Neil Young: Live At Massey Hall

There are two Neil Young's to me: the electric warrior, riding mostly with his Crazy horse, perfectly pictured in LPs as "Ragged glory", and then the gentle loner, singing high-pitched acoustic pieces as seen on "Harvest" or "Silver & gold". I have always prefered the latter, and that's why I'm loving his last release so much: "Live At Massey Hall"is the second CD of his Performance Series (much like Bob Dylan's Bootleg Series) -though weirdly coded as #3...- and sees the canadian singing and playing on his own back home in Canada, but what really overwhelms me is that he keeps going: "This is a new song..."and what follows is what we know as a masterpiece. And already perfectly shaped.

In fact in a few months "Harvest" will come out, but many songs from "Time fades away" and "On the beach" are already in his live repertoire by that day, and it just blows my mind to think of this man that, in a bunch of weeks, composed songs as Journey through the past, A man needs a maid, Needle and the damage done, Old man, See the sky about to rain...and he chats through them as though they were just some more songs.
By the way, the performance is outstanding, with some pieces quite close to album's rendition, but some of the others that differ from it...and get even better: listen to A man needs a maid without Jack Nietsche's pompous orchestration. It is no doubt why some of Neil Young's friends insisted on releasing this before "Harvest". 36 years have been a long time, but the wait has surely been worth it.

More Info:
Neil Young @ Wiki
Fansite: Hyper Rust (lots of stuff, including tabs)
Neil Young Links

Live at Massey Hall