When Neil Young unveiled his online archives website several weeks back, a lot of fans were immediately pleased to be able to listen to his entire, published discography in the highest audio fidelity imaginable, totally for free. At the same time however, there were grumblings that the site had yet to feature any material that they hadn’t heard before. That looks to change this Spring.
Today, Young announced through the first issue of an online newsletter he’s dubbed the Neil Young Times-Contrarian, that he plans on rolling out a few releases in March. The most intriguing is a live album titled Roxy: Tonight’s The Night Live, that he performed in Hollywood in 1973, backed by a band dubbed the Santa Monica Flyers. Amongst Young’s most ardent fans, this stretch of shows has gone down in legend as being some of the most intense and subversive of his entire career.
As he wrote in the Times-Contrarian, he and the band staged their residency shortly after completing what many consider to be his greatest album, Tonight’s The Night. “We had finished recording and decided to celebrate with a gig at a new club opening on the sunset strip, Roxy. We went there and recorded for a few nights, opening Roxy We really knew the Tonight’s the Night songs after playing them for a month, so we just played them again, the album, top to bottom, without the added songs, two sets a night for a few days. We had a great time.”
In addition to the Roxy gig, Young also intends to roll out another live album titled Alchemy, which chronicles his 2012/13 tour that Neil calls “the last recorded album by [his band] Crazy Horse.” Conjuring memories of live album’s past, Young said, “For me, Alchemy harkens back to the best of Live Rust and Weld, beginning to look like a circle….. but not totally joined.”
For those who’d rather see Neil in person, than listen to older live recordings, he let slip this little tidbit near the end, while describing his future plans for the Archives site as a whole. “Tour plans are forming now for the latter part of 2018.” Plan your Fall and Winter schedules accordingly
