Reviews of Neil Young AlbumsIn 2004 Rustie, Mike "Expecting 2 Fly" Cordova posted a series of articles on his experience listening to all of Neil Young's albums in chronological order. Here is one in the series. For a complete listing, see Albums in Order reviews.
Date: Sun, 28 Nov 2004 14:51:36 -0800 (PST)
From: Mike Cordova
To: rust@rustlist.org
Subject: Albums in order: Unplugged
If I am not mistaken, the very first MTV Unplugged show featured Neil Young back in '90. It was a broadcast of some songs from the 1989 (mostly) solo acoustic tour of the US; the same material that is on the Freedom VHS release directed by Tim Hutton. Later shows, including the one on Neil's 1993 Unplugged album, were performances of featured bands in television studios.
I like Neil's Unplugged for the following reasons:
-the vast majority of the songs had never been released on
live albums before.
-it has the previously unreleased Stringman.
-it has unusual renditions of some songs like pump organ
Hurricane and 'real' vocal Transformer Man.
-it features a great band including Nils Lofgren, Spooner
Oldham, and vocals by Astrid Young and Nicolette Larson.
-it's fun to listen to!
When it was first broadcast as a tv show, I was not home and had a friend tape it for me. She tried to describe the songs for me on the phone, like 'laughing old lady' and 'world on a stringman' I knew I was interested in seeing and hearing this asap! I still have that tape somewhere. I never bought the vhs version, but I did buy the cd and I enjoy it a lot. Standout tracks for me are Old Laughing Lady, World On A String, Transformer Man, and Look Out For My Love. Look Out For My Love was performed here very nicely, I thought and it was interesting to me that this was one of the few songs on the Comes A Time album that did not feature Nicolette Larson vocals and here she was singing harmony in this version. I thought that was pretty cool.
I very much enjoyed listening to Unplugged today.
Mike - Expecting To Fly
For more of Expecting To Fly's reviews, see the Albums in Order series.
Neil Young - Thrasher's Wheat Archives