This is Neil Young young, fresh faced talkative, months before he dropped his first self titled album, just after Buffalo Springfield folded, at 22 and a bit, with an uncertain future, an acoustic guitar, a small audience and a two track. This is Neil before he was hardened by the bullshit of the music business, before The Needle and the Damage Done, before Crazy Horse, before Heart of Gold changed his life forever, just a precocious talkative kid with a guitar and some nice tunes. It’s an intimate audience in Ann Arbour Michigan in 1968. Five of these tunes would later end up on his self titled debut the following year and it’s great to hear them unencumbered by that album’s curious production and the frustratingly low mixing of the vocals. The Loner, Old Laughing Lady and If I Could Have Her Tonight all sound great, however it’s the rambling The Last Trip to Tulsa and a much less rockier version of one of Young’s more memorable songs I’ve Been Waiting For You which kind’ve creeps unexpectedly up on you that are the real highlights here. He dips into the Buffalo Springfield reportoire, yet also taps out a rickety old version of Sugar Mountain that is nothing short of endearing. Then there’s his little raps. “Now I’m going to do a very important song,” he offers forcefully…”I don’t know what to do. Does anyone want me to do anything?..Songs I mean…They’re just all so down,” he laments, “I’m just going to go home and just write for a month.” These days it’s almost impossible to consider that Neil was ever so young, though this recording with its tape hiss, his nervous chatter and intimate rickety tunes casts a new light on one of contemporary music’s most interesting and productive contributors over the last say, forty odd years.
Bob Baker Fish
