Happy New Year, Goodbye Screwed Year

So here we are at the end of another year.

As anybody who follows this blog knows, I usually do these year-end blogs with a scene of the always spectacular fireworks show from our Space Needle here in Seattle (which usually gets this blog a nice year-end spike in hits).

The thing is, no matter how much I try to overlook it, I just don't feel in that much of a celebratory mood as 2008 comes to an end.

This year just doesn't feel like it was all that great to me, truth be told.

On the national front, the economy is in the shitter, and the always volatile situation in the middle east looks to be on the precipice of one of those semi-annual powder kegs that flare up from time to time.

Here in Seattle, we spent the last two weeks of the year snowed in under two feet of snow, and don't look now, but the storm winds are blowing in again tonight as of this writing (minus the snow, praise the Lord).
On the homefront, I lost one job this year and gained another...at least for now. Two weeks ago, I learned my current company is going to be downsizing, and come this time next week I should know whether my own job was spared the axe or not. Bottom line, is I may begin 2009 once again in the unemployment line. At least this time, I should have lots of company.

On the bright side, I certainly have nothing to fear from a job performance standpoint -- my accounts all love me, as I do them.

But on the other side of the coin, I've been in this position so many times over the past decade or so that I've learned to recognize the signs almost instinctually.

Based on past experience, I'm not real optimistic. If you guessed that I've been touching up the resume again, you get a gold star.
As many of you also know, I write mostly about music on this space.

And there was certainly not much reason for optimism there this year. Brian Wilson, Steven Wilson, and the Fleet Foxes aside...it was all I could do to even fill a top ten of 2008's best music this year.

The last time I checked, the music industry was still trying to figure out what the fuck happened and where exactly the bottom fell completely out, even as it continued to prop up the latest crop of disposable pablum like Miley and the Jonas Brothers, and to get one more pound of flesh from the rotting corpse of Britney Spears.

When guys like John Mellencamp have to sell their music for use in Ford truck ads, and even Bruce Springsteen is cutting exclusivity deals with WalMart, you know we're in trouble.

And if you think for one minute, that in an era where the delivery systems of choice come in the form of cellphone speakers and the miniscule bitrates of most MP3's...well, don't count on the next Dark Side Of The Moon, Pet Sounds, or OK Computer coming down the pike anytime soon.

Now, before I lose everyone reading so far... I think there's good reason to believe 2009 should be a better year.

Reason #1: Bush Is Gone, Baby Gone.

I don't know about any of you, but when Obama got elected I felt the same sigh of relief that led people to dance in the streets on election night in cities across the country (and when was the last time any of us living today saw that)?

Whether Obama is the saviour many believe he might be not only remains to be seen, but is in fact highly doubtful given the mess that he is about to inherit come Jan. 20.

But it sure can't be worse than what we've witnessed the past eight years, as the country has been ripped apart along ideological lines like no other period in my lifetime (including the sixties -- where there was at least a healthy opposition).

I can't begin to recount the ways that Bush has completely turned this country on it's ear. But watching this guy compliment "Brownie" on his good job during Katrina after a great American city was destroyed; seeing how good, albeit liberal, Christian people had their faith put in question for not buying into "the program"; and watching the middle class destroyed (is it just me, or does an economy rely as much on the everyday joes who buy the goods and services, as it does the corporations who manufacture them?) all come immediately to mind. Sanctioning torture, and suspending the sort of basic, fundamental concepts of guilt, innocence, and just plain human decency and fairness that make America the great beacon of freedom to the world it once was also come to mind.

Obama's got a big job ahead of him. I don't envy him.

So what do we have to look forward to in 2009? I'm not sure. But this much I know (or at least hope). It can't get much worse. There's also a new Springsteen album (and hopefully, a tour) to look forward to next year. Sorry, couldn't resist...

Whatever happens in 2008, it'll start later tonight.

Me and my good pal Dave will go out. We may or may not watch the Space Needle blow up as is the tradition. We'll probably get together with Dave Dudley, a buddy from high school who I saw for the first time in about 30 years last summer at Dave's cabin (that was another big theme last year...reconnnecting with long lost friends ranging from Kim Murrell and Pat Koory, to Dave Dudley, and in about another three weeks...Pat Levy).

Those names may mean nothing to those reading this, but seeing or hearing from them were some of the very few things about 2008 that made me smile...if even only for a minute.

Hopefully 2009 will bring a few new reasons to smile.

"Life Itself": New Springsteen Clip From Working On A Dream

As everyone in the world knows by now, Springsteen's new album arrives January 27. Here's the third, and by far the most interesting, song that's been leaked out in advance. "Life Itself" is definitely the moodiest of the three tracks, and is also notable for the Byrds-like twelve string chiming in the background.



The previously leaked "My Lucky Day," a decidedly more uptempo rocker characterized by the very E-Street sounding piano of Roy Bittan can also be viewed below. I can't wait for this record. Bruce and The E Street Band on a roll right now.



And here's the title track. Enjoy:



Watch this space for 2009 tour info!

The Rockologist Buys Himself An MP3 MP5 Player For Christmas

So I finally went and did it. I bought myself an MP3 player for Christmas. Actually, make that an MP5 player.

For those who read this column fairly regularly, this may come as bit of a surprise as I've been known to rave on a bit about things like the poor sound quality of MP3s. I've also been known to rail away about how today's delivery systems of choice have helped contribute to the whole concept of the full-length album as a dying art-form.

The instant accessibility of downloadable music has once again turned music more towards a single track based medium, essentially turning back time backwards to the days of the Fifties soda fountain jukebox. Which, at least to me, explains why you don't see as many truly game-changing albums released these days. That's my opinion.

Case in point? Look no further than at how much better Radiohead's In Rainbows sounded once it actually had a proper commercial CD release, as opposed to its original quality when it was a free download.
My views on these things are for the most part unchanged, by the way.

I could go on for days about how I think the "forward-thinking" progress of instantly accessible music is, in reality, a nefarious trojan horse hell bent on destroying music from within. The advent of these palm-sized delivery systems have certainly played a large role in the downturn of the music industry (not that the "industry" itself didn't already have plenty of problems of its own).

When I heard that Porcupine Tree's Steven Wilson included a scene in the trailer for his new album, Insurgentes, where he actually target practices his shooting skills on a bunch of MP3 players, I about did a Tom Cruise back flip off my couch!

The truth is, much as I'm pretty sure my more forward-thinking fellow music scribes at Blogcritics like Mat Brewster have a soft spot for the ol' Rockologist, I've often suspected that it was in more of an "Andy Rooney of rock" kind of way.

And, they may be right. I don't really like cell phones either.

But this Christmas, I finally bit.

And you know what? The damn thing came in kind of handy this Christmas season. For those who haven't heard, up here in Seattle we've been snowed in under as much as about two feet for more than a week. Every time the stuff starts to melt, the temperature freezes down to around the teens, and we then get a fresh new dumping of snow.

That's my house by the way. We're supposed to get another six inches tonight.

Personally, I haven't seen this much white powder since my days in the proper music industry. It's been nearly as long for Seattle as a town. I haven't been to work in a week (and may not have a job anyway come the new year, but that's another story).

So what finally got me to bite the digital music bullet was this kick-ass deal I found on a touch-screen MP5 player, which looks a lot like the one that you should see below. What makes this device so cool is that it not only stores and plays standard MP3 files, but does the same for the better sounding downloadable files like flacs.

It also stores 16GB of data, which just about covers the library I've accumulated over this past year that's been clogging up my hard drive.

It also very neatly makes all of this music readily available, categorized by song, album, and artist. It's all portable, too. Not that I've been able to leave my house or anything like that for the past ten days or so...

But I was able to port the thousand or so songs I have stored on my computer to this device in seconds, and from what I can tell, there's no end in sight yet. And I've gotta admit that in these past few weeks, when the power in the house was a bit shaky, my new MP5 friend was a bit of a life saver. So, the inner gadget geek in me has been awakened. Sort of...

Does this mean I'll soon be taking the equivalent of long, hot showers with my newfound digital friend? Not likely.

Once the weather thaws up around these parts, I'm sure I'll be right back to my old-school Bose speaker system. Hell, if I had my way, I'd probably opt for a cabin up in the woods somewhere with just enough electricity to stock my cold beer and power my turntable.

But in the meantime, Springsteen's 1978 Winterland concert and the latest albums by the Killers and the Black Keys haven't been half-bad on those devil-be-damned thumbnail speakers. Any port in a storm, right?

Merry Christmas everybody!

Are You Freaking Kiddin' Me?

This is my yard. Thats my deck, my lawnchair, and my table. We just got most of the snow off the porch. There was about a foot and a half there, and I couldn't open my door because there was a big drift up against it. They're expecting another three to eight inches on top of that tonight. I haven't been to work in three days. Aint Life Grand?

Why You Won't Find Public Enemy At The Karaoke Bar

Book Review: Don't Stop Believin': How Karaoke Conquered the World and Changed My Life by Brian Raftery

Go on admit it. You love Karaoke. No? Well okay, but you've at least done it. Everybody has at least once, right?

There is just something inherently irresistible about the opportunity to play rock star for one night in front of a room full of your mostly drunken friends. Can't sing? No problem. As Brian Raftery points out in Don't Stop Believin': How Karaoke Conquered the World and Changed My Life, his definitive book on Karaoke, one of the rules that makes Karaoke such a beautiful thing is the fact that no one is paying attention to you sing anyway. Instead, they're all sitting on pins and needles waiting for their own turn at the mike.

The thing is, as hilarious and just plain fun to read as most of this book is, I'm not at all sure the humor here is that intentional. You get the impression at times that Raftery takes this whole Karaoke thing quite seriously. Well okay, maybe not that seriously.

In the book, Raftery chronicles his own Karaoke experiences, which take him to Karaoke shitholes and other such places all over the world. He hangs out with a heavy metal Karaoke band. He follows another group looking to win the World Karaoke Championships. And he sings Karaoke ranging from Sinatra to Fleetwood Mac to Fugazi (yes, that Fugazi).

But he also goes into the actual history of the, umm, "art form," as well as tracing the roots of its popularity in this country all the way from that lounge in your neighborhood's local Chinese restaurant to the ultimate manifestation of Karaoke that is American Idol.

What I personally found most thrilling about this book was that he mentioned Dimples. That cemented Raftery's cred as a Karaoke expert for me. Dimples is a Karaoke bar located right across the street from the NBC studios in Burbank where I spent many a drunken night during my two years living in L.A. back in the nineties. A guy who lived in my apartment building tended bar there and used to spiff me lots of free drinks.

What I remember most about Dimples was how seriously they took their Karaoke.

Some nights celebrities would drop by to sing (I once saw actor Treat Williams do a really bad Tony Bennett there). More often though, you'd get the regulars who were pretty much all professional Karaoke types. There was this one Karaoke group who called themselves "the Council" who sang there a lot, that I'm pretty sure consisted of genuine mafia wise guys. The old guy did Sinatra and Al Martino quite well. The younger guy on the other hand would really do a butcher job on Rod Stewart. Yet he always got the biggest applause. Like I said, I'm pretty sure "the Council" were all made guys.

One of the other cool things about Don't Stop Believin': How Karaoke Conquered the World and Changed My Life that I liked was the inclusion of some lists. These include Raftery's "Fifty Songs I'll Never Stop Singing At Karaoke" (his number one choice is Night Ranger's "Sister Christian"). Despite the book's title, the Journey hit doesn't make the cut.

On another list, you'll find his "Thirty Songs I'll Never Find At Karaoke," which includes such non-Karaoke friendly artists as Public Enemy, Funkadelic, The Replacements, and Glenn Danzig. Maybe I should tell him about the Karaoke bar I discovered a few years back that actually had Monster Magnet's "Space Lord" and Radiohead's "Optimistic" on the songlist. Honest to God, I'm not making that up.

I liked this book an awful lot. If you've got an inner-Karaoke guy in you dying to be let loose, chances are you will like it, too. If not, it still makes a great gift for that friend of yours prone to singing badly at parties and other forms of lampshade wearing fun.

Yardbirds Documentary DVD Yields Vintage Live Clapton, Beck, and Page

Music DVD Review: - The Story Of The Yardbirds

Although they never sold as many records or made it quite as big as their friends in the Stones and the Who, the Yardbirds made every bit as lasting an impact on the music world. Even though this band originally made its mark during the Sixties, their influence would last well into the Seventies and beyond. It continues to be felt today. Most notably, the Yardbirds served as the launch pad for the careers of three of the best rock guitarists ever in Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, and Jimmy Page.

The Story Of The Yardbirds is a one-hour documentary chronicling the band's history in interviews with both lesser-known members like Chris Dreja, Paul Samwell Smith, and Jim McCarty as well as the more famous alumni like Clapton, Beck, and Page.

But what really makes this DVD a must-get are the rarely seen live performances. For starters, the extras include a 1967 German television broadcast (from a show called "Beat Beat Beat") where a young Jimmy Page is seen performing on songs like "Shapes Of Things," "Happenings Ten Years Time Ago," and "Over Under Sideways Down." For the finale of "I'm A Man," Page gives us a preview of the Led Zeppelin to come by whipping out his violin bow. Elsewhere in the film, Page is seen with the bow again on a pre-Zeppelin version of "Dazed And Confused."

Earlier on, there is also plenty of live footage with both Clapton ("I Wish You Would") and Beck ("Still I'm Sad," "Heart Full Of Soul," "Train Kept A Rollin'," and more). The Beck footage is especially fun to watch for everything from the Go-Go dancers behind him to Beck destroying his guitar Pete Townshend style during a scene from the film Blow-up (which Beck himself describes as "crap...we were supposed to be the Who").

The footage from Blow-up is also one of the two rare pieces of film where you get to see the version of the Yardbirds with both Beck and Page on guitar (the other is a version of "Happenings Ten Years Time Ago" from 1966). In an interview, Page describes how he originally joined the Yardbirds to fill the shoes of departing bassist Paul Samwell Smith, but ended up playing guitar anyway. In another interview, Beck explains that sharing the guitarists slot with Page was one of the reasons he ended up leaving ("I wanted to be it," he says).

The rest of the live footage, even though filmed in the grainy sort of black and white of the Sixties, is equally great stuff. In one such scene, lead vocalist Keith Relf looks eerily like Brian Jones while performing "Heart Full Of Soul." Relf would later die in a tragic accident in 1976.

Although most of the Yardbirds story is already well known to music fans, it's still interesting to hear it re-told here from the "birds mouth" so to speak. Band members recall, for example, how Eric Clapton left the band shortly after they released the single "For Your Love," saying that Clapton wanted to do blues covers rather than make hit records. There are also interviews with former producers like Mickie Most, and managers like Peter Grant (who would later famously manage Led Zeppelin). Other interesting tidbits include how Jeff Beck got the guitar to sound like a sitar for "Over Under Sideways Down."

This is great stuff all the way around, but be forewarned. It is probably only for diehard fans of rock history, of the band itself, or of the famous guitarists the Yardbirds produced. The live footage is often stunning, just for the fact that any of it actually survived. But the sound and picture aren't always great simply because they are so dated. Otherwise, The Story Of The Yardbirds comes highly recommended.

My Favorite Albums Of 2008 (Not A Best Of List)

Normally, it would be the custom to do one of those top-ten best-of articles for the year right about now. The thing is, at least if I am being 100-percent honest, I would have a pretty hard time filling such a list this year.

It's not there wasn't any good music out there in 2008 -- because there most certainly was. It's just that unlike say, 2006, when you had a record that really stood out the way that Dylan's Modern Times did, or even 2007, when you had no less than great new albums by Wilco, Springsteen, and Radiohead to consider, there just weren't any new albums that stood head and shoulders above the rest of the pack the way that those did.

Although I will admit that I considered Radiohead for this year's list. My reasoning there being that although In Rainbows was first released in 2007 in its download-only version, the physical release which came out on January 1st of this year simply sounded so much better.

Oh well, I guess I'll leave that for the folks at the Grammys to decide.

Anyway, what I ended up doing was going back through all the articles and reviews I did this year, as well as revisiting a few releases that for whatever reason I never actually ended up writing about. So, this list is not necessarily a best of the year for 2008. It does however represent the music I probably listened to the most this year. It is also in no particular order.

Brian Wilson - That Lucky Old Sun

Brian Wilson's love letter to his beloved California is also one of the most personal, bittersweet sounding pieces of music I have heard by just about any artist in recent memory. While much of the music here recalls the simpler, more innocent vision of what he calls the "Heartbeat Of L.A." (read: vintage surf and sand Beach Boys) -- especially on songs like "Forever My Surfer Girl" -- other songs like "Oxygen To The Brain" and "Midnight's Another Day" provide an open-book, autobiographer's sort of sketch into the artist's often troubled life. The music is sweeping and gorgeous throughout.

Bob Dylan - Tell Tale Signs: Rare And Unreleased 1989 - 2006

The latest entry in Dylan's Bootleg Series of unreleased music from the vaults, actually plays more like a unique new album in its own right than a mere collection of leftovers. Focusing on the period from 1989's Oh Mercy right on up through Dylan's much more recent creative renaissance on the albums Time Out Of Mind, Love & Theft, and 2006's Modern Times, songs like "Someday Baby," "Aint Talkin," and no less than three versions of "Mississippi" are reworked so radically here as to become entirely new and different creations. As such, they provide unique insight into Dylan's ever-evolving songwriting process.

Steven Wilson - Insurgentes

The first ever full length solo album from Porcupine Tree's main man Steven Wilson is every bit the sort of all over the place mix of styles you'd expect from a guy whose projects range from the prog-metal of PT to the ambient-pop of No-Man. The sounds on Insurgentes range from the chiming U2-ish guitars of the opening track "Harmony Komine," to the dense layers of "Salvaging," to the doomy, avant-prog of the King Crimson like ""No Twilight Within The Courts Of The Sun." Wilson originally released this in a limited run of 3000 copies (which quickly sold out), but word is there will be a commercial release early next year.

John Mellencamp - Life Death Love & Freedom

Mellencamp could have easily taken the easy road here by following last year's Freedom's Road, and it's highly visible (thanks to those Ford Truck ads) single "Our Country," with a similarly commercial record of Americana tinged pop tunes. Instead, he got together with producer T-Bone Burnett to produce a stark, stripped down sounding album with folk and blues based arrangements that sound a lot closer to the dust bowl than the arena bowl. The result is some of Mellencamp's darkest sounding music to date, while the lyrics of songs like "Without A Shot" and "Troubled Land" are all about the search for redemption.

Mudcrutch - Mudcrutch

I was a bit of a late bloomer to Tom Petty's revival of his looser, rootsier pre-Heartbreakers band. But when their version of the Byrds' "Lover Of The Bayou" eventually hooked me, I was pretty much all-in. For what's been mostly advertised as something of a one-off, this is actually some of Tom Petty's most arresting, yet completely natural and relaxed-sounding stuff in years. It's also a place I'd personally like to see him revisit a bit more often.

Marillion - Happiness Is The Road

The latest entry from these British prog-rock cult heroes was an ambitious double-CD, divided into two separate parts (Essence and The Hard Shoulder) that all-told contained over two hours of music. And while there was plenty here to keep the band's diehard prog-rock fans happy, the band also stretches out quite a bit musically. The muscular sounding guitar riff of "Thunder Fly" recalls The Beatles' "Paperback Writer," while other songs mine new territory for this band ranging from funk to psychedelia. The common thread is the musicianship, which is absolutely stellar throughout.

Coldplay - Viva La Vida (or Death And All His Friends)

Current plagiarism scandals notwithstanding, this album was Coldplay's attempt to regain some of their original critical mettle following the backlash which arrived at right about the same time they became one of the world's biggest bands. The answer for Chris Martin and company was to recruit producer Brian Eno. Obvious comparisons to U2 albums like Joshua Tree aside, the combination works quite well for the most part. While "Violet Hill" and the title track reclaim this band's common ground of catchy melodies and yes, even that whiny Chris Martin falsetto, songs like "Yes" find the band stretching out with eastern and psychedelic inspired atmospheric sounds. It's not perfect, but it aint' half-bad either.

My Morning Jacket - Evil Urges

It actually took me a while to warm completely up to this one, but I've since found myself coming back to it many times this year. My initial reluctance came mainly from the fact that I wasn't that keen on the whole idea of MMJ resurrecting the spirit of Prince here, as much of the pre-buzz for this album seemed to indicate. And while it is true that songs like "Highly Suspicious" and the title track represented a funkier direction, the live MMJ show I saw this past fall confirmed that this band has lost none of their celebrated improvisational spirit. They just had better songs.

Fleet Foxes - Fleet Foxes

Everything you've heard with regard to the most buzzed-about band of 2008 is actually true. These shaggy young hippie kids -- from Seattle of all places -- really do summon the mid-sixties folk-rock spirit of groups like the Mamas And the Papas and the Buffalo Springfield as expertly as they say. With their pastoral sounding wash of gorgeous multiple-part harmonies -- take equal parts CSN&Y and Buffalo Springfield, cross-pollinate that with "Good Vibrations"-era Beach Boys, and you've got the idea -- the only thing that remains to be seen is if they can do it all again the next time out. Listening to "Tiger Mountain Peasant Song" or "White Winter Hymnal," I'm betting they can.

Steve Winwood - Nine Lives

Despite a high profile tour with Tom Petty this summer, this album didn't get anywhere near the attention it should have. On Nine Lives, Steve Winwood abandons the slick, glossy soul-pop of his eighties hits like "Back In The High Life," and instead rediscovers his pedigree as the great blues and soul singer he was during his younger years in groups like Traffic and the Spencer Davis Group. The result is a stew of Hammond organ fueled blues, and percolating Latin percussion that also represents his best work in years. Eric Clapton's filthy sounding guitar solo on the track "Dirty City" alone is worth the admission price here.

A Second Ten: Black Keys - Attack & Release; Ryan Adams - Cardinology; The Hold Steady - Stay Positive; AC/DC - Black Ice; Raconteurs - Consolers Of The Lonely; Neil Young - Sugar Mountain - Live At Canterbury House 1968; David Gilmour - Live At Gdansk; Duffy - Rockferry; Metallica - Death Magnetic; No-Man - Schoolyard Ghosts

Best Reissues: Creedence Clearwater Revival - The Fantasy Records Remasters; Cheap Trick - Budokan!; Love - Forever Changes; U2 - Boy

X-Files Movie: What Were They Thinking?

DVD Review: The X-Files - I Want To Believe

Back in the nineties I was just about as big a fan of the X-Files as you were likely to find. Which is why I was as excited as anybody when I heard there was going to be a new X-Files movie last summer.

However, as the reviews about the movie started to roll in, so did the dread. There was also the matter of drumming up any interest among my friends to go see the damn thing.

You see, there have always been two mythologies about the X-Files which made it such a great TV series. One was the whole government conspiratorial Roswell, UFO, New World Order sort of thing, which back in the pre-millenennial nineties had reached something like a fever pitch. The other great sub-plot meanwhile, was the that whole sizzling understory involving the romantic and sexual tension between two of the geekiest, most un-sexy characters you could find anywhere in agents Mulder and Scully.

So here's the thing.

The X-Files: I Want To Believe works very well as a stand alone paranormal thriller. The problem here is that they blew it as far as drawing in the fan-base goes. I mean, honestly what were they thinking?

The mythology about everything from Roswell to Area 51 that drew in fans like me back in the nineties is pretty much completely dropped here. There's no cigarette smoking man, no lone gunmen, and no nefarious government conspiracy to be found anywhere here. And excuse me if I'm wrong here, but wasn't that the whole point of the X-Files in the first place?

In that respect, this movie is like Star Trek without the phasers or the warp drives. What is left is a fairly compelling paranormal thriller about disappearing FBI agents and a pedophile catholic priest with an apparent psychic connection to the crimes. Which I guess is all fine and dandy, except that it's not exactly anything that would make the Art Bell (or excuse me, I guess it's George Norry these days) show.

Ahh yes, but there is that whole "other" X-Files mythology -- the Mulder and Scully thing -- (I even named two of my cats after them).

This movie acknowledges that in one short exchange where Scully reveals to Mulder "why I fell in love with you," and Mulder replies that "is why we can't be together." There is also a funny nod to current politics where the agents see pictures of George W. Bush and J. Edgar Hoover on the wall and roll their eyes appropriately.

As the movie ends, there are also hints that the two might run off together to get away from all of this -- well, you know, whatever it is.

For me, as an X-Files fan, that's just not enough -- even though there's a bit of a payoff when Walter Skinner shows up at the end.

Bad reviews notwithstanding, this is a decent movie. It's just not a good X-Files movie. What I'm hoping is, much like the way they muffed it on the first Star Trek film, they get it right on the second try.

Neil Young's Latest Archives Tease Is An Essential Live Album

Music Review: Neil Young - Sugar Mountain - Live At Canterbury House 1968 (CD/DVD)

While his fans continue to patiently wait for Archives -- the massive ten DVD boxed set that Neil Young has been working on and promising to deliver for what seems like forever -- one of the nicer benefits of his long, arduous search through the vaults is that it has yielded live gems like this one.

As was the case with Live At Fillmore East and Live At Massey Hall before it, this latest installment from the Neil Young Archives series captures a legendary performance for the first time in it's entirety. In this particular case, it also comes from a pivotal point in Young's early career, where the artist was in between his gigs with Buffalo Springfield and Crosby Stills Nash & Young, and was just days away from releasing his first album as a solo artist. At this point, the long, extraordinary career that was still to come was something Neil Young himself probably couldn't have even imagined.

Which is just one of many reasons why Sugar Mountain - Live At Canterbury House 1968 is such a great record. Here we see Neil Young, alone on his acoustic guitar, performing in a completely relaxed atmosphere that sounds as warm at times as your own living room (thanks in no small part to the DVD audio). When the emcee announces Neil Young, he even expresses surprise at the size of the crowd, saying he didn't expect so many people to show up.

For his part, Neil Young shows a rarely seen humorous side in his often lengthy raps between songs, joking about everything from the length of his hair to his fondness for classic cars. Knowing him as the rock legend that we do now, the effect is a somewhat disarming one that goes far beyond mere intimacy. It's quite frankly a little weird to see an artist of Neil Young's stature connecting with an audience this completely. Which is what makes Sugar Mountain - Live At Canterbury House 1968 stand out from any live Neil Young album you will ever hear.

As for the actual performances, you've certainly heard songs like "On The Way Home," "Sugar Mountain," "Mr. Soul" and the rest before. Just never like this. "Broken Arrow," which has always been one of Young's most gorgeous songs anyway, becomes a brand new revelation here. Stripped down to the core of Young's guitar and famously quavering voice, the refrains of "did you see them" and "hello, Broken Arrow" sound almost like a desperate plea compared to the version recorded by Buffalo Springfield. The way Neil's guitar duplicates the piano parts of the studio version is also pretty amazing.

The usually rocking "Mr. Soul" becomes much more dark and foreboding here, stripped to an essential foundation of minor chords -- which Neil really lays into at times -- as Neil sings the famous lines about how "the clown does the trick of disaster" with a quiet intensity that puts the words into much sharper focus. "Expecting To Fly" is likewise a much lonelier sounding song here, with the singer expressing the romantic regret of the song in a quieter, yet stronger way than on the studio version.

Of the three live records released in the Archives series thus far, Sugar Mountain - Live At Canterbury House 1968 is by far the most satisfying. Not only does it capture a very young Neil Young in just about as raw an environment as it gets, it also shows the artist connecting with his audience in a way that has rarely, if ever been seen coming from an artist of Neil Young's iconic standing.

The latest word on that Archives box by the way, is that it will be out on February 24. Judging by the trailer film included on the DVD here, it also looks pretty amazing. Still, I'll actually believe when I see it. In the meantime, for Neil Young fans, Sugar Mountain - Live At Canterbury House 1968 is an essential buy.