Rock - what are you listening to?

[tweber]

I'd really love to here the other version of this album!!
Still this one is brilliant..

Used to find it hard going but in recent years I've found myself going back to it more and more-definitely worth sticking with!

[tweber]

Have been going through some old stuff in anticipation of the new one from E on Feb 5th:

[cybot]

I love this album, never gets old....

But this has the classic cover :)

[mcq]

Journey through the past...

The entire trilogy of Time Fades Away/On The Beach/Tonight's The Night represents one of the artistic high points of Young's career but it appears to be one that he is unwilling to dwell on.  On The Beach had a very belated CD release and Time Fades Away has, to my knowledge, never appeared on CD (although Young has promised its eventual release in the next stages of his Archives releases, which promises a great deal if he also permits the inclusion of Briggs's personal master tape of Tonight's The Night).  However, I can fully understand Young's reluctance to revisit this difficult time.  The heroin overdoses of Danny Whitten and Bruce Berry, violent spats with the unpredictable Jack Nitzsche, as well as Young's ongoing battles with various substance addictions collectively represent a very dark time in Young's life.  It is commonplace to fetishise such nakedly emotional moments in somebody's life but we can never forget that Young had to live through all of this and somehow carry on with his life by compartmentalising this part of his life as something that happened to somebody else who, in Young's words, was entirely "sickened and fucked up".  I believe that Young has referred to Tonight's The Night as a "suicide note without the suicide" which is, to me, is an uncannily accurate way of describing one of the most uncomfortable listens in all of popular music.  What strikes me in particular about this trilogy is the sense of wilful self-destructiveness and unchecked emotional honesty that filters through each album.   There is a very nihilistic sense of dislocation and disorientation, a sense of being plunged head-long into Young's turbulent subconscious at this fractious moment in his life.  They are his least polished albums and his most personal (with the possible exception of Trans).  Scrappily recorded yet burning and seething with a sense of self-disgust, explosive anger, crippling regret and the most vacant, heart-deadening loss, we should be thankful that Young even permitted their release at all, or, more importantly, that he managed to "open up his tired eyes" and come back from this brink.

"I'm climbing this ladder, my head in the clouds
I hope that it matters, I'm having my doubts"
(from "Borrowed Tune")

[jadarin]

[jaybee]

how is it, I never remembered to buy it!

[jaybee]

I love this album, never gets old....

But this has the classic cover :)

later surpassed by.....

[Ivor]

how is it, I never remembered to buy it!

It's a gem. It's still on sale as far as I know ;~)

[jaybee]

off to amazon so.....

[Derek]

John Martyn died January 29, 2009

Listening to Solid Air and thinking of himself