Neil Young Albums ReviewsIn 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: Trans
I remember hearing about this album before it came out; that it would feature lots of synthesizers and be more of an electronic sound. I missed the tour altogether as it was all in Europe except for some warm-up gigs in Northern California. At the end of the year 1982, I picked up the new album and gave it a spin.
But first I admired the cover art. Great stuff that. I love the front picture with Neil on one side of the street hitchhiking with an old car and seeing his electronic side hitchhiking with a futuristic looking vehicle. And I noticed Neil was working with lots of familiar folks; members of Crazy Horse, The Buffalo Springfield, The Stray Gators, The Santa Monica Flyers (the TTN band); even the Stills/Young band was represented.
It took more than one spin, for sure, but I came around very fast to liking this album. I admit having to read the lyrics to understand them, but there are some wonderful lyrics in this album. They are even more touching now that I know more completely what the songs were about, of course.
And the music. Wow, some really good catchy melodies here. And as one great Rustie says,
~~~the music matters~~~
>>>--- --->
I found it kind of mysterious at the time that he had left off one tune that was still listed on the cover; the song If You Got Love. My theory was that Neil must have felt he had too many songs with "love" in the title already on this album. BTW, those other "love" songs are all right; catchy pop tunes. [I was actually singing along with my headphones on in a parking lot today to Hold On To Your Love; people were looking at me funny and I realized I was singing, which I don't do too good.]
Like An Inca features lead guitar by Nils Lofgren, it's a good one. Then there are all the vocoder songs.
I was somewhat horrified that Neil electronically twisted his voice for those songs, but I got used to it. The lyrics range from loving ("every morning when I look in your eyes, I feel electrified by you, oh yeah") to paranoid ("We R In Control") to something sounds to me like it would have fit in as an advertisement inside a Heinlein science-fiction novel ("we'll send it out right away, satisfaction guaranteed, please specify the color skin and eyes, we know you'll be happy, 'I need a unit to sample and hold'")
I, for one, like this album a lot. And I thought at the time it was very brave of Geffen records to put out something like this. [more about that in future posts.]
One other small tidbit related to this album. I could be wrong about this, but I think I was a witness to the very last time Neil strapped on the vocoder in public. He played Sample And Hold and Computer Age at the Cow Palace in San Francisco on 10-21-86, the Rusted Out Garage video show and I was in attendance. He has played those and other Trans songs later, but I don't think he has used the vocoder since that '86 show. Please, if I'm wrong about that someone let me know.
I very much enjoyed listening to Trans today.
Mike - Expecting To Fly
For more of Expecting To Fly's reviews, see the Albums in Order series.
Neil Young Archives - Thrasher's Wheat