Neil Young - Live at Massey Hall 1971 (2007)

The second in a series of vault releases, Live at Massey Hall 1971 captures Young at a definitive point in his career as singer/songwriter. Enjoying substantial popularity in the wake of his successes with Crazy Horse, CSNY and his solo albums, Massey Hall provides a glimpse of a musician and songwriter who is confident, yet still possesses a certain amiable naïveté. As he rambles through the catalog of old standards (“Old Man,” “Tell Me Why,” “Ohio”), stripped-down acoustic versions of the Crazy Horse material (“Cowgirl in the Sand,” “Down By the River”) and a few particularly dusty chestnuts (“Bad Fog of Loneliness”), Young, ever sweet and awkward in spite of himself, demurely banters with the Toronto audience: regaling them with anecdotes about his ranch and instructing them on when to take photographs.

Massey Hall presents a musician who, despite his flight to California and immersion late-60s counter-politics, seems somewhat unchanged. As he describes the perils of heroin in “The Needle and the Damage Done” and confuses Chicago and Detroit in his preamble to “Love in Mind,” there is a sense that Young’s prairie sentimentalism absolves him from the licentious commercial sins of American popular music. The venue, and the bursts of applause during the namedrops of Young’s home & native land, further attest to the audience’s perception of Young as the homegrown native son of folk-rock. Massey Hall is a homecoming concert—one which has Young at his most exposed and unassuming. An outstanding portrait of the musician’s acoustic era.

Verdict: 4.5/5 (great)

Ween - All Request Live (2003)

An album like All Request Live is, as its title underscores, one that is aimed at hardcore fans. Unabashedly so. Thankfully, in the past few months I have been guzzling down Dean & Gene like so many hardcore Weeners raised on Pure Guava, Chocolate & Cheese (with a dash of White Pepper?...ugh). Shitty puns notwithstanding, I hesitantly waited until I comfortably celebrated Ween’s entire catalog (or most of it anyways) before delving into the once-intimidating territory of All Request Live.

Unlike 1999’s Paintin’ the Town Brown which, while at times capturing the intensity & general hullabaloo of Ween’s live show, suffered in mixing bits from different concerts, with the resulting audio (& performance) quality differing greatly, All Request Live renders the live Ween experience more transparently & thus more faithfully (even though it is ‘live in studio’ or whatever). The highlight of the album is a 5:45 version of the infamous never-used Pizza Hut jingle, “Where’d the Cheese Go At?” An excellent “Demon Sweat,” a turbulent “Mononucleosis,” a beautiful “Stay Forever” (one of those ‘serious’ Ween songs), gloriously thrashy renditions of “Cover It With Gas & Set It On Fire” & “Reggaejunkiejew” and an epic “The Stallion” (a trilogy, apparently in five parts) round off this first-rate release. While its appeal is aimed at diehards, and though it falls short of the band’s superlative live release (2002’s Live At Stubb’s), All Request Live succeeds in capturing the spontaneity, assorted esoteria and, perhaps above all, the endearing good-humor that is Ween.

Verdict: 4.2/5 (better than good)