Neil Young 42: Archives Vol. I

Pigs flew, hell froze over, and the first set of Neil’s Archives finally came out, looking not all that different than from what had been rumored. A true multimedia experience, the hoopla centered around the most deluxe version, that being the Blu-Ray edition, wherein the listener could scroll through the information on each disc while any track played. This version—as well as the DVD edition, with all the content but not the ease-of-access—was also chock full of extra video and audio files, photos, and memorabilia, with a thick book and even the Journey Through The Past film on its own disc.

As a gesture to those fans who couldn’t swing the two hundred plus dollars for the Blu-Ray or DVD version (plus whatever it cost for a player to hear it on), Neil also made Archives Vol. I available as an eight-CD set—just the music, no visuals, outside of a slim booklet detailing track info. (The DVD and Blu-ray sets did include the Sugar Mountain installment, which was nice of them.)

The set begins appropriately with a few tracks by his first band The Squires, who apparently thought of themselves as a surf outfit. Once he started writing and singing his own songs, it’s clear that the Beatles were a big influence. We get to hear early versions of songs, such as “I Wonder” (which would become “Don’t Cry No Tears” on Zuma). A failed audition for Elektra includes some melodies we recognize from elsewhere, and before we know it he’s in Buffalo Springfield. A few repeats from their box set, album tracks and outtakes alike, are bolstered by the long-lost “Slowly Burning” and “Sell Out”. By the end of the disc he’s exponentially progressed as a songwriter.

The second disc (Topanga 1) covers the sessions for his first solo album, including alternate mixes and early versions of “Birds” and “Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere”. Then he meets Crazy Horse and starts working on that album. But first he does a club tour, which provides the basis for the Live From The Riverboat disc. Recorded three months after the Canterbury House show, his mood here seems a little cranky. Perhaps it’s the presence of Springfield bass player Bruce Palmer in the crowd? Whatever the case, he does a few different songs from his debut, plus an unfinished song called “1956 Bubblegum Disaster” and the “Whisky Boot Hill” section of what would become “Country Girl”.

Topanga 2 finishes Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere and begins After The Gold Rush, but with a detour into Déjà Vu. Here we get the legendary outtakes “Everybody’s Alone” and “Dance Dance Dance”, the live rarity “It Might Have Been”, and “Sea Of Madness” with CSN. The Fillmore East and Massey Hall discs bookend Topanga 3, wherein Neil finishes After The Gold Rush (but leaves “Wonderin’” in the can) and tours (again) with CSN.

He’s truly hit his stride by the North Country disc, which covers the widespread recording sessions for Harvest. Highlights include “Bad Fog Of Loneliness” and “Journey Through The Past” with the Stray Gators, the first release of “War Song” since 1972, and an alternate mix of “Soldier”. (We also get the 15-minute version of “Words” that took up one side of Journey Through The Past.)

It’s an ambitious project, and one can be happy for Neil that he was finally able to see it come to fruition in a form he approved. It is, however, far from perfect. For starters, not all of the CDs are filled to capacity; this is likely to mirror the contents of the Blu-Ray or DVD, which would be full of all the extras. While outtakes abound, it doesn’t include every song from each of his solo albums up to 1972. Chronologically, “Love In Mind” from Time Fades Away belongs on disc eight, but as Neil has disowned that album, the version of the song on the Massey Hall disc should suffice. And of course, those who’d already bought the recent Fillmore East and Massey Hall CDs would be irritated that they’re here again. But hey, we’d been warned. And he didn’t owe us a damn thing. Meanwhile, the interminable countdown began for Volume II.

Neil Young Archives Vol. I: 1963-1972 (2009)—4

Velvet Underground 1: The Velvet Underground & Nico

The going cliché was that while the Velvet Underground didn’t sell many copies of their albums, everyone who did went out and formed their own band. While this has yet to be proven, it is safe to say that for the better part of two decades, all anyone knew about the band’s music came from Lou Reed albums, the occasional cover and the raves of critics.

A good deal of that changed in 1985, when PolyGram vault guru Bill Levenson pushed for the reissue of the band’s first three (long out-of-print) LPs, along with a collection of outtakes. All four albums were hyped by the usual critics (Kurt Loder going so far as to contribute liner notes to the common inner sleeve) but the overwhelming favorite was the debut, credited as always to the band plus the extra singer they’d picked up along the way.

The Velvet Underground & Nico treads a line between catchy ‘60s pop and what would eventually be called punk. Despite being hailed as a decadent band, “Sunday Morning” begins with a celeste, of all things, before an especially breathy Lou Reed vocal takes over. (It was, after all, his band.) Things get a little gritty with “I’m Waiting For The Man”, a fairly overt description of scoring dope. Nico finally shows up on “Femme Fatale”, something of a German doo-wop number, and a lovely song despite the attack on its subject. It’s a brief respite before “Venus In Furs”, featuring John Cale’s viola in full scrape over sado-masochistic references. More drugs turn up in “Run Run Run”, a perfectly snotty song just this side of melodic. Nico returns for the elegant yet foreboding “All Tomorrow’s Parties”, one of their most mesmerizing numbers.

Just in case you thought they were just another garage band, side two kicks off with the extremely blatant “Heroin”, which goes out of its way to describe the rush of the drug via the tempo and viola. But the pop returns for “There She Goes Again”, which could have been a hit single, and “I’ll Be Your Mirror”, which couldn’t have been since they let Nico sing it. The last two songs are certainly non-commercial, straight out of the art world. “The Black Angel’s Death Song” puts rapid-fire lyrics under a seesawing viola, and the band finally gets to replicate their live sound with the full-on assault of “European Son”.

As with many things he put his name to, The Velvet Underground & Nico gained most of its notoriety over the years due to Andy Warhol’s cover design and blatant production credit, emblazoned below the banana that peeled Colorforms-style. He may have designed the cover, but the actual producer was Tom Wilson, who’d recently worked with Frank Zappa after having been bounced from Bob Dylan’s sessions. Whoever was behind the desk, the overall sound comes straight from the heads and hands of the band itself, with all the grime in place. It was an astounding debut, and certainly ahead of its time.

The album was an excellent candidate for a Deluxe Edition when the Universal label started doing those, and it doesn’t disappoint. It appears in both its original stereo and mono mixes, having been recorded at a time when mono was still a common seller. Because the label considered the possibility of having hits, four tracks also appear in their single mixes, alongside five VU-related tracks from Nico’s Chelsea Girl album, released later in 1967 to even fewer sales.

Ten years later, Universal continued their “anything worth doing is worth overdoing” policy by issuing a so-called “Super Deluxe” six-disc version of the album. This time the Chelsea Girl tracks on the stereo disc have been replaced by alternate takes, so that the entire Chelsea Girl album is included as the third disc. An early acetate of working mixes is bolstered by a much-booted rehearsal excerpt (including the band playing Bo Diddley’s “Crackin’ Up” while Lou recites the lyrics of “Venus In Furs” to Nico, who also sings lead on a take of “There She Goes Again”), and a complete concert from November 1966 is spread across the fifth and sixth discs (beginning with the 28-minute “Melody Laughter”, edited down to ten minutes for the Peel Slowly And See box). Essential for fanatics, certainly, but even they would object to having to purchase half of the contents for the third or fourth time.

The Velvet Underground & Nico The Velvet Underground & Nico (1967)—4½
2002 Deluxe Edition: same as 1967, plus 20 extra tracks
2012 45th Anniversary Super Deluxe Edition: same as Deluxe Edition, plus 34 extra tracks

Pink Floyd 9: The Dark Side Of The Moon

Having pioneered space rock and songs that took up a whole album side, it was almost odd for Pink Floyd to deliver a record with tracks of digestible size. But The Dark Side Of The Moon is no ordinary album. Here the band found inspiration in a variety of moods and ideas, loosely connected around the concept of madness, but without making the concept so overt they couldn’t be enjoyed on their own.

As with the rest of their work going forward, the album is something of a loop, where the “beginning” can be considered a continuation on the “end”, as the cycle continues eternally. Here, “Speak To Me” provides something of an overture, mixing a heartbeat with snippets of clocks, cash registers and laughter, before giving way to the dreamy jam in “Breathe”. “On The Run” follows a claustrophobic chase through airports and down highways, over a maddening synthesizer sequence into a terrific explosion. The pealing of bells beginning “Time” are jarring no matter how many times you’ve heard them. This track features David Gilmour at his best vocally and on lead guitar, right to the reprise of “Breathe”. “The Great Gig In The Sky” manages to balance a minor-key piano-led jam with the otherworldly wordless screams of some poor woman.

Side two also brings five songs together in a unified whole. “Money” manages to be funky in 7/4, complete with one of the better sax solos in rock history. “Us And Them” is a tour de force for Rick Wright, with its layers of organ, piano and harmonies about the futility of war. It goes abruptly into “Any Colour You Like”, another minor-seventh to seventh jam as heard in “Breathe” and “Great Gig In The Sky”. A brief interlude resolves itself into “Brain Damage”, which will always be heard in conjunction with “Eclipse”, the first of many examples of Roger Waters turning a random list into a song.

The Dark Side Of The Moon has become such a ubiquitous entity that it almost doesn’t need a review. It was famously a fixture on the Billboard album charts for fifteen years—pretty impressive in the pre-computerized charting era. Even audiophiles whose tastes ran strictly to classical and show tunes had this album simply for the aural experience, which is pretty incredible. One of its songs is likely playing on your local Classic Rock radio station as you read this. If for whatever reason you don’t own it yet, and don’t feel like waiting another hour to hear it on the radio, it tends to get reissued every five years or so, depending on the anniversary or latest trend in sound quality, so you’ll have plenty of chances to pick it up.

Such an occasion happened with yet another rollout of their catalog in 2011, projected to treat each album three ways: Discovery, which is a straight remaster; Experience, which adds an extra disc; and Immersion, which adds even more material, plus books, video and ephemera. Dark Side got the first upgrade, adding a 1974 performance of the album at Wembley Empire Pool to the Experience Edition. The Immersion Edition included a third CD with the earlier 1972 Alan Parsons mix, before all the sound effects had been added, and a variety of demos and early live versions. It also included DVDs with the surround-sound and quad mixes, documentaries, concert background films, souvenirs and even a Blu-Ray disc with everything on it.

When the 50th anniversary rolled around, a deluxe box set presented the album and the Wembley show—in other words, the Experience Edition—on their own remastered CDs and LPs, plus Blu-rays and a DVD of the album in various resolutions, and two replica 45s. For everyone who didn’t have it already, The Dark Side Of The Moon—Live At Wembley 1974 was also available separately for the first time, making fans wonder why they didn’t just put out the full show instead of having it spread across three expensive releases.

Pink Floyd The Dark Side Of The Moon (1973)—4
2011 Experience Edition: same as 1973, plus 10 extra tracks
2011 Immersion Edition: same as Experience, plus 16 extra tracks, 2 DVDs and 1 Blu-Ray
Pink Floyd The Dark Side Of The Moon—Live At Wembley 1974 (2023)—4

Rolling Stones 34: Flashpoint

To confirm their position as a major cash cow, the Stones completed their CBS contract with a live album as a souvenir of their recent tours. Of the forty odd songs they played around the world, only twelve are included on Flashpoint. (The CD included two more and various singles had others; unfortunately, “2000 Light Years From Home”, which was pretty cool when they played it at Shea Stadium, was only issued as a B-side.)

As mentioned, the tours were fairly elaborate. Along with inflatable props and tons of scaffolding, the five Stones were accompanied by two keyboard players, backup singers and a full horn section. Despite all the preparation and shows to choose from, like many live albums it was sweetened in the studio during the mixing process.

The hits are here of course, like “Start Me Up” and “Satisfaction”, but there are some surprises, such as “Ruby Tuesday” and “Factory Girl”. “Paint It Black” is predicted by the inclusion of some chatter about the song (right before “You Can’t Always Get What You Want”) lifted from side two of Get Yer Ya-Ya’s Out!, and Eric Clapton joins on a version of “Little Red Rooster”. For the most part, the songs sound like the records, which was the point of having all those people onstage.
Surprisingly, the band included two brand new studio songs on the album. “Highwire” was a very timely if futile commentary on the Gulf War as it started, while “Sex Drive” is another stupid James Brown takeoff that gave Mick another excuse to put out dance remixes.

Flashpoint was a moderate hit, and about as exciting as Still Life. Even more maddening was the limited red leather-bound edition that included a disc called Collectibles, sporting some of the better recent B-sides and a few remixes. But the most striking aspect of the album is the photo of the band taken at the end of one show: all five are grinning, except for Bill Wyman, whose sad smile and wave foretells his departure from the band. This album represents the last time he would play with the Rolling Stones.

Two decades later, the Stones released one of the tour’s complete shows as part of their official bootleg download series, eventually followed by a physical release. Live At The Tokyo Dome had been a Japanese television broadcast, and the source of “Sympathy For The Devil” on Flashpoint, and provides a slightly better reflection of a so-so tour, with Chuck Leavell’s keyboards and the backup singers high in the mix. Eight years after that, Steel Wheels Live presented the Atlantic City show from two months earlier that spawned “Sad Sad Sad” and “Little Red Rooster” from Flashpoint, with Clapton sticking around for “Boogie Chillen” with special guest John Lee Hooker, as well as Axl and Izzy from Guns N’ Roses on “Salt Of The Earth”. This particular two-CD set came with either a DVD or Blu-ray of the show, or you could get both video versions with a bonus DVD of the Tokyo show, with a CD of five extra songs. Or you could shell out the big bucks for the four-LP version. (With the exception of the guest appearances, the only real setlist differences between Atlantic City and Tokyo are the addition of “Undercover Of The Night”, and “Terrifying” in place of “Almost Hear You Sigh”.)

Rolling Stones Flashpoint (1991)—2½
Rolling Stones Live At The Tokyo Dome (2012)—3
Rolling Stones Steel Wheels Live: Atlantic City New Jersey (2020)—3

Dire Straits 6: Brothers In Arms

The previous two Dire Straits albums sported a sublime mix of storytelling and atmospherics, and were much bigger overseas than in America. Whether or not it was a conscious decision, Brothers In Arms tells few stories and buries the few melodies in contemporary mush from a pile of session cats augmenting what used to be a tight little combo. And the lyrics, previously worthy of the pen of a former English teacher, sound dashed off. Where he used to edit for quality, henceforth Knopfler songs (and albums) will simply run long.

Despite all this, it sold by the bucketful for the next two years, usually to people with new CD players needing something familiar to show off. Even the words “A FULL DIGITAL RECORDING” were emblazoned on the cover in the same typeface and weight as the artist and album title. This was also one of the first albums to take advantage of the extended CD playing time, with four tracks on what we still call side one longer on cassette and disc than the record. (That’s not always a good thing.)

“So Far Away” is mostly inoffensive, if a bit simple, but “Money For Nothing” got all the attention, thanks to its recognizable riff, Sting vocal and early anti-MTV stance. “Walk Of Life” took that grating accordion phrase to endless ESPN highlights reels. “Your Latest Trick” expands on the smooth jazz leanings of the previous album with too much saxophone, underscored by the sappy trumpet in the lounge intro lopped off the LP version. “Why Worry” would have been one of the slighter songs on the earlier albums, but here it stands out for its unobtrusiveness; this one runs over three minutes longer on the non-vinyl program.

Side two is concerned with world events and social commentary, but at least it’s comparatively shorter. “Ride Across The River” uses keyboards to evoke some far-off jungle, with that ubiquitous flute effect and, of course, crickets, but distinctly mariachi trumpets. “The Man’s Too Strong” is predominantly acoustic-based, and that’s intriguing enough, but “One World” kills the mood with its dopey arrangement and dopier words (or lack thereof). Of the four songs on the side, the title track is by far the strongest and most eloquent statement, but still a pretty depressing way to finish it off.

Brothers In Arms was an unlikely candidate for the arena-rock champion of the year, going head to head with Bruce Springsteen, and we’re still not sure how it happened. It has not aged well—mostly because of the DX7 synth effects everywhere and canned drums—and the hits tend to get lumped in with the usual “hey, remember the ‘80s?” suspects. It’s really too bad, considering how above-average Dire Straits used to be, and so recently in hindsight. They were never the same again.

The album also fits into our flimsy theory of The First Four, in which a band’s initial four albums can fit on two Maxell XLII-90 cassettes and follow this pattern:
1) the striking debut, catching all the attention and putting the pressure on;
2) the forced follow-up, usually written on the fly and criticized as a retread;
3) the make-or-break statement of purpose, which takes them into the stratosphere;
4) “we’ve been to the mountaintop, and this is what we saw there”
And after that, the fifth album can confound or please the listener. It’s not a perfect system, but possible demonstrations include R.E.M, U2, Coldplay, Springsteen, Led Zeppelin, and Toad The Wet Sprocket. (One day we’ll have it all worked out.) This was Dire Straits’ fifth album, and was too long to fit on one side of a Maxell anyway.

The album’s 40th anniversary was celebrated with the expected vinyl reissue, with the shorter edits intact, as well in expanded packages that included a concert from that busy summer. Amazingly, their set started with a ten-minute “Ride Across The River”, easing the crowd in before blasting into “Expresso Love” and a run through the more expected staples and four other songs from the new album. There are a lot of extended workouts—“Wild West End” runs over nine minutes, and “Tunnel Of Love” more than twice that—but the crowd even stays engaged in quieter tunes like “Why Worry”. These two discs would have been an excellent inclusion in 2024’s Live 1978-1992 box set, but that’s why people get degrees in marketing.

Dire Straits Brothers In Arms (1985)—2½
2025 40th Anniversary Edition: same as 1985, plus 15 extra tracks

Dire Straits 5: Twisting By The Pool and Alchemy

Perhaps in response to the heavy work that went into Love Over Gold, Mark Knopfler and Dire Straits quickly tossed off a few tracks for a maxi-single that emphasized dancing. Based on the cover, the official title was ExtendeDancEPlay, but in the U.S. and elsewhere it was named after the lead track.

“Twisting By The Pool” really is a fun, almost stupid number (in a good way) worthy of some of the Kinks’ similar early-‘80s singles, complete with several false endings. Its B-side, left over from the Love Over Gold sessions and nicely included here in the U.S., “Badges, Posters, Stickers, T-Shirts” neatly evokes the trad-jazz pub era musically, but sung as a character perhaps actually talking to the band in “Sultans Of Swing”. “Two Young Lovers” and “If I Had You” are simple yet toe-tapping, which, of course, was the point; the former is a rewrite of Chuck Berry’s “You Never Can Tell” with Mel Collins honking on sax, while the latter starts like “Expresso Love” but meanders toward the end.

Hindsight has made the EP a very nice appendix to the four albums, closing the circle if you will. With the exception of the title track on a few compilations and a brief appearance of three songs as a “video single”, it’s been MIA in the CD era, but the four songs were finally made available for streaming in 2021.)

Meanwhile, with former Rockpile drummer Terry Williams behind the skins, the band took their show to stadiums. Having reached the part of their career that demanded a double live album, Alchemy ably delivered the hits and album cuts, extended in some cases as befit the concert format. “Once Upon A Time In The West” is brought out for thirteen minutes, and the crowd goes wild. There’s the teaser of the final notes from a performance of “Industrial Disease” (reinstated in full on 2024’s Live 1978-1992 box set) just before an excellent “Expresso Love”, while “Romeo And Juliet” seamlessly flows into “Love Over Gold”, but only on the CD. “Private Investigations” isn’t that different from the album version, but “Sultans Of Swing” brings people back to their seats for ten full minutes. “Two Young Lovers” and the theme from the soundtrack of Local Hero provide smiles for the diehards, but perhaps the best performance is “Tunnel Of Love”, which gains a majestic four-minute intro before the Carousel quote, before the song takes over with fantastic grace. (In addition to “Industrial Disease”, the expanded edition for the box set also added “Twisting By The Pool” and “Portobello Belle”, which had been excerpted on the Money For Nothing compilation.)

These albums, plus his recent soundtrack work, kept Mark Knopfler’s name in circulation as one of the more sophisticated musicians in an era that, frankly, didn’t have a lot of them. Unfortunately, the simplicity of the EP and the big sound of the live album would soon combine in a way that would be a little surprising, and not completely welcome.

Dire Straits Twisting By The Pool (1983)—3
Current CD availability: none
Dire Straits Alchemy (1984)—3½
CD version: same as 1984, plus 1 extra track

Rolling Stones 33: Steel Wheels

Miracles do happen, even in the land of the Stones. The boys managed to patch things up, record an album and embark on an ambitious, expensive tour. Some concessions were obviously made: Keith would call the shots for the music, while Mick could handle the promotion. This arrangement was set in place on Steel Wheels.

Right away it’s an improvement over the last couple of albums. “Sad Sad Sad” opens with a blast of guitar, and doesn’t let up on “Mick’s Emotions” (sorry, “Mixed Emotions”), an excellent choice for the first single. They get a little funky without embarrassing themselves on “Terrifying”, but turn it up again on the blazing “Hold On To Your Hat”. “Hearts For Sale” isn’t very memorable, but “Blinded By Love” stands out despite the stupid history lesson, thanks to its gentler sound, reminiscent of their country experiments.

More social commentary appears on “Rock And A Hard Place”, which at least has plenty of guitars but also spawned about 25 dance remixes. “Can’t Be Seen” begins with one of the least Keith-like intros in their catalog, but at least he gets to yell his heart out fresh off his solo tour. Speaking of which, the co-writing credit for Steve Jordan on “Almost Hear You Sigh” suggests that it was a leftover from Talk Is Cheap. Whatever its history, it’s still an excellent slow jam in line with “Beast Of Burden”. A belated nod to Brian Jones comes on “Continental Drift”, a “world music” track where the boys are accompanied by the Master Musicians of Jajouka. It’s an ambitious experiment, and luckily “Break The Spell” does just that with a Chicago blues beat. Once again Keith gets the last word on “Slipping Away”, another in a long series of classics in the spirit of “All About You”, “Coming Down Again” and “Sleep Tonight”.

The excitement over Steel Wheels didn’t last past the tour, but at least they were trying. The album didn’t stink, and doesn’t sound ‘80s-dated two decades on. For that alone, fans could breathe a sigh of relief while selling their kidneys to cover the cost of concert seats.

Rolling Stones Steel Wheels (1989)—3