

As I mentioned yesterday when posting the "A Night for Austin" benefit concert, there are a lot of these sorts of concerts in 2020, but I pass on most of them. However, like the Austin one, I was impressed by the consistently high quality of music in this one. I encourage you to give it a listen.

01 Home (Jack Johnson)
02 Better Together (Jack Johnson)
03 And It's Still Alright (Nathaniel Rateliff)
04 Time Stands (Nathaniel Rateliff)
05 Where Rainbows Never Die (Chris Stapleton)
06 Starting Over (Chris Stapleton)
07 To Live (Norah Jones)
08 Sunrise (Norah Jones)
09 The Movie Song (Record Company)
10 Black Patch (Kelsey Waldon)
11 Colors (Black Pumas)
12 Confines (Black Pumas with Jack Johnson)
13 Don't Drink the Water (Dave Matthews)
14 Rye Whiskey (Dave Matthews)
15 Grey Street (Dave Matthews)
16 Shadows on the Wall (Dave Matthews)
17 Drink Up and Go Home (Valerie June)
18 Lonesome Valley (Valerie June)
19 Longest Days (John Mellencamp)
20 Jack and Diane (John Mellencamp)
21 Easy Target (John Mellencamp)
22 Rain on the Scarecrow (John Mellencamp)
23 The Eye (Brandi Carlile)
24 The Mother (Brandi Carlile)
25 Field of Opportunity (Neil Young)
26 Homegrown (Neil Young)
26 talk (Neil Young)
27 Harvest (Neil Young)
28 Old Man (Neil Young)
29 Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere (Neil Young)
30 You Don't Know like I Know (Bonnie Raitt & Boz Scaggs)
31 All My Tears [Be Washed Away] (Jamey Johnson)
32 Every Night Is Saturday Night in New Orleans (Jamey Johnson)
33 Far Away (Edie Brickell with Charlie Sexton)
34 Jubilee (War & Treaty)
35 Little Boy Blue (War & Treaty)
36 Letting Me Down (Margo Price)
37 Prisoner of the Highway (Margo Price)
38 American Life (Particle Kid)
39 Focus on the Music (Lukas Nelson & Promise of the Real)
40 King Harvest [Has Surely Come] (Lukas Nelson & Promise of the Real)
41 Roll Me Up and Smoke Me When I Die (Willie Nelson with Micah Nelson & Lukas Nelson)
42 I Thought about You, Lord (Micah Nelson with Lukas Nelson & Willie Nelson)
43 Hands on the Wheel (Lukas Nelson with Micah Nelson & Willie Nelson)
44 On the Road Again (Willie Nelson, Lukas Nelson & Micah Nelson)
45 I'll Fly Away (Jon Batiste)
46 Will the Circle Be Unbroken (Willie Nelson & Jon Batiste)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/p27jfimd

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/q4dteikU0RLjn9p/file

alternate:

https://www.imagenetz.de/inCmM

For the album cover, I decided to use the official logo for the concert. This appeared at the very start of the concert video when it appeared on YouTube. I made some adjustments to the date at the bottom, but otherwise left it unchanged.