Journey through the past?

Press, 6 December 1979, Page 18

Journey through the past?

NEIL YOUNG AND CRAZY HORSE “Live Rust” (Reprise 2R X 2296). This is the second live Neil Young album that has been released, but unlike the raw wound of “Time Fades Away” “Live Rust” is a celebration. One critic has viewed “Live Rust” as a kind of Young journey through the past, in the sense that the compilation triplealbum “Decade” was, but to me it sounds like a celebration. There is a kind of enjoyment in the live album that has been reflected in the last two albums that Young’ has released, "Come A Time” and “Rust Never Sleeps.” The live album is a historical record of the “Live Rust” tour that Young made across America, not so much a personal exorcism such as he has done in the past, especially on “Tonight’s The Night and “On the Beach” in the aftermath of the deaths of the Crazy Horse guitarist, Danny Whitten, and Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young roadie, Bruce Berry, of drug overdoses. Indeed it is interesting to note that just before the opening of “Needle and the Damage Done” there is a Woodstock-type announcement of people getting off the light towers because of the approaching storm, followed by someone saying, “if we think hard enough maybe we can stop this rain.” Then there is a chant of “no rain, no rain.” It almost seems as if

Young is saying, “I have had enough pain.” But, a close look at the fuzzy, yet beautifully photographed coloured covers of the album show closeups of Neil Young’s guitar strap, which includes a Ban the Eomb sign and a badge with a photo of Jimi Hendrix on it. So perhaps the rain chant is also Young’s way of saying he is rooted in the sixties as much as his music now reflects the seventies, including new wave from the British source. There is not much variation in the live songs as opposed to the studio recordings. The album starts out at Neil Young’s beginnings with “Sugar Mountain” and “I Am a Child,” the opening side being an acoustic one. The album really gets under way when Crazy Horse comes in on “When You Dance I Can Really Love.” “Like a Hurricane” is the tour de force on the album, but there is an interesting reggae bit on “Cortez The Killer” which certainly does no harm to the song. While Frank Sampedro may be no Danny Whitten, the album as a whole captures the Young feeling, and one can only wait and hope that he can again make magic. THE ROCHES “The Roches” (Warner Bros., BSK 3298). The Roches album is so good, so different, and so catchy that to review it in some ways would not do justice to it. It appears de-

ceptively simple: three sisters, Terre, Maggie, and Suzzy, singing in harmonies on seemingly ordinary songs in an unusual style. With the help of Robert Fripp, and a lot of Frippisms, which do not detract from the over-all effect of the album, the Roches have put together a refreshingly original and brilliant record which can only be compared in some instances to early Kate and Anna McGarrigle material — at least if you wanted a marker post that is where you would start. Right from the opening track, “We,” which is a record biography of the band, which hints that the band is not interested in “suckcess” as Dylan put it. The Roches take ordinary situations and make them comic or serious, but human, too, in terms of reactions and emotions. The beautiful “Hammond Song” is about a parentchild argument about who knows best, while “Mr Sellack” is about more than asking for an old waitressing job back (“Give me a broom and I’ll sweep my way to heaven”).

“The Troubles” is catching if only because Of the harmonies that the Roches put into the song, while “The Married Men,” of which Phoebe Snow did a sentimental version on her last album is a kind of recorded version of “The Women’s Room,” although it also incorporates the view of the Other Woman into that of marriage and the advantage that married men have Over all women — that is what the song is saying, I think. The only true test for this album, and it is highly recommended because it is so enjoyable, is to listen for yourself. Maggie is 27, Terre 25, and Suzzy 22.

RECORD REVIEWS

by

Nevin Topp