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) I almost missed the tour that spawned this record. I had been activated by my Air National Guard unit in Pittsburgh where I was living at the time and had deployed to Dubai in the U.A.E. While there, one of my fellow officers started talking to me after he heard I was into Neil about a letter he had gotten from a buddy describing the Neil + Crazy Horse Pittsburgh show on 2-17-91; how electric-guitar driven and loud and great it was. I thanked my friend for the description of the show by giving him a cassette (a store-bought official version) of Ragged Glory. After returning to the U.S. in March, I tried to find out if the tour was still on and where I could possibly catch it. Based on my schedule, I found a date; 4-9-91 in Portland, Oregon. Good date. Across the continent from me, but I could work it. The show was intense, emotional, and LOUD. I was glad to have seen a show on this tour, for sure. It was worth the transcontinental trek.
Just before or after Arc-Weld was released, Neil was a guest on the radio interview program Rockline. In it he casually mentions that the harmony vocals by Poncho/Billy/Ralph on Weld are overdubbed in the studio for the live album. He justifies this by saying something like “you wouldn’t want to hear what was on the tapes before we cleaned them up.” And further, that he had done this very same thing on Live Rust. I have to admit to feeling a bit let down upon hearing this. I had had in my mind that Neil’s style was to release what was done warts and all; the revelation that Neil fixed live tracks on live albums in the studio was disorienting and disappointing. Perhaps I was just naïve. Oh well.
A note about Arc (the first two discs in the my set are dubbed Weld and disc 3 is Arc). This was the first tour, I think, where Neil started this grunge-feedback thing and for this album decided to put together those parts onto a cd disc. Stretched out endings are among my least fave experiences at concerts, truth be known. I’d rather see that time used to play another song and I find the experience lazy and indulgent on behalf of Neil and the band. I wish that Arc had sort of gotten those stretched out endings out of his system, but over the years it seems to have actually gotten worse. There are some versions of Hurricane out there in which the intros and stretched out endings are longer than the song. Listening to Arc was a bit painful, but I did it today…
On to Weld. Like Live Rust, Weld depicts pretty well the concert experience of this tour. As a live album, it is very enjoyable. I am very happy to have the live versions of Crime In The City and the cover of Dylan’s Blowin’ In The Wind and RITFW and the songs from Ragged Glory on record. One thing about this album kind of concerned me at the time though. For the first time since I’d become a fan, I felt like Neil was sort of repeating himself. A large percentage of the songs on this album were also on Live Rust. Most of his recent catalog was completely ignored. But, in any case, it’s a good live album. The songs that are on the album are done very well. This one’s a pretty good road record. Put it in the car and blast away and you’ll get where you want to be faster, for sure.
I very much enjoyed listening to Arc-Weld today.
Mike - Expecting To Fly
From: Mike Cordova
To: rust@rustlist.org
Subject: Albums in order: Arc-Weld
For more of Expecting To Fly's reviews, see the Albums in Order series.
Neil Young - Thrasher's Wheat Archives