Tuesday, January 22, 2008

Neil Young Citizen Kane Junior Blues mp3s
Pink Reason Cleaning the Mirror mp3s


Okay, so I got it, thanks blogsearch.google.com. I even broke my "no downloads from Russian sites" rule. This bootleg documents a surprise May 16 1974 performance at The Bottom Line in New York City (capacity 400!) - apparently Neil was there to see a Ry Cooder gig and decided to do some songs himself. The bootleg is revered because it has a few songs from the about-to-be-released On The Beach album that were rarely performed live. It's a so-so audience recording but it was clearly a special night - you can tell Neil felt good, the crowd was stoked, and the songs cut like you wouldn't believe. The silence of the crowd during "Revolution Blues" is deafening, especially when he takes the song down as quiet as possible right after the line "I hate them worse than lepers and I'll kill them in their cars." Not a single person in the room didn't hear him. "On The Beach" is so good I barely miss the conga and electric piano from the LP. One line jumps out harder here than on the record: "Though my problems are meaningless/that don't make them go away." Pretty much the late-capitalist North American dilemma in a nutshell... and moving on to the On the Beach of the 2000s (I mean maybe, we could discuss it), Pink Reason's Cleaning the Mirror. Still sounding like it did when it came out and I listened to it three times a night, i.e. devastating.

3 comments:

snatchface said...

I think I heard that "Citizen Kane Junior Blues" version. I downloaded it from Napster in 1999. Can you hear barroom chatter in the background and the cackle of the amp?

Larry said...

It's definitely an audience recording and not a soundboard - you can hear chatter, clinking of glasses, rustling papers, super-loud coughs.... Is there a better version? Listening to it again now - funny how much they're laughing at his lyrics in "Long May You Run."

Anonymous said...

that blog google link is ridiculous!

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