In a roughly five year period between 1968 and 1973, music poured out of Neil Young’s febrile mind almost faster than he could produce it. He released iconic solo albums like Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere, Harvest, and After the Gold Rush. He also added the “Y” to CSNY on the brilliant 1970 album Deja Vu. All of this would anticipate a career that was spent dipping in and out of musical genres, always charting his own course, zigging when others zagged.
Young has plumbed his extensive archive for the benefit of a fanbase that now stretches from early Baby Boomers to smart phone-addled millennials. His latest release is Tuscaloosa, recorded with the Stray Gators at the University of Alabama on February 5, 1973.
There is a shaggy dog quality to both the recording and the performance. Although this set was played in a large auditorium it has the feel of a honky tonk. The beginning tracks, which Young performed solo or with acoustic accompaniment by the Gators, have a looser feel than their studio-recorded siblings. Old Man and Heart of Gold mix some of the nascent California-influence of Linda Ronstadt with the Nashville sound Young mastered on his seminal work Harvest while Out on the Weekend has a languid, almost hallucinatory quality.
The second half of the set is electric. Young shows his no-fucks-to-give attitude by pulling out a searing version of Alabama that hints at his later exploration of guitar feedback and grunge. Other tracks, like Time Fades Away and Don’t Be Denied move the country stomp of Hank Williams and Willie Nelson into electric guitars anchored in a solid backbone of bass and drum.
Tuscaloosa is another data point indicating Young’s sui generis place in modern music. His interweaving of rock, country, and rhythm and blues is evident throughout this truncated set of music, a must have for fans of this one-of-a-kind musician.
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