I am a huge fan of The Posies, including the solo work of main men Ken Stringfellow & Jon Auer.  I received some news by way of the Posies Google Group (join here if you are interested) today that Ken Stringfellow is the guest editor for this week on Magnet Magazines website.  Magnet is a kick ass, wonderfully laid out music magazine with some great photography if you are at all into progressive new music.

Check out his posts at http://www.magnetmagazine.com/

Ken (now living in France) muses about the food, music, and film in his new euro-home.

If you scroll down a bit you’ll find posts from past guest editors like Tim Kasher from the band Cursive, Ben Lee, and Dean Wareham & Britta Phillips sounding off on the things that they are excited about.

Check out some Posies related links:

http://www.theposies.com

http://www.myspace.com/theposies

http://www.myspace.com/jonauermusic

http://www.myspace.com/kenstringfellow

The first and most fertile period of Young’s musical legacy.  I have outlined the releases from this era below.  Please note what I deem to be the ESSENTIAL releases.

	1966 – Buffalo Springfield – Buffalo Springfield: Young finally hits the big time…  Unfortunately the band wasn’t so keen on letting Young sing his own songs.  What you have is 5 songs written by Young but only 2 sang by him.
	1967 – Buffalo Springfield – Buffalo Springfield Again: This time the band let Young sing a few more songs.  Young became frustrated with the in fighting and left the band after the recording of this release.
	1968 – Buffalo Springfield - Last Time Around:  Young decided to reunite with the band for a short time before they completely fell apart.  He contributed only 2 songs to this record.
	1969 – Neil Young - Neil Young: The continuation of the work that Neil was doing with Jack Nitzsche, whom he had collaborated with on some of the more complicated arrangements on the second Buffalo Springfield record.  A very strong debut, with glimpses of what was to come.
	1969 – Neil Young & Crazy Horse – Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere: The debut of Neil’s backing band Crazy Horse (formerly The Rockets).  If his debut was a polished jewel, this was a rough gem of beautiful country tinged rock n roll. ESSENTIAL
	1970 – Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young - Deja Vu: Young reunites with Stills in his new group including former members of The Hollies and The Byrds.  Other than lending the group some much needed rock n roll credibility, Neil sings only two songs on this record, one of them the wonderful "Helpless".
	1970 – Neil Young - After The Gold Rush: Originally supposed to be a soundtrack to a film that actor Dean Stockwell (best known for his role in TV show Quantum Leap) had written, when the film never happened Young released this landmark recording.  ESSENTIAL
	1972 – Neil Young – Harvest: Neil had fallen in love with actress Carrie Snodgress and was stricken with serious back problems during this period.  He  was in Nashville for a performance on Johnny Cash’s variety show and decided to enlist some Nashville session players and a couple of stars that were also in town for the show (James Taylor & Linda Ronstadt) to help him record what was to become his most popular record.  Definitely more polished than his work with Crazy Horse but absolutely brilliant in its own right.  ESSENTIAL
Neil Young Archives releases from this era:
	1968 – Neil Young – Sugar Mountain: Finally released in 2008 this acoustic solo performance  captures Young doing some of his great early songs.  Some of which were usually sung by other members of Buffalo Springfield.  ESSENTIAL
	1970 – Neil Young & Crazy Horse – Live At The Fillmore East: A rousing rock set from Neil and Crazy Horse while guitarist Danny Whitten was still alive, including the prerequisite 12 plus minute rendition of "Down By The River".
	1971 – Neil Young – Live At Massey Hall: Another great solo acoustic show, this time in Toronto featuring some songs from his then recent albums and some peaks at wonderful tunes yet to be released.

Check out the upcoming release of Neil’s long awaited Archives project.  Volume One 1963 – 1972 has finally gotten a solid release date of June 2nd.  See details here.

Here is a playlist I have put together featuring my favorites from this era.  I tried to stay away from the most well known tunes but also included those that appeared on the recordings of Buffalo Springfield and CSNY.  If you can not see the playlist below, please follow this link.

For the last couple of months I have had the great pleasure of reading this book and re-examining the catalog of Neil Young.  I have been a fan of Neil’s music ever since a friend turned me on to Decade (1977 career retrospective) in high school.  This book allowed me to literally dissect Neil Young’s immense body of work piece by piece, learning the background of what I was hearing.

The material is extremely interesting, or as Young would say "innaresting".  The format in which the information and story is delivered is genius.  The book surpasses what your garden variety biography would deliver with a mish mash of chronological story telling, excerpts from interviews with Young himself, short biographies and quotes from the large cast of characters that have occupied Young’s life, all mixed in with commentary from the Author.

The book covers Neil’s life up to around 1998 including a quick but detailed history of his Grandparents and Parents lives.  Once you get to his High School days you will learn all about his influences and his early musical ventures.  Moving further on though his musical career the bulk of the book is about the music he created as a solo artist, with Buffalo Springfield, Crosby Stills Nash & Young, Crazy Horse, and the many other incarnations of his backing groups.  Among the characters that are covered include his manager Elliot Roberts, the producer for many of his albums David Briggs, early collaborator Jack Nitzsche, and most of the members of the bands he was involved with.

My only qualm with the book is that I think Jimmy McDonough is a little heavy handed with his opinions about some of Young’s work and decisions.  Most of the time he is right and he tells Young to his face, but I do think he has some pretty high expectations.

I have always found Young to be a fascinating character, and I was surprised by some new facts.  For example before he moved to America, Young was in a group called the The Mynah Birds with Rick James (Beotch!) of all people.  They even recorded an album for Motown which sadly has never seen release.  Another strange connection was his involvement with Devo which I covered in a recent post which you can see here.   The last little tidbit I’ll offer is his involvement in the toy train industry.  In the early 1990′s Young purchased part of the Lionel toy company and eventually bought them out.  Also check out the ever eccentric Young’s newest projects on this recent post.

Usually I include a playlist with each of my music book reviews and I fully intend to do so for this one as well.  Actually it will be more like 3-4 playlists, each covering a different era of his recording career.

Neil Young & Crazy Horse – Rust Never Sleeps (DVD)

The live concert video featuring a performance from the 1978 Rust Never Sleeps Tour.  Originally released in 1979 and reissued by Sanctuary on DVD in 2002.  I’ve never really enjoyed live concert films very much, but I regard this one as a gem with its classic set list, bizarre interludes, and odd stage props.  Neil really went all out on the concept for these shows in 78′ as his usual humorous between song banter is replaced by weird rock music and pop culture references.  One of the most striking things about the film/tour is the inclusion of the "Road Eyes", which were glowing eyed jawa looking creatures who took over the stage hand/roadie duties during the performance.  Another interesting inclusion is the PA announcements that take place during the intermission, which after awhile you may or may not realize are from the overblown festival Woodstock (an event that Young played at as part of CSNY).  Even after all the osbscure references, costuming, and odd set design… at the films core is a rock solid performance from Young and the Horse.

A little known fact about the title for the film and album of the same name is that its a direct quote from the lead singer of Devo, Mark Mothersbaugh (aka Booji Boy).  Neil first heard Mark say this during filming of the feature Human Highway; a film project that Neil worked on in the late 70s and early 80s that featured the actors Dennis Hoffman & Dean Stockwell and also the members of Devo.

Enjoy the performance of one of my favorite Neil Young songs from the show below.  Beware if you are short on patience… its a long jam.