Official Bootleg Series (2022)

Originally, I was going to write an overview of the many live albums that feature Neil solo from the late 60s and 70s. There are quite a few and I’ve already written about a couple of them: Live at Massey Hall, Live at the Riverboat, and Songs for Judy. There are three others: Live at the Canterbury House, Live at the Cellar Door and Young Shakespeare. Aside from Judy, these all cover a lot of the same material from 1968-1971. They all have incredible moments and all show a hilarious side of Neil’s banter with the audience. You can’t go wrong with any of those, really. My preference for Massey Hall has been stated repeatedly. However, Neil did something interesting (taking a cue from Dylan, I think. And Zappa.) with this series. He’s one of those artists who have a thriving fan recording community and many of these recordings have become legendary over the years. He decided to take a few of them, clean them up (or replace them with recordings from his archives) for official release. There’s a bit of controversy on some of them. Carnegie Hall uses audio from a different night, many of his famous “raps” are cut from the physical releases so they fit on vinyl, etc.

Carnegie Hall (2021)

December 4, 1970. Right away Neil throws a curveball as the widely circulated Carnegie Hall bootleg is actually from the following night as this recording. However, I’m not sure anyone can really complain when you get the wonderful theater of Neil attempting to lead the audience through “Sugar Mountain” in various tempos. The audience speeds him up and claps at the wrong tempo so Neil slows it way down and tells them to “sing, don’t clap.” It’s a fun eight minute sequence that releases a little of the pressure. One of the more annoying audience members keeps telling Neil to talk louder, which is an odd demand. Overall, this is a crowd pleaser, with many of the early hits and a few Harvest previews that the crowd responds to well.

Royce Hall (2022)

January 30, 1971. This has the distinction of being the source for two album tracks, “The Needle and the Damage Done” on Harvest and “Love in Mind” on Time Fades Away.

“I’m Happy That Y’all Came Down” (2022)

February 1, 1971, Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, Los Angeles.

While it’s nice to have the above two documents, I don’t hear anything in them that I don’t get out of Massey Hall in a vastly superior recording by David Briggs made less than two weeks before with virtually the same tracklist and arrangements. Neil is typically funny and chatty in both, even trying a sing-a-long on “Sugar Mountain” again like Carnegie Hall. Perhaps that’s the real draw to having four different (including Young Shakespeare) recordings of the January ‘71 tour, is just hanging out with Neil and listening to his banter.

Citizen Kane Jr. Blues (2022)

May 16, 1974. This is perhaps the most famous bootleg of Neil there is for a variety of reasons. Two of the major reasons are: On The Beach is a fan favorite Neil album and this show is where Neil debuted many of its songs on an unsuspecting crowd. That might be the third reason: Neil played a surprise set at 2am after a Ry Cooder show. It’s an infamous set because it contains Neil’s recipe for honey slides, a concoction of cooked marijuana and honey that Rusty Kershaw and Ben Keith introduced Neil to during the On The Beach sessions. Of the four bootlegs released to date, this is the most bootleg sounding one, being a straight rip of the original audience cassette (unlike the previous bootleg releases that use professional recordings). So it really makes you feel like you are there like the best of bootlegs. That said, they did make some cuts to Neil’s “raps” for the physical release, which was sacrilege for many fans. So much so that NYA ended up putting the full uncut concert up on the website timeline. I wasn’t an aficionado of this bootleg, so I can’t really point out the cuts, but its worth listening to the entire show if you can. Neil’s banter with the sometimes pushy audience is great.

There are two more bootlegs on the way (in about a month), a collection of recordings of Neil’s short-lived Santa Cruz “supergroup” The Ducks, and a recording of the UK leg of the Tonight’s the Night tour. The preview of Neil doing an electric “Little Wing” with the Ducks is stellar, but the very distant sounding recording of “Human Highway” does not impress me much. The Ducks’ High Flyin’ is the real intrigue here, given that only five Neil songs appear on this collection, showing it truly was just a band Neil was in one summer and reflecting the democratic way they played songs from all members. The Somewhere Under The Rainbow release is more of a rose-tinted document for the fans that mythologize Tonight’s the Night.

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