Get in there while it’s free. Rolling Stone reports this morning on Neil Young’s Archives which went up at the end of last year with an interactive timeline that offered fans his back catalogue in rather fine sound quality along with photos and videos from his entire career. They report: “One thing the archives didn’t have was much music that isn’t already available on Spotify and other streaming services. On Wednesday, however, Young posted the inaugural issue of the Neil Young Times-Contrarian delving into detail about upcoming archival releases.
The first package slated for a March release is Roxy – Tonight’s The Night Live, spotlighting a 1973 Los Angeles show that Young played with the Santa Monica Flyers right after they cut Tonight’s The Night. “We really knew the Tonight’s The Night songs after playing them for a month [in the studio],” Young writes in the online newspaper. “So we just played them again, the album, top to bottom, without the added songs, two sets a night, for a few days. We had a great time.”
Young also plans on releasing ALCHEMY, which chronicles his 2012/13 tour with Crazy Horse. It will include “Walk Like a Giant,” “Dangerbird,” “Mr. Soul,” “Surfer Joe & Moe the Sleaze,” “Red Sun” and other songs taped on the world tour. Video from the tour will also be released onto the archives, including a wild performance of “Like a Hurricane” at a 2013 show in Switzerland where the group played in the midst of a thunderstorm. “NYA has the whole multi-camera capture of this unreal experience,” Young wrote, “and will preview it at the premiere of NYA’s Movie Night.” Movie Night will spotlight one film from Young’s vast library every week.
Access to the Neil Young Archives is free at the moment, but the musician plans on putting up a paywall later this year. “We plan on a couple of levels of subscription with many exclusive features for the top level,” Young wrote. “We don’t want to lose our listeners so we are making it very low priced and attractive, with all kinds of perks, from premier listens to first shot at buying tickets to shows before they are commercially announced.” Young has been off the road since late 2016, but in his letter on the newspaper he says that “tour plans are forming now for the latter part of 2018.”
