Neil Young
Road Rock (Volume I)

LA RECENSIONE

Family Concert and with old friends for the great Canadian.

Released in 2000, the Live collects all pre-eighties songs performed with Ben Keith, Spooner Oldham, Donal Dunn, and Jim Keltner, and with vocal contributions from his wife and daughter: it begins with a very long (18 minutes) "Cowgirl in The Sand", perhaps still lacking the usual solid structure (sorry for the pun), a choral version of "Walk On", continuing with the unreleased "Fool For Your Love", very slide and blues-like which will not be remembered among Our's milestones. It continues with the beautiful and "slow" "Peace of Mind" from the "Comes a Time" period, to return to "Harvest" with a version of "Words" that is beautiful but slightly tired; "Motorcycle Mama" turns out to be the best performance of the concert with a nice vocal duet with Pegi. "Tonight's The Night" evidently lacks the contribution of the Crazy Horse but is still enjoyable despite being less gloomy than what suits a piece of the genre, "All Along The Watchtower" by Dylan, very improvised but effective, concludes the album.

The album certainly does not add anything new under the sun, but it is listenable, a pity that the Live recording is full of flaws, the sound is very distant and poorly defined (it's hard to recognize all the instruments), it almost seems like the audience is on stage and Neil and company are playing in the audience!

If you missed it, you can do without it, but who among Neil Young enthusiasts would let one of his performances slip by?