Is Neil Young Finally Going to Start Releasing Those Archives?

Apparently the answer is yes.

Fresh off a summer long concert tour with bandmates Crosby, Stills and Nash, and his annual appearance with Willie Nelson at this year's Farm Aid, Neil will apparently have two new CD releases in record stores in time for the Christmas season.

Well okay, they are not exactly new - but at least one of them has been anticipated for something like twenty years.

According to reports published on Billboard Magazine's website, Young will first issue a new version of his controversial Living With War CD. The newly remixed version will reflect a "more accurate" version of the original CD, which was recorded live in the studio in about ten days and released last May.

The new Living With War - Raw (maybe Neil's a closet WWE wrestling fan) will also include a bonus DVD with videos, directed by Young himself, of every track on the album. The videos, which presumably will mirror the anti-Bush theme of the songs on the original album, contain footage from the Iraq war as well as from Al Gore's acclaimed documentary An Inconvenient Truth.

The new version of Living With War will be released first via iTunes November 7, to be followed by a traditional retail release December 19.

Perhaps of greater interest to long-time Neil Young fans however, is word that the long rumored Archives will finally begin to see the light of day. On November 14 — assuming everything holds — Neil Young will release the first of that series, Live At The Fillmore East 1970. Recorded at the legendary rock venue with the original lineup of Crazy Horse, the set has been rumored for official release at least since around the same time as the 3-CD retrospective set Decade more than twenty years ago.

Young — a notorious perfectionist when it comes to the remastering and re-packaging of his back catalog — has talked for years of putting out his "archives," but has thus far been frustratingly (for fans) slow in doing so. Several of Young's back catalog releases, including critically acclaimed albums such as On The Beach, were similarly unavailable for many years until Young finally put them out about two years ago.

This represents the first time an actual release date has been scheduled for any material from the infamously rumored Archives series. If all goes as planned, Live At The Fillmore East 1970 should begin a process of regular releases from that archive, much in the way Columbia has handled Bob Dylan's Bootleg Series. However, while Billboard reports that Live At The Fillmore East 1970 will be a CD/DVD release, Amazon.com currently only has a CD release up at its site (the presumed cover-art can be seen by going to my Blogcritics article here).

Either way, here is the track listing for the Live At The Fillmore East 1970 CD as it appears at Amazon.com:

1. Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere
2. Winterlong
3. Down By The River
4. Wonderin'
5. Come On Baby Let's Go Downtown
6. Cowgirl In The Sand

Curiously, the Billboard article also mentions such Young classics as "Broken Arrow," "Cinnamon Girl," and "On The Way Home" as possible inclusions on the set.

Assuming the planned Novenber 14 release date actually holds (and when it comes to Neil Young's Archives that could be a very big "if"), hopefully all will be revealed soon.

In the meantime, Neil Young will perform his annual Bridge School benefit shows this weekend near San Francisco, with a lineup that also includes Brian Wilson and Pearl Jam.