Neil Young: Archives Vol 1 (1963-1972). 20-odd years in the making. 9 blu-ray discs. 125 tracks (plus 12 hidden tracks). What seems like a small hatchback’s worth of photos, lyrics, clippings and more. It makes that bonus CD with a few remixes seem like a kick in the teeth. Now THIS is for the fans.
Young managed to put out this £200+ package at a time when such things are in vogue. Well timed, old man. In the late 80s he might not have been able to pull this off. If you don’t normally pay that much for a single artist release, this is a good place to start (if you’re a fan).
There’s plenty of reviews out there that can tell you all about the music inside. But we want to talk about the package as a whole.
It’s insane. Even in the heady days of extravagant box sets from labels like Rhino and Bear Factory, this takes the cake. The box is huge, a little bigger than it needs to be, and it comes with 10 discs, a fantastic book, a poster and a little notepad. It’s sturdy too. We only cut the plastic wrapping at the top so it’s now nicely protected as well. Not sure where the hell we are going to store this. And really, the box could have been 50% smaller. Does no one remember the Longbox?
What kills is the book. A leather bound wonder full of memorabilia. Clippings, old photos we’ve never seen before. Drafts and drafts of old lyrics. Annoyingly, some of the lyrics in the booklet are for songs that are not on the box set. Wasn’t this supposed to be complete? That fact it’s not is one of our biggest gripes with Archives. Where is the Losing End? Wasn’t Winterlong from this era? 3 versions of Tell Me Why, yet the exclusion of one of Young’s best tracks – Out On the Weekend – the opening track to Harvest – is almost unforgivable. We could have done with a few more annotations about what the photos and clipping are, and when they were taken etc. But the whole thing is so darn pretty we can forgive. The cover alone – a leather print of a sunrise, knocks out LA hippie sandals right off.
Oddly, our blu-ray box came with a separately packaged copy of Sugar Mountain. Which is part of the Archives story, and it baffled us why it was not to be included. It baffles us now why it was included but not advertised. It really bugs us that we already owned this and two other live discs on the set. But not in blu-ray, so that’s something.
The poster and the notebook are nice. We took them out. Looked at them one. Put them away. don’t see ourselves doing that again for some time – if ever. Not to say we don’t appreciate this kind of stuff, but we don’t love it, and it’s a bonus, not a feature.
The discs are all packaged in it’s own sleeve with fantastic different covers. We love that. So many box sets don’t do that. A bit hard to get out but with so many discs, it will always be the case. And thank you for the free mp3s, redeemable with a code that comes with a credit card sized card, included in the package. It took a few days after release to became available, but it’s great for a casual listen.
But we didn’t just get Archives. We joined the Archives club. On the day of release, Young himself wrote the first of many notes about the box, under the title Archives Post Informer – on the official Archives site – http://www.neilyoungarchives.com. The site also has a handy interactive tutorial on how to use the menus on the discs and a nifty Q&A. You can also send Young your own memorabilia from the era for him to send to others and include in future releases.
If that wasn’t enough, there is always Archives Guy. Over at Thrasher’s Wheat, (THE Neil Young website), a man called Archives Guy has popped up and will occasionally answer question for the fans about this package. It’s amazing support for a release of any sort. And it makes you feel better about forking out the big bucks. (We assume Archives Guy is the guy written about in Shakey, but we can’t remember his name right now).
All in all – great job. The music that is on there is fantastic. A new, expensive bar has been set. We are still getting to know this mammoth collection and we look froward to doing it for a while longer. 20 years in the making and it was worth the wait. The next period in Young‘s career is our favourite. We hope it doesn’t take 20 years for Volume 2. Please give us more sporadic live albums til then.
We first wrote about Archives here – The gold rush: Neil Young’s Archives