How many artists have enough material to even consider a project of this magnitude? Try and think of a couple that exist in the Pop category, sorry no Miles Davis or John Coltrane sets, I'm talking about top 40 stuff here. In my limited amount of time I came up with a couple. Bob Dylan, Guided By Voices, Johnny Cash, and maybe some sort of all encompassing Lou Barlow project. Bob Dylan gets a vote because he has been releasing the "bootleg" series for a while and because you know he probably has a bunch of half assed demos from the early days when half of the album would be covers. Guided By Voices because as Robert Pollard once said, and I'm paraphrasing at best, "I can write 3 songs while sitting in the john, and 1 of them is good". Johnny Cash got a vote because well he was around forever and he recorded 100's of songs with Rick Rubin that never got released, and very few artists live material translate as well as his. Lou well, he has been involved in Dinosaur Jr., Sebadoh, Folk Implosion, and the numerous Sentridoh releases which were Lou solo. If you could complie all of his material as well as a shit load more of his unreleased stuff and demos which I'm sure there are plenty then maybe you could come together with a 40 disc set, but probably not.
I think Neil is the only artist who could actually take on a project of such enormity and sustain intrigue. He has on numerous occasions scrapped entire finished albums. The archives will include according to Neil both the unreleased "Homebrew" and "Chrome Dreams" albums, plus others are rumored to be included as well. One of which is the record that Geffen refused to release in the 80's, which I got to hear, that helped down the road land Neil and Geffen in the court room together, for making music that was wholly uncharacteristic of Neil Young music. Now obviously with any 40 disc project you're going to have a bunch of live material, lucky for us Neil's live albums rival his best studio work. The albums "Rust Never Sleeps" and "Tonight's The Night" are considered that, albums, while being comprised mostly of live performances, with both featuring frequent studio overdubs. The fact that Neil was able to put out live records with original never before released material and be the definitive versions of the song says alot of his and Crazy Horse's ability to bang that shit out live.
The other factor making this an important project, is that I hope other artists take a cue from Neil and take control of their own archives. Neil has been employing someone to take care and organize everything about Neil Young's career whether it be storage of tape reels, master tapes, file reels of his own movies like Human Highway, featuring Devo in acting and performing roles, concert posters, photographs, original handwritten lyrics, and of course all this stuff needs to be taken care off or we'd lose it forever. My only hope is that it's located in a bunker underground and guarded by a fucking pack of rabid Tigers because if this place gets robbed, or struck by lightning Neil's legacy is fucked. But that's beside the point, my point is that he is going to set a new standard for how the music buying public will expect their heroes to be honoured. No more will a 4 cd box set even seem relevant. Gone are the days when a group who received the tremendous honour of the hard to come by 5 disc treatment feel privelaged, they'll feel feel jealeous that the NYA's cock is 35 discs longer.
And for the occasionally obsessive geek like me who wants to hear every note played by his favorite musicians that is what I really hope happens. CD's are dead technology I guess but what I do hope happens is that the NYA with the loaded Blu Ray discs give the fans who are intested in buying a physical product a chance for a new way of doing things. Interactive menus with music files located in an interesting manner can enhance the overall experience of the music and provide artists with a new way of impacting it's audience or relaying their vision. Neil is the first person I've heard that is using the full capabilities of the technology at his disposal. Once the world gets to see what he's been up to we may see the whole industry change their buisness model away from MP3's which they hate, and go into Blu Ray. For all of you who think I am making too big a deal of this, just remember, the man's only been working on this for the last ohh 20 years or so.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment