The Night Before

Tomorrow, I'll be heading to Hampden Park to see Bruce Springsteen And The E-Street Band and am hoping that God considers that Glasgow has had more than its' share of rain today and that he'll keep it dry tomorrow (evening at least).

I've had the pleasure of seeing Springsteen on two occasions before and these two shows would appear at either end of any list of best gigs that I've been to.

Dealing with the poor one first - you may have seen a portion of this. It was at the SECC in Glasgow and the performance of Lucky Town was broadcast live on Top Of The Pops (and is available on the DVD version of the Video Anthology).

The venue is typical of the multi-purpose halls that are built these days, and which seldom make any allowance for such niceties as sound quality. We were in the largest hall and it was all standing meaning that there were no stands to at least absorb some of the sound. I was stuck fairly near the back of the hall and, sonically, the whole thing was a mess.

Of course, this was the tour that Springsteen did without the E-Streeters and a more anonymous bunch you'd be hard pressed to meet. Despite making every effort (and you did feel he was overdoing it to compensate for the paucity of inspiration from the others on the stage) Springsteen simply failed to project any of his usual passion and warmth and it was a hugely disappointing evening. All the moreso, because I knew precisely what The Boss was capable of......

Indeed I did, having witnessed him on the Born In The USA tour at Roundhay Park in Leeds (some clips of which appear on the live Born To Run video - it's the venue that looks like a natural amphitheatre). Pristine sound, and a performer and band that connected with every single member of the audience. The crowd was about 80,000 that day and I recall vividly turning round at one point to look back across the multitudes to see everyone dancing, jumping up and down or participating in some way or other right to the very back. Simply awesome.

I know which Bruce I'm wanting and hoping to see tomorrow night!

Concert Review : Crosby, Stills And Nash Regal At The Castle

CSN were excellent at Edinburgh Castle and successfully kept the predicted heavy rain at bay during their performance. Stills was in excellent form throughout and made this a much more satisfying show from them than my previous gigs where he was largely along for the ride.



Have to say that, despite the scenic advantages, that Edinburgh Castle is a terrible venue for a rock gig. Even for the slimmer amongst us the seats would be a challenge with no room to move, and which consequently make turning towards the stage (for those at the sides) somewhat difficult. Luckily, there were some spare seats last night and others in the row moved elsewhere which allowed more room for manoeuvre.

Stewarding was also poor with next to no assistance showing people to their seats and queuing for the toilets was somewhat haphazard and relying entirely on the good sense of those in the queue.

The toilets themselves were portakabins which appeared to be sizable but were taken up internally by the latrine itself leaving very little room to stand in.

Back to the music though - highlights were Southern Cross, Cathedral, Guinevere and the "new" songs from the forthcoming Covers album sounded super. Perhaps best of the night was Crosbys’ rendition of Long Time Gone.


Stills played with a winning combination of flash and economy and never outstayed his welcome when soloing, thus adding considerably to the impact of the songs.

Crosby sounded a little weak in places (perhaps related to his finding the weather somewhat un-Southern Californian!) but came through for his solo set pieces.

Nash was as solid and reliable as ever. That's not meant to sound in any way demeaning - Nash is the rock of stability that's kept these guys at it all the years and is a fine role model for any aspiring musician to follow. Perhaps regarded as the lightweight at the outset, it's amazing how many of his songs resonate down the years. More power to his elbow.

Music Review : It's been so long since I've added to this blog that Neil's actually issued Archives!!!!.......

Strange but true!

After an interminable period of teasers and delays the first volume of Neil Young's Archives have now been released to the wider world.

There's been much debate about the format in which this is going to appear but ultimately fans were given three choices:-

• the music on an 8-CD set
  
• music and video on a 10-DVD set along with the first official release of Journey Through The Past, or
  
• in Blu-Ray format with the same content as the DVD but with the promise of extra content along the way via links to the internet. (There is also wider options when it comes to listening whilst browsing other content than on a DVD)

Not wanting to miss the opportunity of the extra content I decided ultimately to go for the Blu-Ray version. This presented me with a couple of issues:-

• firstly, I didn't own a Blu-Ray player! Well, that was easily resolved with a visit to Richer Sounds -I have to say that, Neil apart, it's been a worthwhile investment as the couple of films that I've seen in this format have been stunning. In addition, the upscaling feature does mean that your DVD's do look better as well
  
• secondly, being hooked up to my telly (and no, I'm not getting a surround system!) I wasn't going to get the best out of the sound. Only one option then, get the CD version as well!!

So was it all worth it? To be honest, I'm not entirely convinced.

Young promised early in the project's gestation that "it was all going to be on there". Sounds great, except that it isn't. The first major disappointment is that not everything from the originally released album is on there. I understand that Neil intends to now issue these in remastered form, and owning just the first generation CD's I'll feel somewhat tempted, if not obliged, to purchase these. Poor show on this count, Neil, because as far as I can see there's still loads of capacity to have done this.

Next up is the fact that the albums issued over the past couple of years as the Neil Young Performance Series are also included. This means that the additional material on the Archives is considerably less attractive as a result. Another poor show.

And there's more! All Neil Young fans know that there's load of other material out there from this era that could have been included but hasn't been. Indeed, the set could possibly have been made up of material leaving the official releases off entirely. Young has built a reputation as a rewriter of history (for example, his shameful exclusion of some tracks from the Buffalo Springfield box set) and he appears to be continuing in this vein. It's not all there, Neil - only that which you want us to hear. Not good enough.

As for the other material, the documents and memorabilia are interesting but having had a peek there's not much that I'll be searching out quickly. The video material is good but, so far at least, it falls into the category where we know that there's more available.

The packaging is good but more bulky for the DVD/BluRay sets than was strictly necessary.

Having said all that, the music is uniformly superb. However, this isn't a set that the casual fan is going to buy but neither is it a set to get the already committed fan too excited by.

Raise the bar higher next time, Neil