Neil Young & the Ducks - The Summer of Duck - Various Live Songs (1977)

I just posted a full concert of Neil Young playing as part of the Ducks in 1977. As part of that, I wrote a lot of text about why the heck Young spent the summer of 1977 in Santa Cruz, California, as just one member of an obscure band nobody had ever heard of. Please read that to get up to speed on the whole story before continuing here.

As I explained in that post, I wanted to post all the "must have" Ducks songs for someone into Neil Young's music. I decided the best way to do that was post the only complete Ducks concert that's publicly available (as a bootleg). That was my previous post. This is the "leftovers," all the songs the Ducks did that are in good quality that weren't played in that concert.

No Ducks music has ever been officially released (yet). Luckily, it turns out that although there are only a few Ducks bootlegs out there, most of what exists is in excellent soundboard sound quality. This is probably due to the fact that a mobile recording studio was seen at most or all of the Ducks' 20 or so concerts in the summer of 1977. Apparently the plan was to record a live concert, though sadly that never happened.

I'm guessing that the concert I posted (played at the Catalyst on August 22, 1977) comes from those professionally done recordings. On top of that, three more hours of Ducks' soundboard recordings have emerged. I'll bet they're from the same source. Unfortunately, those three hours have no information whatsoever regarding which concerts they're from. Neil Young fans have figured out the exact songs the Ducks played at each of their concerts, and these songs appear to be drawn from many concerts, in no understandable order.

I found 12 songs on these undated recordings, for a total of 47 minutes' worth of music. By chance, that's an ideal album length. Since the recordings were in no special order, I reordered them to match what the Ducks would do in concert. The recordings often had two versions of the same song, so I was able to pick the best versions. The band members were very democratic, and usually each band member would sing one song until all four were done, and then they would repeat that process. I tried to follow that pattern. However, I was short one song for Jeff Blackburn and John Craviotto, and I have one instrumental, so I had to vary that pattern up a little bit. (By the one, one of Bob Mosley's songs, "Leaving Us Now," is sung by Craviotto, so I put that in what would be Craviotto's spot.)

On the Catalyst concert I just posted, there was a lot of dead air between songs (no talking, just the tuning of instruments). I removed a lot of that for that concert. There was a little bit of that here, but not nearly as much, as the three hours of recordings seem to have already been a "best of" selection that removed that unnecessary stuff. But still, I did a little trimming where I thought it could help tighten things up. I didn't remove any of the talking between songs. There isn't much of that in any case.

As with the Catalyst concert, Neil Young was "just one of the guys," so he only sings four out of the 12 songs here. But he plays all the lead guitar for everyone's songs, and does some back-up vocals too. If you like the Catalyst concert, this is more of the same good stuff. What's surprising is how talented the other members of the Ducks are, including with their songwriting.

As far as I know, there's just one Ducks concert that was recorded as an audience bootleg. That's their last show, on September 1, 1977. I obtained that bootleg, checked the song list against the other Ducks music I had, and only found one unique song, a version of Young's "Homegrown." So I've added that as the last song here. Even though it's from an audience recording instead of a soundboard, the sound quality is nearly as good.

Also, note that while there is some crowd noise between songs on the Catalyst concert, there's almost none here. That has nothing to do with me. It's just that some soundboards capture more of the audience than others, and these capture very little. It's no big deal, but I just thought I'd point that out in case you're curious why it's so quiet after each song ends.

When I made a compiled album like this, I typically title it after one of the songs, if there's no better option. But in this case, on a whim, I decided to call it "The Summer of Duck." I wasn't there, but it seems that Young's time with the Ducks was a very big deal for Santa Cruz in the summer of 1977. A kind of "Duckmania" happened in the town, with a lot of playfulness over the "Duck" name. For instance, all the duck whistles were sold out for miles around, and people would blow their duck whistles between songs in the concerts. (You can hear this if you listen carefully, especially on the Catalyst concert.) The band members, including Young, liked making lots of duck jokes, such as punning off words like "bill" and "quack." So "The Summer of Duck" somehow seemed fitting as a play on "The Summer of Love" ten years earlier, especially since we don't know when these songs were recorded, except that they were recorded that summer.

By the way, just as I did with the Catalyst concert, I've added the last names of the songwriters for each song in the "comment" mp3 tag field. Hopefully, that can help you appreciate who did which song.

01 Human Highway (Neil Young & the Ducks)
02 Sailor Man (Neil Young & the Ducks)
03 Wide-Eyed and Willing (Neil Young & the Ducks)
04 Honky Tonk Man (Neil Young & the Ducks)
05 Long May You Run (Neil Young & the Ducks)
06 Trucking Man (Neil Young & the Ducks)
07 Hey Now [Instrumental] (Neil Young & the Ducks)
08 Little Wing (Neil Young & the Ducks)
09 Love You Forever (Neil Young & the Ducks)
10 Car Tune (Neil Young & the Ducks)
11 Leaving Us Now (Neil Young & the Ducks)
12 Homegrown (Neil Young & the Ducks)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/zbafJ7Pk

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/uBvD3srss8knC6u/file

alternate:

https://www.upload.ee/files/16696720/NELYNG1977_DcksTheSmmerofDckSntaCruzCA__8-1977_atse.zip.html

There are very few quality photos of the Ducks together. However, I found this one, and it's in color. It was taken backstage at the Catalyst. From left to right, the band members are: Bob Mosley, John Craviotto, Jeff Blackburn, and Neil Young.