Graham Parker & The Rumour "Live at Rockpalast 1978 + 1980"

The continuing non-appearance of the new Graham Parker and the Rumour album in the iTunes Store (and, coincidentally, it still hasn’t managed a general release in Australia) was what pointed Hughesy towards The Up Escalator, and it was that same Escalator that pushed me in this direction when I made another fruitless visit to iTunes a couple of days back.

A glance at what they had listed under The Rumour (I’m after a legitimate copy of Max) revealed these Rockpalast shows and a squiz at the track listings showed the second show featured most of The Up Escalator, so the natural curiosity took over. Escalator, after all, was widely panned on sonic grounds, so I was interested in seeing how that material sounded in a live setting.

That, such as it is, is my excuse anyway.

The hard copies of these two shows (also available on DVD) have the 1980 show as Disk One, and the earlier show on the second, which is strange, but ultimately not as annoying as the transposition of Thunder and Rain and Watch the Moon Come Down on the download, something that’s easily fixed but shouldn’t have happened in the first place.

Apart from that, the download has the shows in the right order, with the earlier one featuring what amounted to The Rumour horns (Albie Donelly and John Earle on saxophones, Dan Ellis on trombone and Dick Hanson, trumpet) while the 1980 version features the post-Bob Andrews Rumour with Nicky Hopkins on keyboards,

As far as the performances go, there isn’t anything here that will surprise, apart from the fact that the Escalator material works rather well in the live setting, which hardly comes as a surprise given Parker’s reputation as a white hot live act and The Rumour’s status as one of the better instrumental combos to emerge from the New Wave ruckus.

Parker delivers his regular archetypal angry young man posture, spitting the lyrics and declaiming his venomous disdain of anyone who sticks their head above the parapet. Fevered, impassioned and, ultimately, the prototype for much of what followed, he comes across as an Anglicised Springsteen or Southside Johnny, working the same sinewy post-Stones and Van Morrison as his stateside equivalents, driven on by a band that’s every bit as good as The E Street Band or The Asbury Jukes.

So, no surprises, just a reminder of how good this outfit actually was, and a scratching of the head as to the continuing non-appearance of Three Chords Good, an issue that will hopefully be dealt with at some point in the concert-going future.

Track listing:
23 January 1978

Heat Treatment
White Honey
Soul on Ice
Back to Schooldays
Heat in Harlem
Fool’s Gold
Watch the Moon Come Down
Thunder and Rain
Stick to Me
I’m Gonna Tear Your Playhouse Down
Don’t Ask Me No Questions
Not If It Pleases Me
The New York Shuffle
Soul Shoes
Hold Back the Night


18 October 1980

Stupefaction
No Holding Back
Jolie Jolie
Love without Greed
Discovering Japan
Passion Is No Ordinary Word
Howlin’ Wind
Thunder and Rain
Manoeuvres
Don’t Get Excited
Beating of Another Heart
Empty Lives
Devil’s Sidewalk
Endless Night
Can’t Get No Protection
Nobody Hurts You
Don’t Ask Me No Questions
Tripe Face Boogie
Soul Shoes

Townes van Zandt "Live at the Old Quarter, Houston, Texas" (4.5*)

First released in 1977, and intermittently in and out of print thereafter, Live at the Old Quarter delivers twenty-six of Townes van Zandt’s best songs, drawn from a five-night solo residency in July 1973 at a tiny Texas venue that could comfortably seat sixty, though according to legend over a hundred jammed into the room on the nights these recordings were made.

Judging by the introduction, we’re talking the last night of the run in a two-storey building (everything, it seems, is upstairs) that apparently drew a mixed clientele of skid row bums, hippies, and tidy professional people, a neighbourhood bar where you’d reckon the ambient noise would kill any chance of a decent recording. They were, after all close to double the notional/legal capacity of the bar.

The result, however, is almost crystal clear, with just enough happening on the edges to remind you that, yes, this is a live recording and underlining the apparent fact that a man and a guitar, a set of mostly immaculately written songs and a joke or two in between can hold an audience spellbound.

You might look at it and figure the bloke’s got rocks in his head to lead off with what’s arguably his best-known song (Pancho and Lefty) and following it with Mr. Mudd & Mr. Gold but from that opening one-two punch he doesn’t let it slip.

On the other hand, to the average listener, Poncho might be about the only track they’d be likely to recognise, apart from the cover of Bo Diddley’s Who Do You Love? so it’s sort of a case of that’s a damn fine song and these are damn fine songs too.

Lyrically, the songs are pretty dense, hardly the epitome of verbal economy, but there’s a precision there as well. Yes, they’re wordy, but they’re only as wordy as they need to be, and they’re delivered in a manner that commands your attention, which is obviously what happened in a crowded two-storey building close to forty years ago.

I was pointed towards this album by a discussion about great songwriters over on the not entirely Neil Young-centric Rust mailing list, where a comment from a bloke who seemed to have reasonable taste suggested this was either the best of Townes’ albums, or the pick of the live ones.

As a relative newbie I’m not in a position to comment on either suggestion, but can’t help thinking the man’s better in a live setting than stuck away in a studio. The writing is excellent, it’s relatively early in his career, so issues with alcohol and drugs haven’t kicked in to the extent they did later on (that much seems obvious from the performances here aligned against the man’s legend) and there’s a crisp clarity to the recording that gives you the I’m right there feeling.

There may be better Townes van Zandt live albums, and if there are I want to hear them. In the meantime this will do very nicely, thank you.

Little Feat "Barnstormin' Live Volume One", "Barnstormin' Live Volume Two", "Rocky Mountain Jam" (all 4*)

Here are a couple that slipped past in the changeover between buying hard copies of new music and rocking over to iTunes to grab the digital equivalents.

The purpose of these selections from the Feat's extensive tape archive is, as far as I can make out, to provide new items that can be sold through the website and, more particularly, at the merchandise table at live gigs. That sort of thing is a vital component of a touring outfit's bottom line.

Barnstormin' Live Volume One hit the market and the merch table back in early 2005, and Hughesy was off to the website for a hard copy tout suite. Volume Two sneaked out later that year, by which stage I think I'd run across the problem of storage space so I'd put off buying a hard copy, and the reappearance of Volume Two in a two disk box with its predecessor wasn't going to result in a purchase either.

Rocky Mountain Jam appeared in 2007, aimed at much the same target, and by that time, with the purchases almost exclusively in the digital domain it was a case of we'll get around to it someday while financial and other considerations stepped in.

A glance at the three track listings doesn't reveal much in the way of fresh material. Apart from a take on Little Walter’s Last Night on Barnstorming One and a segue from Down On the Farm into Candy Man Blues to kick off Volume Two there’s a selection of titles from across the band’s history from Sailin’ Shoes to tracks from the then-most-recent studio effort Kicking It At The Barn without most of the night by night musical suspects. Those turn up on Rocky Mountain Jam, presumably because their absence on the earlier two titles had been noted.

As such, the three titles a fair portrayal of mid-noughties Little Feat in the seven piece configuration. One doesn’t ask too much about these things, but vocalist Shaun Murphy was cut loose in 2009, presumably as a cost-cutting exercise and the death of drummer Richie Hayes leaves keyboard wizard Bill Payne as the only survivor from the original quartet. Guitarist Paul Barrere, percussionist Sam Clayton and the bass playing Kenny Gradney climbed aboard for Sailin’ Shoes and multi-instrumentalist Fred Tackett had been on the fringes of the Feat scene for years before he was officially recruited when the post-Lowell George outfit reconvened to Let It Roll in 1988.

There will, of course, be those who’d question the need for any of these rebundlings, and that’d be a fair point if the Feat were inclined to regurgitate exact facsimiles of their studio output. As they don’t, it’s a matter of whether you like your Feat live (I do, mileages will vary), whether you need a bit more live material to go into the iTunes playlist (ditto) and whether you’re willin’ to pay the asking price (@ $16.99 over at iTunes you could say it’s a bit steep, but I can afford it, so...)

As far as the contents go, Barnstormin' Live Volume One has a fairly straightforward reading of Rocket in My Pocket, followed by a tasty trumpet (Fred Tackett) intro to Keepin' Up with the Joneses. Changin' Luck surges along just fine, with Shaun Murphy in characteristically fine voice, Spider's Blues is a spirited run through a relative obscurity and the album’s showpiece comes in the form of One Clear Moment > Just Another Sunday, an extended fifteen minute workout through two of the best post-Lowell era tracks. Your mileage may, of course, vary, but this is how Hughesy likes his twenty-first century Feat (right down to the bit of Representing the Mambo thrown in round off Just Another Sunday).

After that little tour de force you need a little light and shade, and Walkin' as Two provides just that. Sam Clayton growls his way through Little Walter’s Last Night and Paul Barrere leads a languid quest to Roll Um Easy. The Blues Don't Tell It All lifts the tempo a tad or three before Why Don't It Look Like the Way That It Talk lands things back in the languid zone to close things out.

Overall it’s a tasty sample that visits some of the less frequented quarters of the repertoire.

Barnstormin' Live Volume Two is a bit further away from the laid back side of things, opening with a jaunty Down on the Farm > Candy Man Blues before Bill Payne drops things back with a restrained reading of Under the Radar in its original rather than the subsequent reggae influenced incarnation. The restraint continues as Paul Barrere takes the vocal lead on Fool Yourself with a little vocal help from Fred Tackett and Shaun Murphy. It’s a tasteful reading of one of those Feat numbers that tends to be overlooked in favour of the usual suspects (Easy to Slip is another one).

There’s a rather nifty guitar, mandolin and understated swirling keyboards intro to Sailin' Shoes, and though Paul Barrere and Shaun Murphy go verse for verse through the song the version’s close in feel to the original second album version. After a couple of slower numbers, a tempo change is probably needed, and it comes with a rollicking Night on the Town, before things drop back a notch for an old favourite in Apolitical Blues, with a bit of Muddy Waters’ Long Distance Call inserted midstream. Shaun Murphy gets a spot of limelight for A Distant Thunder, and there’s a jaunty reading of Down on the Farm’s Six Feet of Snow. Bill Payne heads off Fighting the Mosquito Wars, and things are wound up neatly with A Day at the Dog Races, which Mr Barrere, judging by his comment at the end of the eleven and a half minutes, thoroughly enjoyed.

Rocky Mountain Jam kicks off with a spirited six and a bit minute Marginal Creatures, follows it with close to a dozen minutes of One Clear Moment > Sunday Jam, which is probably where anyone who isn’t into lengthy jamming will want to jump ship, since Spanish Moon > Skin It Back fills a solid quarter of an hour and the take on Dixie Chicken tips the scales at just over twenty-one minutes. In the light of those two, close to seven minutes of Rocket In My Pocket and a slightly leaner Feats Don't Fail Me Now might be seen as light relief, but if you’re Jam-averse, Rocky Mountain Jam ain’t gonna be your scene (man).

On the other hand, if you’ve heard a lot of sub-par mindless boogie with limited dynamics you might just be inclined to have a listen to what half a dozen musos with substantial playing chops (check the list of collaborations for individual members here) can do when they’ve decided to stave off boredom with tracks they’re probably expected to play every night (Dixie Chicken) or have to include in the setlist on a regular basis (Spanish Moon, Skin It Back, Rocket In My Pocket, Feats Don't Fail Me Now).

Mightn’t be everybody’s cup of tea, but it goes down just fine in these parts, and if it sounds like the sort of thing that floats your boat comes with a hearty recommendation from the Little House of Concrete.

Leonard Cohen "Songs from the Road" (4* for the Cohen fan, 3.5 otherwise)

Having already shelled out for the Live in London DVD I wasn't that keen on repeating the exercise when this compilation from Leonard's recent world tour appeared. After all, with the whole of a show that didn't seem to have varied much over the three year span you probably don't need too much more.

So I thought. That copy is on DVD, and I've been ethical about copying files to the hard drive and importing the audio into iTunes, so when Old Ideas appeared on the scene and I wanted to check how Going Home would line up with the material that was being used in the stage act I was handing over the dosh for this twelve track compilation of live performances from the 2008 and 2009 legs of the tour.

While you could interpret this as another exercise in padding out Leonard's retirement funds, those who have seen the show will know what to expect, and the listener might be inclined to question how you could reduce two and a half years of extensive touring (from Canada in May 2008 through to Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas in December 2010) to a round dozen tracks on this CD/DVD combo.

The easiest shot would, of course, probably have lobbed into the fan’s collection via Live in London, so you’re not going to be looking for a repeat of a setlist that doesn’t seem to have varied much.

Don’t believe me? Here’s the first show, from the Capitol Theater in Moncton, New Brunswick on 23 May 2008:

Dance Me To The End Of Love, The Future, Ain't No Cure For Love, Bird On The Wire, Everybody Knows, In My Secret Life, Who By Fire, Anthem, Tower Of Song, Suzanne, Gypsy Wife, Boogie Street, Hallelujah, Democracy, I'm Your Man, A Thousand Kisses Deep, Take This Waltz
Encores: Heart With No Companion, So Long, Marianne, First We Take Manhattan, That Don't Make It Junk, Closing Time, I Tried to Leave You

And the last, from Caesar’s Palace on 11 December 2010:
Dance Me To The End Of Love, The Future, Ain't No Cure For Love, Bird On The Wire, Everybody Knows, In My Secret Life, Who By Fire, Darkness, Born In Chains, Democracy, 
Chelsea Hotel #2, Waiting For The Miracle, Anthem, Passin' Through, Tower Of Song, Suzanne, A Singer Must Die, Sisters Of Mercy, The Gypsy Wife, The Partisan, Boogie Street, Hallelujah, I'm Your Man, A Thousand Kisses Deep, Take This Waltz
Encores: So Long, Marianne, First We Take Manhattan, Famous Blue Raincoat, If It Be Your Will, Closing Time, I Tried To Leave You

Not a whole lot of difference, is there?

Actually, given a show that had been thoroughly rehearsed and buffed before the opening gig you wouldn’t expect there’d be a whole lot different about the performances either.

So how the heck do you do it?

The answer lies in Cohen’s post-concert routine. Within about ninety seconds of the end of I Tried To Leave You (with a bit of variation according to the actual venue’s backstage configuration) Cohen, accompanied by his tour manager and producer Ed Sanders will be in the limo heading back to the hotel. As a rule he won’t even mention the show (and, on the basis of what appears above, why would he?)

But along the way there’s going to be the occasional night when something out of the ordinary happens.

According to the story, the twelve tracks here represent nights when something out of the ordinary did, as it turned out, happen. Without the video footage, of course, it’s hard to define what made these dozen performances special, but research indicates Lover, Lover, Lover was played in front of a fifty-thousand-strong Tel Aviv crowd in September 2009, while Hallelujah (from the Coachella Festival in California in April 2009) was performed in front of the entire crowd at a festival where multiple stages are the go and had been in operation until just before Leonard hit the stage. There’s an indication of the crowd size towards the end of the audio, and one presumes there’d be more evidence on the DVD version.

The London O2 Arena show on 13 November 2008 that provides That Don’t Make It Junk and Famous Blue Raincoat would, I guess, be another big crowd spectacular.

In the end, really, it doesn’t matter. If you’re a fan you’ll more than likely be happy to have these tracks packed away along with everything else in your Leonard Cohen playlist (or whatever) and what’s on offer here differs from the studio versions (well, after forty years you’re not going to be reprising the 1969 Songs From a Room version of Bird on the Wire are you?)

One for the fans and completists? Definitely. There are plenty of fans out there, many with completist tendencies and an artist who doesn’t have a huge back catalogue.

And for everyone else? Worth a listen. At least...

Bob Dylan "In Concert (Brandeis University 1963)" (3.5*)

While the official version of the story behind this seven song set has a seven-inch reel to reel tape found in the archives of critic and Rolling Stone co-founder Ralph Gleason, this sounds remarkably similar to things I heard back in the beginnings of the bootleg era. A bit crisper, given the probability that it was a first generation copy taped straight off the mixing desk but definitely familiar.

Once it had been unearthed, the contents initially appeared through Amazon.com as a bonus disk for customers who bought The Bootleg Series Vol. 9 The Witmark Demos: 1962-1964 or The Original Mono Recordings and subsequent demand saw a wider release, with the hard copy version coming with liner notes by Dylan scholar Michael Gray, author of The Bob Dylan Encyclopedia and the three-volume Song & Dance Man: The Art of Bob Dylan.

Not that you're going to get such fripperies with the digital download, you understand.

As far as the actual contents are concerned, we're looking at two sets from a Brandeis  University folk music festival on 10 May 1963, featuring Bob Dylan, one of the new and most exciting blues performers; Jean Redpath, foremost singer of Scottish ballads, Don Stover and the Lilly Brothers from West Virginia and Boston's Hillbilly Ranch; Jesse Fuller ... and the silver leaf Gospel Singers.

Honey, Just Allow Me One More Chance (Incomplete), Talkin' John Birch Paranoid Blues, Ballad of Hollis Brown and Masters of War seem to have come immediately before an intermission, and while there's no way of knowing if Talkin' World War III Blues, Bob Dylan's Dream and Talking Bear Mountain Picnic Massacre Blues followed the resumption what’s obvious a matter of days before the release of The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan is that Dylan was already a skilful performer firing on all cylinders. Given the MC's remarks at the end it's even possible Dylan was, in effect, the headliner.

Not, perhaps, an essential purchase but it’s a timely reminder of how good the early acoustic Dylan was, and a pointer indicating a need to grab Live at the Gaslight 1962 and Live at Carnegie Hall 1963.

Southside Johnny & The Asbury Jukes "Men Without Women Live" (3.5*)

Mention the name Steven Van Zandt in Australia and, if you get a response at all, he’ll probably be identified as Miami Steve from Bruce Springsteen's E Street Band, or (probably more likely) the actor who played Silvio Dante in The Sopranos. Mention the name in my presence, however, and you’ll probably get a reference to his contribution to the early albums by Southside Johnny & The Asbury Jukes and his identity as Little Steven, head honcho of an outfit called The Disciples of Soul in the 1980s.

Slotted firmly into Hughesy’s all-time favourite albums is 1982's Men Without Women by Little Steven and the Disciples of Soul, and my enthusiasm for that album was such that when I noticed this live performance from The Stone Pony in Asbury Park dating back to July 2011 it was a fairly obvious no-brainer.

Six horns up here tonight exclaims Mr Lyon at one point, and that’s the key ingredient in a close to note for note reproduction of Mr Van Zandt’s earlier work. One imagines there wasn’t a need for too much rehearsal for the show that ran through the album’s track list from the opening Lyin’ In A Bed of Fire to I’ve Been Waiting, not least because many of the participants were on the original album anyway.

A bit rough around the edges, perhaps, but these dudes have playing stuff along these lines live for the best part of forty years, and what you lose in crisply rehearsed, brushed and buffed studio perfection is compensated for by an exuberant live vibe.

Two copies might be superfluous in most collections, but in these parts an old favourite with This Time It’s For Real, Broke Down Piece of Man and It’s Been A Long Time tacked on the end will be getting its share of airings. 3.5*  for the general public equates to Interesting but non-essential, but if you’re into horn-driven R&B you’d probably mark it up by at least half a notch.

Need convincing? Rock over to the iTunes Store and take a listen to Forever. Hell, rock over to itTunes and have a sample of all of it...

But start with Forever...

Fairport Convention "House Full: Live at the L.A. Troubadour" (4.5*)

Thank you. This is our last number and it's called Sir Patrick Spens isn't the first thing you'd expect to hear on an album, but presumably it’s the only track from the first of three-nights that were recorded to have made the cut for the disk, so there you go.

In any case, if you’re into musical archaeology, House Full, as the only currently available live Fairport Convention album with Richard Thompson in the band, is probably required listening. There’s the small matter of Fairport’s influence on a group of young Angelenos of Mexican origin who morphed into Los Lobos.

Having lost singer Sandy Denny almost directly after Liege & Lief appeared on the market, Fairport had reshaped the vocal department with guitarist Richard Thompson and folkie fiddler Dave Swarbrick sharing the leads with assistance in the background from new bass player Dave Pegg, who’d been slotted in to replace Ashley Hutchings, who was en route to more traditional territory with his new missus Shirley Collins.

The new line up had recorded and released Full House, and were on the road behind the album (as the saying goes) when they landed in L.A. for a week-long gig at the Troubadour (opening, believe it or not, for Rick Nelson) that was legendary for a couple of reasons. According to Dave Pegg the band were doing a week's residency, two spots each night and three on the weekend for which we were going to be paid five hundred dollars. But when we went to collect our wages, we'd drunk so much we owed them fifteen hundred bucks. Impressive, even taking into account the possibility that the drinks in question were overpriced and the band were generous tippers where leggy waitresses were concerned.

The finer details of alcoholic catering may have had something to do with the related fact that Led Zeppelin were performing at the Forum and Robert Plant, John Bonham and Fairport’s new bass player were old mates from Birmingham. Dave Pegg invited the foursome to the Troubadour after their Forum gig at the Forum and when they arrived a dressing room consultation resulted in Page, Plant, Bonham and Jones joining Fairport on stage for a set that included Hey Joe, Morning Dew, Banks of the Sweet Primroses, Mystery Train and That's Alright Mama. While the mobile eight-track machine was rolling throughout the tapes (existence confirmed by Joe Boyd) are buried deep in the Polygram vaults.

But it seems they exist. In White Bicycles Boyd reminisces: the tape reveals Plant’s vocal being louder than any of the amplifiers, Page trying to keep pace with Richard on jigs and reels and Zep manager Peter Grant at a front table cursing and abusing the waitresses.

He also recalls Linda Ronstadt being invited on stage (another night, another distinguished guest) after Fairport had run out of encores for another forty minutes covering songs she had forgotten she knew.

There’s nothing from either night here, however. So what’s on the disk?

Well, for a start, there’s nothing that predates Liege & Lief (predictable, the infamous car crash would still have been relatively fresh in the memory), and the Liege and Full House material is fleshed out with traditional material, a World War I bagpipe lament and, on a lighter note, Yellow Birds (or boids, up high in banana trees).

Even if you’re not familiar with Fairport, those of us who went through high school in the sixties will probably recall Sir Patrick Spens from the poetry anthologies (I had the impression it was regarded as somewhere in the same postcode as iconic as far as medieval ballads were concerned), but don’t let that put you off.

Actually, while Sir Patrick Spens and Banks of the Sweet Primroses get proceedings off on a nice roll, there’s nothing there to suggest you’re in the presence of anything other than a fairly good folk-rock band, things change with the jigs and reels in The Lark in the Morning Medley, which may not be the fastest of their kind in captivity (that honour quite possibly goes to Jenny's Chickens / The Mason's Apron or Bonnie Kate / Sir B. McKenzies) the version here romps along at a merry clip, and like the later variations, is played with stop on a sixpence precision by an outfit with considerable instrumental chops (Swarbrick’s fiddle work might not quite rate as virtuoso, but it’s in an adjacent postcode and Richard Thompson is, well, Richard Thompson, enough said) and a rock hard, hard rocking rhythm section.

Those chops come to the fore again in twelve and a bit minutes of Sloth, and yet again in the play-out to Matty Groves, with the traditional Staines Morris wedged between them. The vocal department on Matty Groves shows what they lost with the departure of Sandy Denny, but there’s a rough-hewn rustic note to the Thompson and Swarbrick take that has its own charm, from where I’m sitting.

Jenny's Chickens / The Mason's Apron cart us back into jigs and reels territory, then there’s a stately take on Battle of the Somme, a piper’s lament that you might not expect to work in this setting but if you didn’t you weren’t aware of Thompson’s ongoing affinity with the skirl of the pipes.

Up to this point we’re revisiting the original House Full. The related release Live at the L.A. Troubadour gives us Bonnie Kate / Sir B. McKenzie's Daughter's Lament for the 77th Mounted Lancer's Retreat from the Straits of Loch Knombe, in the Year of Our Lord 1727, on the Occasion of the Announcement of Her Marriage to the Laird of Kinleakie, which predictably gets abbreviated to Sir B. McKenzies. Non-Einsteins will no doubt be able to figure out why, and proceedings are concluded on a lighter note with the old Yellow Birds.

In their day, the five man Fairport were, by all accounts, an awesome experience in a live setting and as the only officially released live recording of the lineup House Full, with that extra material from the cousin-brother Live at the L.A. Troubadour tacked on the end is close to essential listening for anyone interested in investigating this little corner of the folk-rock genre.

In summary, a crack five-piece outfit at the height of their considerable powers. I was, back in the day, highly impressed by Angel Delight, the studio album that followed this live excursion, by which time Richard Thompson had gone. Classic, exuberant British folk-rock from the best all-male lineup of a band that has gone on to become an institution (they’re still going strong with a 45th anniversary coming up, and there’ll be those who’ll rate a configuration featuring Sandy Denny as slightly better).

They never, as someone or other pointed out, made an album like this again, but then again, no one else did either. For $10.99 at the iTunes Store it was a no-brainer...

Neil Young & The International Harvesters "A Treasure"

Your mileage regarding the accuracy of the title may vary, and while I'm firmly in the anything Neil does is worth a couple of listens camp my personal reaction to A Treasure would be to relabel this live compilation from 1985 An Interesting Diversion.

Now, I may be wrong but my understanding of Young's modus operandi runs something like this.

He'll spend some time quietly going around his business on the yacht, the Broken Arrow ranch or wherever he happens to be, and in the process he'll come up with a number of tunes that'll be recorded some time around a full moon in a sort of see how these work in this particular setting approach.

From there he'll take a look at what he's got to figure out how it might translate into an album. When he's got the album together he'll do something about touring behind it, though there's no guarantee that the tour setting will reflect what happened on the album.

The touring bit, as far as I can see, is what pays the bills and keeps the wages bill around the place under control.

This sort of thing is, however, the almost guaranteed to give record company executives the screaming abdabs, particularly when they've got definite ideas about what their artists should be doing. That scenario had David Geffen suing Mr Young for his failure to deliver product that was recognizably Neil Young.

There's a fair chunk of the contrarian in Young's personality, and the threat of legal action to force compliance in a particular genre setting is almost guaranteed to deliver the exact opposite.

Calls for something along the lines of Harvest or an album of electric rock in other words, will result in statements of intention to record and perform nothing but country music.

That's not going to preclude anything from his earlier catalogue, of course, and setlists from the International Harvesters era would also include reworkings of songs like Country Home, Heart of Gold and Down By the River along with the Flying On the Ground Is Wrong and Are You Ready For the Country? that turn up here.

Apart from that, there's a substantial yee-haw factor in tracks like Motor City, Get Back to the Country and Southern Pacific and tracks that had turned up in other incarnations along the way, like It Might Have Been or candidates for a later reworking (Soul of a Woman, which subsequently turned up in The Bluenotes era).

Highlights include the opening Amber Jean, written for Young's infant daughter, and the closing six-minute Grey Riders but there's plenty of interesting listening along the way, though mileages on Let Your Fingers Do the Walking may vary. Young's albums rarely end up labelled as Essential, but there's almost invariably something worth investigating, as is the case here.

You may be inclined to Approach with caution, but it's definitely worth approaching (or giving an evaluatory listen).