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Thursday, November 12, 2009

Let's Talk About... Happy Birthday, Neil Young!

Posted by Ned Lannamann on Thu, Nov 12, 2009 at 1:13 PM

Today is Neil Young's birthday, and the godfather of grunge turns a youthful 64 years young. So please join me in welcoming "the Canadian Dylan*" a very happy one. It's been a big year for Neil; the first volume of his long awaited Archives series was finally released, as well as a new record called Fork in the Road. Now I'll level with you. I am as big a Neil Young fan as they get. At one point, I owned everything he'd released, on vinyl and CD. (Yes, even Everybody's Rockin'.) My bookshelves are littered with maybe two dozen books on the man. I spent a lot of lost time trading tapes and acquiring bootlegs in the pre-torrent era. And on and on.

But I did not buy either Fork in the Road or Archives this year. I will probably get around to buying Fork; I just heard so many bad things about it when it came out that I shied away. But the Archives? Containing tons of vintage unreleased Neil? Well... here's the thing. Most of the stuff on there was released, either on his proper records or on the recent Fillmore East and Massey Hall CDs. And the price tag was $300 for the Blu-Ray version, which apparently is the version to get. (Also, I don't own a Blu-Ray player.) I guess I'm wondering, did anybody buy the Archives?

Um, so anyway, happy birthday Neil! Here's a link to a song from another upcoming archival release, one which I will buy. It's called Dreamin' Man and it's from the Harvest Moon tour in 1992. Dreamin' Man Live '92 comes out on December 8. Listen to the title track here (it's great).

*I know, I know.