I'm very glad that Young has released his "Archives Volume 1" box sets and some other archival albums. That's filled in some important gaps in his musical career. But I feel one time when he blew it was with the archival release of "Live at the Fillmore East." That's a 43-minute-long album of highlights from four concerts on March 6th and 7th at the Fillmore East in New York City. But Young played half solo acoustic and half with his rocking band Crazy Horse at each of those shows. Absolutely none of the acoustic material was included, even though the set lists differed with each show. And while the set list for the electric shows were generally the same from show to show, no version of "Cinnamon Girl" was included.
Luckily, there is one soundboard bootleg from that same tour, recorded in Cincinnati a couple of weeks earlier, which I'm presenting here. I think it's a much better representation of what he was like in concert at the time. One gets an hour and a half of Young, acoustic and electric, instead of just 43 minutes of him playing electric. The performance and sound quality are similar (though admittedly the Fillmore East sound is a tad better).
This is a popular bootleg, because there are only a handful of his shows from 1971 or earlier with really good sound. But I've made some changes to make this even better than the usual bootleg version. First, I separated all the talking onto their own tracks (and he talks before most songs). Then I boosted the volume for those talking tracks, because they usually were a lot quieter than the songs. I also deleted the prolonged dead air and aimless guitar tuning between songs. I probably cut about five minutes in total that way, without losing anything worth hearing.
Another problem with the bootleg has to do with the audience noise. Because this is a genuine soundboard, you hear what's on stage very well, but there wasn't much of the audience response to the songs. So I've carefully boosted the volume of the cheering. This was especially difficult to do during the electric portion of the show. Some songs got cut off right as the audience reaction began. In others, one couldn't hear much of the audience over some guitar noodling. But I brought in audience noise from the ends of other songs so that each song ends with a proper audience response.
One minor disappointment is that the electric set didn't happen to include "Cowgirl in the Sand" that night, one of his prolonged guitar workouts. I found a version from the same tour, in Boston, and I've added it as the last song as sort of a bonus track. The sound quality of this isn't as good, because it comes from a mere audience bootleg. But most of the poorer sound is apparent on the vocal sections of the song, while the guitar soloing sounds just as good as a soundboard. And since this song is like 80 percent guitar soloing, the overall sound isn't that different.
In short, if you want one good Neil Young concert from 1971 or earlier that isn't just solo acoustic, this is the one to get. Personally, I prefer it to "Live at the Fillmore East" because there's just a lot more music, including more of the electric set. (With the bonus song added, you get an hour and two minutes of the electric set compared to 43 minutes in "Fillmore East.")
By the way, one reason this electric set is longer here (even though it's basically the same bunch of songs) is because it seems most of the between-song banter was stripped out for the "Fillmore East" album. There's only a minute of talking on that album, and most of that is band introductions. But this has seven minutes of talking for the electric set alone. I like Young's banter; I think it adds to the character of the concert.
01 On the Way Home (Neil Young)
02 talk (Neil Young)
03 Broken Arrow (Neil Young)
04 talk (Neil Young)
05 I Am a Child (Neil Young)
06 talk (Neil Young)
07 Helpless (Neil Young)
08 talk (Neil Young)
09 Dance, Dance, Dance (Neil Young)
10 talk (Neil Young)
11 Sugar Mountain (Neil Young)
12 talk (Neil Young)
13 Don't Let It Bring You Down (Neil Young)
14 The Old Laughing Lady (Neil Young)
15 The Loner (Neil Young)
16 talk (Neil Young)
17 Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere (Neil Young)
18 talk (Neil Young)
19 Winterlong (Neil Young)
20 talk (Neil Young)
21 Come On Baby, Let's Go Downtown (Neil Young)
22 talk (Neil Young)
23 Wonderin' (Neil Young)
24 talk (Neil Young)
25 It Might Have Been (Neil Young)
26 talk (Neil Young)
27 Down by the River (Neil Young)
28 talk (Neil Young)
29 Cinnamon Girl (Neil Young)
30 Cowgirl in the Sand (Neil Young)
https://www.imagenetz.de/bZqJq
I was surprised that I couldn't find any good color photos of Neil Young in concert in 1970, given how famous he is, even back then. The one I've used here is decent, but I think the colors are slightly off, and I'm pretty sure it dates to 1971 instead of 1970. If anyone has a good one from 1970, please let me know and I'll redo the cover.
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