Neil Young & Crazy Horse - Odeon:Budokan (1976)

I've mentioned before that I don't tend to post live albums on the site, but this is an exception as it was supposed to be released by Young himself, but like so many of his proposed releases it seems to have fallen by the wayside. The idea was to take concert recordings from his 1976 world tour with Crazy Horse and put together a live record of it, and it was eventually decided to take the songs from gigs at the Budokan Hall in Japan and the Hammersmith Odeon in the UK. The concerts consisted of an acoustic half and an electric half, and so a  mixture of each was to be taken from the recordings, and for many years it wasn't known which songs would be picked until, a few years ago, a video emerged on Youtube of edited video footage from both shows entitled 'Yesteryear Of The Horse' (still available here if you want to watch it), and so I've used that as a basis for the track listing that I've gone with. I've sourced the material from bootleg recordings rather than ripping the Youtube video as it gave better sound quality, and I've tried to edit the songs together to make a seamless live set, although you will notice a difference in the ambiance of the two venues. You can see why Young had considered releasing this as a live album, as it does contain some unique versions of his songs, such as 'Mellow My Mind' and 'Human Highway' with banjo accompaniment, piano versions of 'No One Seems To Know' and 'Stringman' (there's a bit of mic rubbing, but it was only played the once in London), and the band's first attempt at a live take of 'Country Home'. There has been talk recently of this album still being on the cards for an official release, but we've heard that so often before that I thought I'd post a copy now anyway, just in case that comes to nothing. 

Track listing

01 Tell Me Why
02 Stringman
03 Human Highway
04 Down By The River
05 Cortez The Killer
06 Mellow My Mind
07 Too Far Gone
08 No One Seems To Know
09 Country Home
10 Don't Cry No Tears
11 Cowgirl In The Sand
12 Lotta Love
13 The Losing End 
14 Drive Back

Track 1 Hammersmith Odeon, London  29th March 1976
Tracks 2 - 5 Hammersmith Odeon, London  31st March 1976
Tracks 6 - 14 Budokan Hall, Tokyo  11th March 1976