A Job I Know I'll Keep: Neil Young- Chrome Dreams (70s)

The image of an awkward Neil Young wearing a bolo tie and standing next to a Blow Job Machine should tell you that this is not an official release, or even a "real" album (in fact, I've been informed in the comments that the photo was taken by Chester Simpson and is not "legally" reproduced here), but it's actually one of my favorite Neil Young records.

I love the man and his work, especially when he's at his most irascibly erratic, so a Neil Young bootleg from the 70s is potential gold to me, and this is golden gold. Like I said, I'm a fan, but not a fan of the encyclopedic variety, so I can't really tell you where all these songs were supposed to be or where they ended up, and in what version... I know that some of it pops up later on American Stars n Bars, Hawks and Doves, Rust Never Sleeps, and some others. And this I know as well: the version of "Sedan Delivery" found here is just god damn great, a muscular, bad cocktail of drugs and desperation that chugs sweatily at a slower pace than any other version I've heard, making it punky and unique and really really dangerous sounding. You might say, the narrator seems unreliable.

"Look Out For My Love" shows up here in an alien and immaculate version that blows the more sentimental renditions out of the water. These selections, along with "River Of Pride," "Too Far Gone" and "Star Of Bethlehem" exemplify the coolest aspects of Young in the 70s: paranoid but elegant, menacing guitars with a folky embrace, comforting traditions laid out in dangerously thin and dark performances, and raw, nervy emotion wrapped in enigmatic weirdness. Of a kind with Tonight's the Night, On the Beach, and Time Fades Away.

This is a bootleg, so it's very uneven, containing live performances, outtakes, and lost, finished tracks, but the easy joke is there to make: it's hardly any more uneven than had it come from the man himself, who seemed to be planning records, sequencing them, and making career choices with a hack gypsy and a bag of chicken bones.

CHROME DREAMS (192)