Neil Young Official Release Series: Discs 1-4 / Randy Harward

Official Release Series: Discs 1-4

(REPRISE)

www.becausesoundmatters.com

Rating: (9)

On Neil Young's Official Release Series: Discs 1-4 (Reprise; www.becausesoundmatters.com): The first time I heard Neil Young was on my stereo while lying on the top bunk in my room. Sunlight beat down on the east-facing window, heating the curtains until the must smelled up the whole room. That copy of After the Gold Rush was clean, being a recent purchase by my friend, who lent it to me. I thought he was nuts to have purchased an LP when cassettes were the wave of the future. I also thought the artwork-patchy jeans, acoustic guitars-screamed "country and western" artist and, when I played the record and it didn't sound like Kiss or Prince & the Revolution, decided it sounded country enough to be country, whether it was or not.

I didn't listen to Neil Young-willingly-for years. If he came on the radio, I made fun, whining along to "Old Man" and "Rockin' in the Free World," even as those songs started to make sense to my (woefully slowly) maturing mind. Eventually, I grew to appreciate the work of Crosby, Stills and Nash, but only figured out Young's connection to them when I ordered 4-Way Street from Columbia House. On the strength of "Ohio" and "Southern Man," I penciled the corresponding numbers to the then-new Young album Sleeps With Angels into the boxes on the CH form.

When it came, I found myself only really connecting with "Piece of Crap" and, once more, emulating Young's voice, which had taken on a crotchetiness that made "Piece" sound like my grandpa bitching and moaning. Ha! He said ‘crap.'

I know. What a douchebag. Did I really get anything from listening to "Ohio" and "Southern Man?" Looking back, I was connecting only to the sound of the songs and not what they said. I hadn't learned, hadn't grown up enough, to appreciate the hypocrisy of a Bible-thumper's racism or the significance of a protest gone horribly wrong. I was happy in my bubble where the events of the world affected someone I didn't know-and where my Kiss Alive! poster, a symbol of all that was well and truly cool and relevant, towered above my headboard.

Makes me kinda sick, actually. I know pretty much everyone starts stupid and ignorant, but man... I took a long time to pull my head out.

When I finally did, it was because another friend, much farther down the road, found the CD copies of Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere and Tonight's the Night he thought he'd lost and, somewhere along the line, had replaced. In that time, I'd learned about the discord between Young and Lynyrd Skynyrd over "Southern Man" and how "Sweet Home Alabama" was their response to the song, which forever altered how I heard both songs. The line "four dead in Ohio" now evoked a heaviness, a combination of dread and remorse, in my viscera, and sent a chill down my spine. 

Finally I got my own copy of After the Gold Rush-it was less than two years ago, and at least six years since I got Nowhere. Although I listened to them both plenty of times, start to finish, in car, in my office, alone and with company, life-and the flood of promotional CDs I've received since taking this job, pushed them to the outskirts of my collection, where staples languish while new artists file in and out, demanding various level of attention. Some of them leave strong, defined imprints on me and others mere footprints in the soft soil of my consciousness.

It's winter now, days before Christmas. The last time I listened to a Neil Young album was August, on a road trip through southern Utah while my wife and daughters slept. I don't think they heard a note, but I did. It was Harvest, and it was one of those magical uninterrupted listens that happen less frequently now as life hurtles past me. It was interesting to note how the red rock canyons of St. George gave way to the sagebrush-the normal, dry variety and the fire-blackened shadows of that-of central Utah as "Old Man" played. I didn't mimic Young. Instead, I pondered what the song means to me now as the grown son of an overgrown infant, and what it could mean to my daughters when they reach the age of reason.

This box set, the fancy 180-gram deluxe limited-to-3,000 copies audiophile's-wet-dream whose components I've considered for the better part of the last ten days? I don't know what the format has to do with anything. To me, it's just presentation. The quality of sound is superior to my compact discs and MP3s, but that's not what I get out of the music. Holding these records in my hand now, letting them play in my office as snow falls outside and I sweat road conditions and deadlines and Christmas, I don't know what the big deal is about the heavy wax and audio quality.  

I do know this: Every time I listen to Neil Young, I get at least one part of that summer day back... and then some. My youth and the accompanying sense of wonder and future have eroded, such that they're beyond my grasp, and I'm still ashamed for that boy who couldn't get a handle on Neil Young's music when it was handed to him on a slick black platter. But I'm happy for the not-quite old man who gets to hold the album cover again and hear the music and know just what Shakey means, why it's important, and how it pertains to my life now and my days to come.

As this would be a "review," it occurs I should tell you why it's good and why you should pay attention or money-assuming, of course, that Neil Young still hasn't creeped into your collection. I would cough up some adjectives, but since I'm pretty happy with the way I came to Shakey, I can only recommend that, when you decide you're ready for his songs, you listen well.

***

Neil Young's Official Release Series: Discs 1-4 features his first four albums on 180-gram vinyl with gatefold covers and a nice, sturdy box to keep ‘em lookin' real good. Incidentally, those four albums are Neil Young (1969, reissued with the original art/cover), Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere (1969), After The Gold Rush (1970) and Harvest (1972). It retails for $149.98 and came out December 1. There's a gold-disc CD edition, too. That'll set you back $84.98. www.becausesoundmatters.com