Album Reviews

This extraordinary document recorded by Young during a two night stand at small club on the University of Michigan campus in Ann Arbor back in November of 1968 is about as intimate and revealing a performance as you’re likely to find in the singer’s catalog.

Young, then just late of the band, performs Buffalo Springfield favorites like “Nowadays Clancy Can’t Even Sing,” “On the Way Home,” “Mr. Soul” “Expecting To Fly” and “Broken Arrow,” along with songs from his then forthcoming first solo album like “The Last Trip To Tulsa” “The Loner,” and “I’ve Been Waiting For You,” minus the heavy production and he makes them equally if not more compelling and moving as pure folk music.

Young also introduces “Sugar Mountain,’ which wouldn’t show up on an album for a few years.

His occasionally long in-between raps reveal a not quite 23 year old, not so sure of his place in the world as an artist, somewhat uncomfortable with the quick rise to fame, but even more so the fortune. He barely had enough material to cover a concert, hence the long raps, wherein he sounds like the young actor Michael Cera in character.

Young raps about working in a book store (for a very short time), innocently popping uppers, not lying on stage and being an unlikely vintage Bentley owner among other things, delivering his stories with the same disarming vulnerability he uses to sing the tunes.

The solo performance puts Young’s acoustic guitar center and his voice off slightly to the right and aside from the applause between tunes, that’s all that can be heard.

However, for some reason, what’s not heard but can be sensed and felt is almost as intriguing as what is and that is an atmosphere, a “vibe” if you will of what 1968 felt like. Don’t ask for a further explanation or description because I can’t give you one.

Probably recorded on a stage-side Akai or Roberts 2-track at 7 ½ IPS, some tape hiss can be heard, but overall the recording is remarkably natural-sounding.

Chris Bellman’s mastering and the 200g Japanese pressing produce a life-like Neil apparition. The key is to play it back at a level where the hiss just drops below audibility and at that point you’ll be there.

A definite “must have” for die-hard Neil fans who want to hear a portrait of the artist as a very young man. If the vinyl’s sold out, take what you can get. The Blu-ray version on the Anthology box sounds great too but there's something about the vinyl.....