Listen to MP3 clips of Ragged Glory
In 2004 Rustie, Mike "Expecting 2 Fly" Cordova posted a series of articles on his experience listening to all of Neil Young's albums in chronological order. Here is one in the series. For a complete listing, see Albums in Order reviews.
Date: Sun, 28 Nov 2004 14:51:36 -0800 (PST) Less than a year after the Freedom album was released,
Neil Young surprised me with yet another great record,
this one sounding much different (and shouldn't I have
expected that by now) than the previous disc.
The 1990 album opens with the very first song I ever heard
Neil Young and Crazy Horse perform live way back in
November of '76, Country Home (Neil had opened with a solo
acoustic set, then brought the Horse in and Country Home
was the first song played in the NY+CH set.) I can't say
that I realized this until much later after I joined Rust
and started trading shows and comparing setlists. I was,
however, aware that the two songs that open Ragged Glory
were written in the 70's, re-recorded for this album.
One kind of humorous thing that happened around the time
of RG being released was the parental sticker thing, which
was brand new. I remember reading before the album came
out that this one could be the first major release with
the sticker because of one of the songs (Fuckin' Up, of
course.) In the end, the parental sticker committee or
whatever decided that in the end, they would be kind of
fucking up to put a sticker on an album for use of the
f-word in the context of the song.
It's not a perfect record for me. I have never been able
to get into Farmer John. And I had recorded from
television the Farm Aid performance at which the RG
version of Mother Earth was recorded and the overdubbed
harmony vocals were something I didn't really care for.
But it's still a very good album.
The glorious thing about this record is the way Neil and
the band sound; charged up and making some really exciting
music. There are some very good songs. Over And Over, Love
To Burn, Love And Only Love are all solid tunes. One of my
fave tunes of all time is Days That Used To Be. Yes, I
know it resembles Dylan's My Back Pages musically and
thematically, but it creates it's own imagery with some
terrific phrasing like "are you driving a new car, does it
take you where you wanna go, with a 7 year warranty, or
just another hundred thousand miles away, from the days
that used to be?) Mansion On The Hill was released as a
single and got some airplay too.
In addition to listening to the album today, I also
listened to the Mansion On The Hill single [an aside: why
are they called singles when they have more than one
song?] which includes the otherwise unreleased Don't Spook
The Horse which was recorded in the RG sessions. Cracks me
up, that one.
I very much enjoyed listening to Ragged Glory today.
Mike - Expecting To Fly
From: Mike Cordova
To: rust@rustlist.org
Subject: Albums in order: Ragged Glory
For more of Expecting To Fly's reviews, see the Albums in Order series.
Listen to MP3 clips of Ragged Glory
Neil Young - Thrasher's Wheat Archives
Reviews of Neil Young Albums