Neil Young & Crazy Horse – Way Down In The Rust Bucket (2021) [FLAC 24bit/192kHz]

Between vintage concert albums and recent ones excavated from archival tapes, it’s become easier than ever to track the onstage history of Neil Young and Crazy Horse. We can now hear Young and the band in its early, funky, Danny Whitten days (Live at the Fillmore East), breaking in Whitten replacement Frank “Poncho” Sampedro (the often breathtaking Japanese 1976 show included on last year’s Archives Volume II), thundering in arenas not long after that (Live Rust), flexing their newly revitalized muscles in the early Nineties (Weld), and showing the flannel-shirt crowd a thing or two about endurance and longevity in the mid Nineties (Year of the Horse).

Next to those projects, Way Down in the Rust Bucket isn’t especially revelatory, nor does it shed new rays of gleaming light on an under-documented part of the saga. To warm up for the 1991 arena tour heard on Weld and its noise-mayhem sibling Arc, the band played two club shows in Northern California, and this long-bootlegged tape, from the 800-seat Catalyst in the fall of 1990, documents one of them. (Young must have a fondness for that venue, since he had also played there, somewhat incognito with the Ducks, over a decade before.)

In 1990, Neil Young made a resounding comeback. With the grunge tsunami about to devastate Planet Rock, Mr. buckskin jacket was celebrated more than ever by the entire English-speaking indie scene. From Pearl Jam/Nirvana to Dinosaur Jr. /Sonic Youth, all saw him as a kind of godfather of punk, the almighty God of grunge. It was the perfect moment for the Loner to reactivate his loudest combo, Crazy Horse, and release a magnificent album of dirty, uncompromising rock’n’roll. It’s an album full of raw guitars and spine-tingling feedback. Title: Ragged Glory. Recorded on November 13 that year at the Catalyst in Santa Cruz, the live Way Down in the Rust Bucket (for die-hards and experts, it’s volume 11.5 of the Performance Series from the Neil Young Archives) documents preparations for the Ragged Glory world tour. It’s an impeccable Cali concert to warm up the new repertoire and revisit some immortal classics (Cinnamon Girl, Don’t Cry No Tears, Sedan Delivery, Like a Hurricane and Cortez the Killer, in a cataclysmic 11-minute version!). Surrounded by drummer Ralph Molina, guitarist Frank Sampedro and bassist Billy Talbot, Neil Young, then 45, was at the top of the raw art form he embodies. This is electric rock’n’roll powered by songs to die for. An essential unreleased archive. – Marc Zisman

Tracklist

1. Country Home (live)
2. Surfer Joe And Moe The Sleaze (live)
3. Love To Burn (live)
4. Days That Used To Be (live)
5. Bite The Bullet (live)
6. Cinnamon Girl (live)
7. Farmer John (live)
8. Over And Over (live)
9. Danger Bird (live)
10. Don’T Cry No Tears (live)
11. Sedan Delivery (live)
12. Roll Another Number (For The Road) [Live]
13. F*!#In’ Up (live) [Explicit]
14. T-Bone (live)
15. Homegrown (live)
16. Mansion On The Hill (live)
17. Like A Hurricane (live)
18. Love And Only Love (live)
19. Cortez The Killer (live)