NEIL YOUNG : RESTLESS

1. My My Hey Hey (Out Of The Blue)
2. Rockin' In The Free World 
3. Comes A Time
4. Sugar Mountain
5. Helpless
6. Crime In The City 
7. This Old House 
8. This Note's For You
9. The Needle And The Damage Done 
10. No More 
11. After The Goldrush
12. Heart Of Gold 
13. Ohio 
14. Powder Finger 
15. Down By The River (with Bruce Springsteen)

Label : Kiss The Stone

Time : 76:28

Venue : Jones Beach, Wantaugh, New York, USA

Date : June 14th, 1989

Quality : Audience Recording (A+)

Review (Old Grey Cat) : The first thing to know about this 1991 release from Kiss the Stone is that, like much information gleaned from boot CDs' sleeves, this show was not from 1990--but 1989. June 14th, to be exact, an early date on a solo summer tour of sheds/amphitheaters. And while this isn't the entire performance, this is a very good representation of it all the same. At the time, of course, Neil was fresh from his first real hit of the '80s, "This Note's for You," and pre-Freedom--and reaching yet another plateau in both performance and songcraft. Forget the fact that the show is "acoustic." He prowled the stage in a restless manner with one of those handless microphones strapped across his face, his guitar a shield and a weapon at the same time. The "Rockin' in the Free World" presented here, for example, is in many ways an acoustical version of the electric take on Freedom--if that makes sense--complete with the "kinder, gentler machine gun-hand" reference. And his guitar on "Crime in the City" is much more like a machete, with the chords chopped at while the harmonica blunts the back of your head--you ain't safe nowhere, not in the audience or in your own home. Other highlights include a very unsentimental presentation of "Sugar Mountain," "No More" and a heart-thumping "Ohio" that includes his dedication to the students slain in China that summer. This was the first Neil tour that found the freedom-loving Old Grey Cat in attendance--a week or so earlier than this show, at Bally's Under the Stars in Atlantic City. I remember Neil giving a very similar introduction and then me and everyone around me on our feet, our fists in the air and our lungs as one while we shouted the lyrics. Incredible, that's how I remember it. And while the audience at this performance doesn't sound quite as enraptured--Neil does. Although excised by the powers-that-be at Kiss the Stone, a second version of "Rockin' in the Free World" followed "Ohio" that summer at almost every concert stop. Instead, here, we leapfrog to "Powderfinger"--which works very well following "Ohio." "Red means run, son," takes on a new meaning, if you think about it. Unfortunately, "Powderfinger" is also the song where the sound begins to go--this may very well have been due to rain hitting the mike, who knows, but it gets increasingly worse as the song progresses and all but ruins the encore, "Down by the River," with Neil's bud Bruce Springsteen sharing vocals on the chorus. Another minus for this boot is the fact that, rather than excising some of the between song lapses KTS simply cut out a few songs ("Pocahontas," "For the Turnstiles," "Roll Another Number" and the second "Rockin' in the Free World," to be exact). A minute here, two minutes there--it adds up to enough to have fit on at least one of those songs. For that reason, and the sound problems of the last two songs, this earns ...