Thrasher's Wheat - A Neil Young Archives

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Everything You've Ever Wanted To Know About The Neil Young Archives But Were Afraid To Ask

So what is Thrasher's Wheat all about and why?

When we first started Thrasher's Wheat back in 1996, we weres feeling overwhelmed by the flood of Neil Young information on the Internet. When we joined the original Neil Young mailing list Rust@Death founded by Dan Farmer, author of the infamous SATAN program, back in 1993, the volume of posts to RUST averaged half dozen or so a day. By the time we headed for the Human Highway ditch, the volume on RUST had exploded to about 75 a day. As of mid-2003, RUST@Yahoo posts are sometimes averaging over 150 posts per day.

Our original thinking at the time was to create a site for the busy reader. A Neil Young internet portal that one could go on occasion and check in on some interesting Neil Young reviews and opinions of concerts, albums and films. It was never intended to be an up to date official Neil news site or a bootlegs guide. More like a fan club page of research for Young scholarship on a PhD that keeps us searching for a heart of gold.


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Another motivation for this site was a firm belief that Neil Young's work deserved the in depth critical analysis that is widely accorded to Bob Dylan. It was this investigative research on the intersection of Bob Dylan's lyrics and Neil Young's music that jump started the core of Thrasher's Wheat's archives.

Around 1998, we stopped updating Thrasher's Wheat due to time constraints. Also, we were experiencing some Neil burnout and weren't being particularly inspired by the music of the late '90's and early 21st century. But love of Neil Young's music and lyrics has never diminished. His unique sound and style has become one that we have all grown to love.

With the arrival of Greendale in 2003 being some of Neil's most interesting material since the Sleeps with Angels and Mirror Ball era, we have been inspired to update Thrasher's Wheat for the first time in years and to celebrate Thrasher's 10 year anniversary of joining RUST. Similarly, sometimes folks will say "Whatever happened to Neil Young?". Well, just as Neil never went away and continues to make great music, Thrasher's Wheat is dedicated to satisfying that question. So what you have is an archive of Neil Young and Crazy Horse information.

What we're trying to do is archive some of the best writing on Neil that we find on the Internet. Whether it's a RUST, Human Highway post, Usenet post or major media publication.

On a side note, it seems that some folks like to write about Trasher instead of Thrasher. Just curious about this frequent typo? And speaking of curious things, like the urban legend about the Neil Young and Lynyrd Skynyrd feud, here's a FAQ of facts and trivia. And another side note, someone recently pointed out when you click on a link on Thrasher's Wheat it becomes "purple words on a gray background." Pretty cool. ;)

Also, check out Thrasher's Blog, a Neil Young blog and more. Some rock-n-roll ramblings on some of my other favorite music that's been inspired and influenced by Neil like Pearl Jam, Lucinda Williams, Wilco, The Jayhawks, My Morning Jacket, and more.

In 2004, Thrasher's Wheat moved to its own domain. While the earthlink.net domain served us well over the years, the crush of Greendale traffic caused problems on bandwidth consumption. So we'll see how this all works out.

So if you see something interesting let me know. In the meantime, as Neil Young says: Keep on Rockin' and Be The Rain! Be The Change ! Be The Wheat!

Thrasher
December 1996
Updated: June 2003

p.s. - If you can, please support Thrasher's Wheat.

Logo graphic by Geoff Moore, Silver Moon Art & Design

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