MORE NEIL NEWS

OK, three out of my last four posts are about Neil Young. What can I say, there's always stuff going on - and I'll credit Thrasher's Wheat, a great Neil fan site where I hear everything first.

Neil's own web site "The NY Times" reports that "one of the most under-estimated and deceptive Crazy Horse records of all time," "Toast," is going to be released in the future as the first in a series of "unreleased Neil Young albums" coming out. How this effects the long promised Neil box set, who knows. The sessions were recorded in 2000, and only one song, "Goin' Home," was released. The rest of the songs were discarded, and later re-recorded with a band made up of Crazy Horse guitarist Frank "Pancho" Sampdero and members of Booker T & The MG's. The result was the album Are You Passionate. Good album, but not a classic. Still, of course, I'm curious to hear this release.

In other Neil news, his post 9/11 concept album, Greendale, is about to hit the stage as a play/musicial. The Undermain Theater in Dallas, Texas is going to be running their production of the show through May. Not only that, but DC Comics' Vertigo imprint is going to be doing a graphic novel version of the story as well. I wanted to like Greendale, but it reminded me of a Roger Waters album, where the heavy message and the narration in the lyrics overpowered the music, which wasn't memorable enough. Still, I'll be checking out the graphic novel, even if I'm not booking a trip to Dallas.