Neil Young – Dreamin’ Man Live ‘92
Posted by AlMachine on Wednesday, January 13, 2010




When ever you mention the name Neil Young, the response you find that you get is “is he still going?” Although why that is who knows because he hasn’t been going as long as Sir Cliff Richard. Mind you no one has been going longer than Sir Cliff. It may shock some people that this Jazz, Blues, County singer songwriter has had his music covered by a small Rock and Roll band called Oasis, when they covered ‘Hey Hey My My’ live at the old Wembley.

Ironically this album is a live album which was made only a couple of years before people started hearing about Oasis. First observations on the album is that for someone with such a wide range of tunes to choose from he only picks ten tracks which for any live show seems short.

Neil Young strips everything away and all you are left with is him and his acoustic guitar, with the harmonica in places. It is that raw that you can hear the strain on the guitar strings as Young plays the chords to each of his indididual masterpieces.

The thing about anything done by Neil Young you know that it is always going to be close to his heart every lyric wrote personal to him in some way or another. There is no doubt that he can deliver a performance but you just feel that there should be something else, something more. Is it all a ploy, because after listening to this album you enjoyed it yet you still feel like you missed out on something?

The album kicks off in such a manner with ‘Dreamin’ Man’ that you find yourself checking the connections to your speakers. It as if this is being played off a vinyl (you know records???) Anyhow for whatever bizarre reason this crackling sound that you remember off the vinyl only seems to last for the whole album, maybe it’s just how it was recorded.

. It is always nice to hear ‘Harvest Moon’, but even more so live. Neil Young just shows off all his musical abilities all at the same time. The set/album, whichever way you look at it flows through nicely with ‘From Hank To Hendrix’ and ‘Unknown Legend’ which is a bit ironic for Mr. Young is most definitely a known legend.

Young finishes off with ‘War Of Man’ which with today’s current state of the world is quite fitting, although I don’t think even he predicted the torrid war times that we face.

Mark Moore

6/10


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