Review- Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young/ CSNY 1974

Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young/ CSNY 1974 (Rhino, 2014)

This 1974 reunion tour was, at the time, the highest grossing and most ambitious tour ever. While some bands played the odd stadium date, this is the first time that any band booked an entire tour in baseball stadiums coast to coast. All of the excess was documented, including professional mobile recording. This three CD/ one DVD box set is a stunning document. Like the more recent Led Zeppelin live albums (How The West Was Won, etc.) this was mixed from the original two track tapes and the sound quality is unbelievable.

While this album is comprised of songs performed on different nights, each show on the tour was at least three hours long and broken down into three segments: Electric, acoustic, and an electric closing set. This triple live album keeps that spirit by splitting the three sections across the three discs. 

The arrangements are loose, jammy, sprawling and have a fog over them. You can almost imagine a hot, humid, outdoor show complete with the smell of beer, pot, and body odor when listening to Almost Cut My Hair. Neil Young had recently released his On The Beach album, and his take on the title song is fantastic. Don't Be Denied, from Neil's frustratingly out of print, never commercially issued on CD Time Fades Away is part of the rocking ten song finale that makes up Disc Three. Military Madness rules. No band channeled the zeitgeist or reflected the values of the times better than these guys.

You get songs from the core band, songs from each member's solo albums, songs that were at the time unreleased and wound up on later albums (Long May Your Run), and some that never materialized but are finally available here. Goodbye Dick, which was written the day that Nixon resigned, has been in the vaults since these shows were played forty years ago. The band sounds great. I have never seen them, any of them in any configuration, live. I need to rectify this as soon as possible.

I did sit all the way through all three discs one night, and there is a real emotional payoff when you listen to it that way as opposed to one disc at a time. Set aside an evening, pop some popcorn, and grab a beverage of your choice and give it a serious listen.

Junk Food For Thought rating: 4.5 out of 5.

The OCD zone- Those of you who just wandered in might wonder what this section is about, so I'll spill. It is about packaging, and the materials used in said packaging. I adore physical media, and the tactile experience is what makes it real in my mind. You can keep your mp3s; I'll stick with my friend the compact disc.

The digipak is one chunky monkey, with a four-sided foldout complete with an honest to gosh plastic hub for each disc. The 180+ page book has it's own pocket, and is jammed with great liner notes and tons of pictures. While it may seem like a chunk of change to buy this, it is totally worth every penny. There is a deluxe wooden box set with LPs, Blu-Ray audio disc, and all sorts of bric-a-brac for the super diehard well-heeled fan. This “average consumer edition” is fine by me. 

Review- Neil Young/ Live At The Cellar Door

Neil Young/ Live At The Cellar Door (Reprise, 2013)

This release is part of the Neil Young Archives Performance Series, being labeled Disc 2.5. This was recorded seven weeks before one of the other Archives series releases, Live At Massey Hall 1971, over six shows in late November and early December, 1970. Like that live album, this is an excellent performance and a high quality recording. This being an earlier page of the same chapter as Massey Hall, this is the After The Gold Rush solo tour with an intimate vibe. No backing band, only Neil singing in a druggy haze, playing guitar or piano, depending on his mood. Fans who were lucky enough to be at these shows were hearing the first ever public performances of Old Man and See The Sky About To Rain. Fans would not be able to buy those on album until 1972 and 1974, respectively.

The set bounces between the After The Gold Rush album, then-unreleased songs, and a few tunes from his days in Buffalo Springfield. His between song banter is low key, sometimes coming off as lost or despondent. My favorite banter comes before Flying On The Ground Is Wrong, where Neil says “It’s about what happens when you start getting high, and you find out that people you thought you knew, you don’t know anymore, because they don’t get high and you do.” I am sure that the smell of herb was prevalent in the crowd that night and many of the long hairs in the audience were nodding in agreement. I wonder where those people are now.

The most powerful moment on the album is the piano version of Expecting To Fly. He stated how he was playing on a nine foot Steinway, with it being in his contract because he thought that it would be eccentric. The thing that I love about Neil Young, aside from his songs, of course, is his blunt honesty. He does whatever he wants to, whenever he wants to, with little regard to the personal or financial consequences of his whims. The “smart” thing for him to do in this era would have been to stay with the cash cow Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young. Instead he cut the downbeat After The Gold Rush and played clubs and small auditoriums. He wears his heart on his sleeve, coming off as either vulnerable or lashing out, both being equally convincing. He also does it without coming off as being manipulative or a pussy, which is what most artists who emulate his template come off as. This album is a must have if you are a Neil Young fan or a fan of honest music in general.

Now if we can get another Archives box set or a reissue of Time Fades Away...

Junk Food For Thought rating: 5 out of 5.

Reviews- Neil Young/ Americana and Joe Walsh/ Analog Man

Neil Young With Crazy Horse/ Americana (Reprise, 2012)

Let's give credit where credit is due: Neil Young could have just slapped some lyrics on these arrangements of traditional folk songs and passed them off as originals, and no one would have been any the wiser. Instead, he and the reconstituted Crazy Horse stretch, massage, and strangle these 19^th and 20^th century traditional folk songs into living, breathing works that require an honest look here in 2012.

How many people would honestly give Jesus' Chariot (She'll Be Comin' Around The Mountain) a listen otherwise? I know that I have sat down with the lyrics to these songs, something that I have never done even though we've all heard them countless times before.

Gallows Pole is frickin' incredible, sounding like Neil Young and Crazy Horse crash landed in a 19^th century shanty town and set up their instruments to play for the downtrodden. Unbelievable. Oh Susana is super catchy, and again, Neil could've slapped some of his own lyrics on here and completely fooled everyone into thinking it was a new song. Get A Job is another Back to the Future moment, sounding like Crazy Horse crash landed in the '50s. I love this album. 

Joe Walsh/ Analog Man (Fantasy, 2012)

Welcome back, Joe! Analog Man, which ironically was recorded digitally, is a great album. It clocks in at 36:36, a tad short for such a long wait. Still, I am of the mindset that I'd rather have shorter album without an ounce of filler than an 80 minute opus filled with lackluster tunes. Every song on this album is good, hitting every style that Joe has dabbled in over the years. There are those moments that sounds familiar, and you're like Oh yeah, this sounds like Joe Walsh. He has made no effort whatsoever to fit into any modern marketing demographic. You won't see this on the counter at Starbucks...but maybe you should. There is only one song, India, which sounds like it was made this century.

This may be his most honest album, lyrically speaking. Analog Man is hilarious, pure vintage Joe with his sense of humor intact. Some of the lyrics show Joe as older, wiser, and, dare I say it, spiritual. They're not overly preachy or anything, but Joe does seem to acknowledge his higher power a few times, only this time it ain't his homegrown.

Funk 50 is the third in a series, with Funk #49 being one of The James Gang's signature tunes. This drum beat on this borders on hip-hop, but leans closer to funk. I bought the standard consumer edition of the CD and got gypped out of two bonus tracks. Sonofabitch! I didn't want the frickin' DVD, man! Shenanigans!

Reviews: Hawkman

HAWKMAN (DC, 1989; softcover)

Collects the Hawkman stories from The Brave and the Bold Nos. 34-36, 42-44 (cover dates March, 1961- November, 1962)

I love DC's Chronicles line of trade paperbacks. Aside from the stray issue of Batman as a small child, this is how I got started on Batman comic books. Then the Superman, Green Lantern, Wonder Woman and Flash ones came out. I bought them all because I like to see how characters got their start, and they collect everything in chronological order by publication date. I ended up ditching the Green Lantern line for the Omnibus and the Wonder Woman line for the Archives (all gathering dust in my backlog, to be reviewed in 2012/2013). Along the way I wondered about DC's "other" iconic character, Hawkman. I thought that he was cool in the SuperFriends cartoon as a kid and was thinking that I would pick up a Chronicles trade paperback if they ever released one. One day I was out gallivanting around various comic book stores and stumbled across this old school trade, with Hawkman's earliest appearances and clocking in at 160 pages...just like a Chronicles trade! I was ecstatic.

The comparisons end there, though, because for starters this trade is a ripoff compared to my beloved Chronicles trades. While the paper is a nicer stock, the cover price on this book is $20, which is more than the current line (priced at $15-18). Even more appalling is the fact that they priced this book at the higher price over 20 years ago! Chronicles trades feature all of the covers in their correct place before each story, but not this book. DC has never had any rhyme or reason when it comes to cover placement in their trades. Some have them in the back of the book, some don't feature them at all. Here we get them 2 per page, 4 covers in all. The problem is that this book reprints 6 issues. The icing on the cake is that one of the 4 covers featured is to issue 45, which is not even reprinted in this book!

I love the faulty science and the charm of Silver Age comic books. DC was zany and borderline ridiculous during this era, especially when compared to their fledgling competitor, Marvel Comics. (Several issues in this book actually pre-date Fantastic Four #1, the start of the Marvel Age of Comics.) Gardner Fox writes this relaunch of his former Golden Age creation, and while I have the Golden Age Hawkman Archive, I have not read it yet. He really expands upon the character in a logical manner, first supplying Hawkman's origin and then the origin of his home planet Thanagar. Joe Kubert handles the artwork, and his artwork is serviceable for the era but is not really my cup of tea. He is sub-par when you compare him to the other heavyweights of this era, Steve Ditko and Jack Kirby.

I had fun reading this but will not pursue either of the Hawkman Archives from this era for the usual reasons: Money, space, and time. I don't have enough of any of the above.