NEIL YOUNG & CRAZY HORSE : RUST NEVER SLEEPS

 

  1. Introduction: Star Spangled Banner / A Day In The Life
  2. Sugar Mountain
  3. I Am A Child
  4. Comes A Time
  5. After The Gold Rush
  6. Thrasher
  7. My My, Hey Hey (Out Of The Blue)
  8. Stage Announcements
  9. When You Dance I Can Really Love
  10. The Loner
  11. Welfare Mothers
  12. The Needle And The Damage Done
  13. Lotta Love
  14. Sedan Delivery
  15. Powderfinger
  16. Cortez The Killer
  17. Cinnamon Girl
  18. Like A Hurricane
  19. Hey Hey, My My (Into The Black)
  20. End Credits: School Days
  21. Tonight's The Night

Label : Reprise Records

Venue : Cow Palace, San Francisco, California, USA

Recording Date : October 22, 1978

Release Date : 1979

Length : 120 minutes

Aspect Ratio : 4:3

Review (Vintage Rock) : Always one step ahead, Neil Young was one of the few musicians from the 60s who wholeheartedly embraced the spirit of punk and new wave of the late 70s. He had already begun dabbling in forms of recklessness on Zuma. By 1979, after a series of country-oriented collaborations, Young was ready to recharge his batteries with Crazy Horse in his corner. But a funny thing happened on the way to the studio. Young crossed paths with Devo, the robotic and industrial strength band leading the new wave brigade. It was from them that the Canadian folkster heard the phrase, “rust never sleeps.” A light bulb flashed on, and Young started to conceptualize an idea, something that would embody the state of rock past and rock present — a farce on the extravagances and absurdities of the entire game. It would become more than a song. Rust Never Sleeps followed as a stage show, morphed into an album, and ultimately became a film its maker called a “concert fantasy.” Directed by Bernard Shakey aka Neil Young, Rust Never Sleeps is a wonderful mess of a film that somehow lathers up its odd moments with surefire charm, comical interludes and mouthwatering music. The live performances, filmed on October 22, 1978 at the Cow Palace in San Francisco, are nothing short of miraculous — whether it’s the stiff intimacy of Young and his acoustic guitar, or his turns at bat with Crazy Horse. In the midst of the actual show is all this other activity taking place. The “Road Eyes,” as they are called, are members of Young’s regular road crew with a twist — they operate with muted melodrama and “fervor and purpose” as they frantically scramble the stage dressed like hooded wookies. During the film’s opening sequence, the “Road Eyes” struggle to raise a giant microphone as a cacophony of footsteps, Jimi Hendrix’s “Star Spangled Banner” and the Beatles’ “A Day In The Life” blares over the P.A. Once the stage is empty and overflowing with enlarged road cases, Young appears, kneeling on top of a gigantic amplifier and singing “Sugar Mountain.” After he runs through endearing readings of “I Am Child,” “Comes A Time” and “After The Goldrush,” Young intones with dry and adolescent abandon: “When I get big I’m gonna get an electric guitar.” It only gets weirder from there.Best headphones deals The newer songs are instant classics. “Hey Hey My My” (or “My My Hey Hey”), in its acoustic as well as its electrified guise, covers the range of rock from Elvis to Johnny Rotten, punctuated with the immortal lines: “It’s better to burn out/Than to fade away…” Taking his cues from the punks of the day, Young brings out Crazy Horse for the debilitating “Welfare Mothers,” a tribute to passionate divorcees. Following a Rust-O-Vision experiment gone wrong (it involved those flimsy 3D glasses you could get at 7-11), the band kick into another scathing rocker called “Sedan Delivery.” The sea parts once they settle into the unequivocal “Powderfinger,” a broad sweep of the Wild West that finds Young’s darting guitar lines leaping over the rhythm with eccentric agility and grace. Once the band blast through “Cortez The Killer,” “Cinnamon Girl” and “Like A Hurricane” (watching Frank “Poncho” Sampedro play a hanging keyboard resembling a feathered apparitiont while the “Road Eyes” clear the stage of a mysterious intruder is worth the price of admission), there’s no doubt that Neil Young and Crazy Horse were (and remain) a crunching unit built to give any punker a run for his money. The DVD is bolstered by a host of extras including a photo gallery from the period and the original theatrical trailer. The sound has also been remastered without much fuss, but offered in both DTS Surround and Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround. Either way, Rust Never Sleeps is a must-see for anyone who is willing to discover how utterly ridiculous the whole rock and roll game can truly be.

Review (Tinnitist) : “It relates to my career,” Neil Young once said of the title Rust Never Sleeps. “The longer I keep going, the longer I have to fight this corrosion.” That simple statement explains much of Young’s long and winding career. Like, say, his 1983 synth record Trans. Or the 1991 noise construct Arc. And, of course, Rust Never Sleeps, the bizarre, theatrical tour/movie/album that is one of the most beloved entries on his decades-long resume. It’s certainly one of the quirkier entries, as the new DVD of Young’s self-directed 1979 concert film Rust Never Sleeps brings home. A twisted mish-mash of science fiction cheese, ’60s hippie-era nostalgia, Alice-in-Wonderland staging, standup comedy and — oh yeah — a double handful of Young’s finest songs, the two-hour Rust Never Sleeps is remarkable both as a concert and as a piece of performance art.Online movie streaming services Of course, like a lot of art, it’s hard to tell exactly what it all means. The set is decorated with giant road cases — which are raised to reveal outsided faux Fender amplifiers. The roadies are tiny hooded figures with glowing red eyes — presumably modelled after the Jawas in Star Wars — who lurk and scurry around the stage in packs, emerging to position a huge microphone like they’re planting the flag on Iwo Jima or whack an overgrown tuning fork on the stage. The soundmen have lab coats and coneheads. Announcements from Woodstock play between songs. The audience is outfitted in 3-D glasses. A comedic emcee emerges mid-show to deliver a monologue on rust. Another guy, clad in a DEVO coverall, rappels down from the ceiling to crash the party, only to be overpowered and carted away by the “Road Eyes.” Maybe some of it has a point — something about the lingering echoes of the ’60s, the impending invasion of punk, the overgrown adolescent playground of rock, and so on — but mostly, it just seems like a bunch of lunacy that could easily swamp the average rock band. Thankfully, both Young and his long-serving backing trio Crazy Horse are way above average here. Young, skinny as a scarecrow and sporting a shaggy haircut, opens up with an acoustic mini-set, delivering superb versions of Sugar Mountain, I Am a Child, Comes A Time, After The Gold Rush, Thrasher and My My, Hey Hey (Out Of The Blue). Then Crazy Horse — guitarist Frank (Poncho) Sampedro, bassist Billy Talbot and drummer Ralph Molina — join him for a typically loose and glorious set of rockers like Sedan Delivery, Cinnamon Girl, Like A Hurricane and Welfare Mothers, along with more poignant fare like The Needle And The Damage Done, Lotta Love, Powderfinger and Cortez The Killer. By the time they close with Hey Hey, My My (Into the Black) — followed by an encore of Tonight’s The Night — you can almost believe Neil’s claim that “rock ’n’ roll can never die.” At least, not as long as he’s around to scrape off the barnacles every now and then.