[photo credit]
This week has been an anniversary of sorts for Neil Young and I. It was 30 years ago — Christmas of 1977 — when I became a Neil Young fan for life. I received the three-l.p. vinyl Decade as a gift, and wore holes through the grooves playing it so often. When Neil toured the following year with a batch of new songs that would later become Rust Never Sleeps, I was at the Nassau Coliseum show:
Neil Young has been a constant through those entire 30 years, through my passing fads of fanship in punk, post-punk, anti-folk, jamband, et. al. When Neil suffered a serious aneurysm in 2005, it looked as if the career of rock’s most diverse and yet consistently excellent performer would either be curtailed or come to an end. Fortunately, the post-aneurysm Neil was as productive as ever, producing Prairie Wind, appearing in Jonathan Demme’s Heart of Gold, and producing an new album (Living With War) and a full tour with old friends CSNY (a recording of the Jones Beach CSNY 2006 concert is in the nyctaper archives).
The current tour, which ended its US leg on Wednesday night at the United Palace Theatre, has been a complete triumph in support of another superb Neil release Chrome Dreams II. Neil has performed the standard Acoustic/Electric set split, with the appearance of some rare chestnuts mixed in with consistent classics, and new numbers. Wednesday’s show featured the tour’s star revival “Out on the Weekend” as the first set closer. Other highlights included “Journey Through the Past”, “Winterlong”, “Cowgirl in the Sand”, and completely shredded 26-minute “No Hidden Path” as the second set closer.
Some readers may have followed my efforts to attend one of these concerts, which ultimately came to a happy ending when I found a cancellation ticket on ticketmaster on the morning of the 19th. My seat was in Row N, slightly left of center, about 10 rows behind the Soundboard and under the overhang. This is not an optimal recording position, and the problems were exacerbated by the low volume of the PA during the acoustic set and a couple of clowns in the audience around me. The final disaster was my batteries running out during the last few notes of No Hidden Path. After a significant amount of post-production (removing idiotic yelling is excruciatingly difficult), and the very generous offer of the balance of the concert from an alternate recorder thanks to “zuma11”, nyctaper is finally pleased to present a really excellent version of this concert. Enjoy!
This recording is no longer available at nyctaper. If you look around the web, you’ll likely find a copy.
Neil Young
2007-12-19
United Palace Theatre
New York, NY USA
Digital Master Recording
Recorded from Row N
Left Center, 10 Rows Behind Soundboard
DPA 4021’s > Marantz PMD-660 (Oade BCM) > 16bit 44.1 wav > Soundforge (set fades, level boosts, close clapping and crowd noise edits, slight eq, crossfade patch material) > CDWave 1.95 (tracking) > Flac Frontend (level 7, align sector boundaries) > flac
Premiere Download offered at
https://www.nyctaper.com
nyctaper@nyctaper.com
Recorded and Produced by
nyctaper
2007-12-22
Setlist:
Acoustic Set
[total time 1:04:36]
01 From Hank to Hendrix
02 Ambulance Blues
03 Sad Movies
04 A Man Needs a Maid
05 No One Seems To Know
06 Harvest
07 Try
08 Journey Through the Past
09 Mellow My Mind
10 Love Art Blues
11 Cowgirl In the Sand
12 Out On the Weekend
Electric Set
[total time 1:29:01]
01 Mr. Soul
02 Everybody Knows This is Nowhere
03 Dirty Old Man
04 Spirit Road
05 Bad Fog of Loneliness
06 Winterlong
07 Oh, Lonesome Me
08 The Believer
09 No Hidden Path**
Encores
10 [encore break]**
11 Cinnamon Girl**
12 Cortez the Killer**
13 The Sultan**
[**patch material — thanks zuma 11]
If you download this recording, PLEASE SUPPORT Neil Young and visit his website.
— the DVD of their 2006 tour of Iceland. This film captured the band’s return to their homeland after a worldwide tour in support of 
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