Neil Young Archives

The Holy Grail of the music industry has finally arrived! At least Volume One arrived! For close to twenty years the massive Neil Young career collection, referred to as the Neil Young Archives, has seemed to be a rumor or postponed so many times that its release seemed improbable. On that account, I was quite surprised to find that the first volume arrived in stores so I actually bought it.

This is only Volume One, and I think there are supposed to be four volumes eventually released. Volume One covers the beginning of his career in the mid-'60s all the way through to 1972. The fact that this set is eight discs just covering those years shows how prolific he has been in his career. I am not crazy about the digipack storing of the individual CD's in the set(I bought the CD version, not the more expensive DVD or Blu-Ray versions). It's easy to scratch the discs when removing them from the digipacks as opposed to using jewel cases to store the set. Also I thought the booklet that came with the set would have more information. For a set this vital, I thought there might essays or comments from Neil rather than just a list of who played on what song. Those are the negatives and they are outweighed by far by the positives.

Three live albums are included in the set, 1969's Live At The Riverboat, 1970's Live At The Fillmore East, and 1971's Live At Massey Hall. All three are well worth checking out if you like Neil's music. There are moments with him playing solo (the Riverboat set has him in a very intimate setting with lots of casual banter) and there is the more intensive material with Crazy Horse (check out the epic version of "Down By The River" from the Fillmore East set). The other five discs cover his early stuff with The Squires, Buffalo Springfield and the period covering his albums, Neil Young, Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere, After The Gold Rush and Harvest with unreleased material, alternate takes, etc. There is so much material here that I haven't even had the chance to check all of it out yet. Also, I like the outer packaging. You can store the set on your bookshelf as a cube or the set folds out into a longbox, depending on how you want to store it. Overall, a big thumbs up to the Neil Young Archives, Volume One and I am looking forward to the other volumes in the series. Hopefully it won't be a long wait until Volume Two!