Neil Young Dreamin' Man Live '92 (4*)

If I've taken my time getting to Dreamin' Man Live '92 I can always point to the lack of urgency Neil Young displayed in getting to this document from his 1992 tour. Not much urgency in a close to twenty year gap between a handful of concerts selected from the four dozen shows spread over four legs of touring between January and November 1992 and this album's appearance as volume twelve in the Archives Performance Series.

And, with the disregard for sequencing we've almost come to expect from Mr Young it might be volume twelve, but it's the fifth to actually be released.

That 1992 tour was widely bootlegged, so, if you’re looking for a more accurate record than this chronologically sequenced collection of live recordings covering a non-sequential rerun of Harvest Moon’s ten tracks they’re out there. Many of them are perfectly listenable, and there’s a sixty-two track tour compilation in circulation as well, covering the whole gamut of songs played on the tour from acoustic takes on the likes of electric classics like Down By The River and Cinnamon Girl through to songs he wouldn’t get around to releasing officially until  Le Noise two years back (Hitchhiker).

So, what have we got here? Well, for a start we’re talking chronological order, rather than any other variation. Dreamin' Man from Portland in January, Such a Woman from Detroit four months later and three each (One of These Days/ Harvest Moon/You And Me and From Hank to Hendrix/ Unknown Legend/ Old King) from two consecutive nights in Los Angeles four months after that and a two month jump forward to Chicago (Natural Beauty) and Minneapolis (War of Man) for the last two tracks.

Being solo and acoustic, we’ve got Neil mostly on guitar, hopping over to the piano for Such a Woman, taking a turn on banjo for Old King, with the odd blast of neck brace harmonica. The result isn’t quite a deconstruction or reinterpretation of the Harvest Moon material, more a stripped back version of some of his strongest material from the nineties, delivered with the intimacy the live acoustic small theatre setting makes possible.

Long term fans would be totally aware of how well Neil works this sort of setting, and while there’s plenty for the more casual listener to enjoy here, Hughesy, for one, would much rather  have seen a complete recording of a particular concert, maybe with the rest of the Harvest Moon material added to the end, something like the full set list from the show that gave us the opening track, Dreamin' Man, here.

That would have read: Long May You Run, From Hank To Hendrix, Unknown Legend, Silver And Gold, You And Me, War Of Man, Old King, Such A Woman, Harvest Moon, Heart Of Gold, Dreamin' Man, Natural Beauty, Don't Let It Bring You Down, Sugar Mountain, After The Goldrush.

But despite those (slight) misgivings, given the fact that the Harvest Moon material mightn’t be totally familiar to the average listener, Dreamin’ Man Live '92 works well enough to warrant an evaluatory listen.

Little Village "Little Village" (4*)

I've frequently bemoaned the relative dearth of music fans who happen to have similar tastes to my own in these parts and here's a prime case in point. Had I been in the middle of the same sort of bunch of music fans I recall from my musical heyday there would've been someone in the crowd who'd have picked up a copy of Little Village.

Alternatively, had I been in a larger centre I may well have sighted this under-appreciated little gem in a cutout bin or second hand rack and weakened. After all, you'd expect that an album featuring the guitar of Ry Cooder, John Hiatt's vocals and songwriting, Nick Lowe on bass, vocals and the occasional writing credit and drummer Jim Keltner would be worth the price of a discounted admission.

Hiatt, Cooder, Lowe and Keltner had worked together on Hiatt's Bring the Family in 1987 and various permutations and combinations of the four had appeared on other projects credited to Cooder and Lowe, so it's not too difficult to see the origins of this 1992 album. 

Originally the idea was to call the outfit Hiatus, and while most of the vocal duties were passed to Hiatt the idea seems to have been to produce a genuine four-way collaboration, which is fair enough as a concept, but democracy doesn't always work in a band situation. 

Initial reactions when the album was released twenty years ago were very mixed, possibly due to the same degree of heightened expectation that tends to cruel highly anticipated supergroup collaborations.

If you'd heard and enjoyed Hiatt's earlier work (and particularly Bring the Family), loved the early Ry Cooder and noted Hiatt's presence on The Slide Area and Borderline, and spotted Lowe as a classy collaborator who could turn out a quirky song or three you'd probably have been licking the lips and anticipating a masterwork of staggering genius.

That's always going to be tough to deliver in an environment where you're making a band record featuring three strong performers who are used to calling the shots, so Lowe's summation of the album (of which Lowe has said, this rather limp record, which got limper and limper as certain members of the group messed around with it) might be understandable, because there are probably things on there he'd have done differently, and you'd suspect Cooder and Hiatt would have said something fairly similar.

Casting those issues aside might be difficult for the participants but having heard a sample of live Little Village via bootleg I was intrigued enough to chase down a download of the album. When you listen to it well removed from the high expectations of 1992 it's actually a rather good listen, provided you can remove yourself from expectations of stellar performance.

As an example of that, try Don't Think About Her When You're Trying To Drive, a track that would have been a highlight on a John Hiatt solo album, or Do You Want My Job, a bleak portrait of life in a place that may or may not be a fished out archipelago somewhere in the Pacific. 

For the rest of the album, Solar Sex Panel addresses male baldness and global warming issues with Hiatt espousing the virtues of his solar powered loving, The Action gives a sort of blow by blow description of a good time hangout, and Inside Job grooves along nicely around a Cooder solo. Six and a half minutes of Big Love might be a bit much to take if it wasn't for the fat rumbling licks Cooder slides in underneath the vocals, while Take Another Look switches the vocal spotlight to Lowe.

Then there's Do You Want My Job? On this description, the answer's a firm No, regardless of the tropical island vibe. 

Don't Go Away Mad has Hiatt front and centre in a track that grooves along pleasantly but doesn't have a lot going for it, though the guitar solo in the middle is kinda tasty, but with Fool Who Knows we've got Nick Lowe back on vocals in a trademark vocal performance in a song he obviously likes (he was doing it on tour with Ry Cooder in November 2009), interesting guitar action. 

There's a bit of motoring metaphor on She Runs Hot for Me, where everyone seems to be having a good time, that you might see continuing into Don't Think About Her When You're Trying to Drive. Yeah, sure it does, but it's another one in a lengthy series of heartfelt heartbreak Hiatt ballads where you're looking for the searing Cooder solo (on the surface you'd think it would be a natural fit) but the guitar work stays at the tasteful punctuation stage. 

Finally, there's a slick groove driving Don't Bug Me When I'm Working, complete with audio inserts from the Sonny Boy Williamson track that gave the band its name.

Now, when you line Little Village up against the best work from the three headliners it might come across as slightly lightweight, but that's in comparison with some very classy competition. Definitely worth a listen, particularly for Hiatt fans.

Oh, and those live bootlegs where Mr Cooder gets a bit more room to stretch out are worth chasing down as well...