Neil Young

100greatestbootlegs.blogspot.com

#149 Neil Young & Crazy Horse - Chicago 1976 (Flac)

a blog about the greatest bootlegs available on the internet
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Original notes below:

About this recording. I’m sure this is one of those Neil Young recordings that all of you are familiar with, but this marks the first time this specific source has been shared. During all those years there has always been the same underlying version of this concert, but always from a bootleg release, never a version with known generation, let alone a source with known lineage to the master.

But that changes now. BK of JEMS explains:

“This cassette comes from the collection of our longtime friend and ally SS, and given everything we know about the provenance of this famous and fabulous recording and the person from which SS received it, we strongly believe this cassette is the point of origin for every known version of the show. Meaning, all copies in circulation go back to this tape. It is ground zero. What we do not know for sure is if it is THE actual soundboard master. My assumption is that this is a first-generation tape made off either a cassette or reel master. Regardless, I believe it to be the best known version of the recording and the first with a lineage back to analog source with no digital tape or CD generation in-between.”

Firstly, this version, although it had several of the noises and minor sonic defects also present in the bootleg releases, unlike those, in this version they are barely perceptible, able to be heard only if you pay full attention or if you are fully interested in those details, either because you are someone interested in those type of issues or because you're planning to fix them yourself.

In my opinion, sonically this transfer sounds much warmer, with more clarity both in the vocals as much as in the sound of the guitar. It feels more natural, unlike the bootleg releases that surely, at some point, had some kind of noise reduction. Here the mastering has no residue of such a process.

I am very happy to know that this recording is finally getting a release worthy of its quality. As always, I thank the JEMS team for their eternal confidence in me (and those who support me) in releasing recordings to the public. Huge thanks as well to SS for loaning BK his cassette source and blessing its dissemination.
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Lee Newman said:
It’s like a nice sampler version of Massey. Not quite as nice of a source. It’s great for if you don’t have the commitment of time for the double lp live sets.
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hatfieldpdx said:
If you have Massey Hall and Carnegie Hall, you are pretty set in terms of early acoustic Neil, but this one is also great and more Neil is almost always better. Some have suggested picking by setlist, but each show has its own nuance, and each features at least one essential track not on the others. So I guess the only proper answer is that you really do need to own all 3 (I tried to resist on Carnegie Hall, but caved about a week ago. :ROFLMAO: No regrets!
Biscuit said:
Words are easy, like the wind; faithful and affordable live Neil Young vinyl albums are hard to find.
Recommended.
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In Da house...
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albumsthatshouldexist.blogspot.com

Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young - Live at the Fillmore East, June 1970

A few weeks back, I posted a concert that was meant to gather up all the Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young (CSNY) live material from 1969 (othe...
albumsthatshouldexist.blogspot.com albumsthatshouldexist.blogspot.com

A few weeks back, I posted a concert that was meant to gather up all the Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young (CSNY) live material from 1969 (other than Woodstock) that's in excellent sound quality. Here's basically the same idea, except for 1970. This is a big concert album - two and a half hours - that took a lot of effort to put together, so I hope you enjoy it.


CSNY was a volatile combination, consisting of four stars who had big egos and tended to use a lot of drugs. They broke up briefly in early May 1970. You can hear them talk about it some in their between song banter here. Then they would break up again in early July 1970, after the end of their short tour. Luckily, while they were still together, they decided to film and record their shows at the Fillmore East in New York City, from June 2nd to June 7th.

Apparently as I write this in November 2021, there are plans afoot to put out a new release based on these Fillmore shows. But with the way CSNY aren't talking to each other anymore, who knows when or if that'll happen. This can tide you over until such a release hopefully makes this obsolete.

The Fillmore shows were the main raw material used in making the live album "Four Way Street," released in 1971.
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[...]

By the way, on the subject of talking, at one point between songs, there's a mention of "wooden nickel," and then they talked for a little while about bootlegs. This is because by the time of this concert, a CSNY bootleg called "Wooden Nickel" had emerged and had sold a lot of copies, since there was no other live CSNY recordings available at the time. But, as they pointed out, it wasn't very good, mainly due to sound quality issues. The recording of the Fillmore shows and the release of "Four Way Street" later was essentially an effort to beat the bootleggers.

Another little point of clarity I want to mention is that at one point, Young mentioned the name "Halverson." That's reference to the fact that someone named Bill Halverson was recording the concerts to make a live album. So Young brought up Halverson's name as kind of a surprise joke, knowing that person was listening.

I hope that if and when an official Fillmore East box set comes out, they'll use at least one version of each song played at those shows. There are a couple that I couldn't include, because they were only played on the shows where there isn't a good recording. For instance, "Birds" was played on June 2nd only, and "Another Sleep Song" was played on June 7th only (and not bootlegged).

That said, there were a few particularly interesting and unique songs that I wanted to include that didn't have excellent sound quality. I did a lot of editing to bring them up to snuff, but one can only do so much. So I've included them merely as bonus tracks: "Bluebird," "Everybody's Been Burned," and "We Are Not Helpless." Although they don't sound great, I was able to use the sound editing programs Spleeter and X-Minus to make them sound better than they ever have before, in my opinion. For instance, both "Bluebird" and "Everybody's Been Burned" had big surges of applause at their starts when the audience recognized the songs. I was able to almost entirely eliminate those applause surges, and other crowd noise through the songs. By the way, each of those songs were only ever played once in concert by CSNY during that time period.
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The blog post itself goes into the tracklist and set lists and which songs are missing or from non-fillmore recordings etc. Good, good stuff (if you're into the live stuff, as I have increasingly been)
 
yukbon said:
The blog post itself goes into the tracklist and set lists and which songs are missing or from non-fillmore recordings etc. Good, good stuff (if you're into the live stuff, as I have increasingly been)
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Neil Bootlegs are a giant rabbit hole of goodness. I've got shoeboxes full of Neil CD's from the mail trading days. Highly recommend searching out "A Perfect Echo" which was soundboard recordings through the years. I can't find a good link online for downloading it offhand though.
 
TenderLovingKiller® said:
I feel ya, According to Discogs I have purchased: 5 Neil Young Live albums this year (not including Massey Hall), 2 studio albums on vinyl and 2 studio albums on cassette.
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I'm doing even worse/better... per my Discogs:

1 year ago - Homegrown
1 year ago - Fillmore East
9 months ago - Rust Bucket (Target B2G1 deal)
8 months ago - Young Shakespeare
6 months ago - Massey Hall (via trade)
4 months ago - Cellar Door
4 months ago - Return to Greendale (Amazon cheap deal)
4 months ago - On the Beach ($1 at a yard sale, actually plays better than the copy I had for years)
3 months ago - Trans / Freedom / This Note's For You ($5 each from private collection)
2 months ago - Reactor (cheap used copy)
1 month ago - Decade (from the same private collection)
1 month ago - Hitchhiker
1 month ago - Hawks & Doves (cheap used copy)
16 days ago - Roxy (PBC order)
Currently waiting for Carnegie Hall

Totals: 8 live albums (4 of them acoustic), 8 studio works (2 from the archives), plus 1 compilation. I already had most of his 70s albums before this year, but 2021 is when I went off the deep end with Neil.

Yes, typing all this makes me feel crazy.
 
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