Before the Goldrush

Uncut magazine’s web-site is reporting, a bit optimistically I fear, that Neil Young’s much-delayed “Archives” project looks likely to finally be released on November 3.

Notice how they carefully do not mention which year.

Neil’s ‘Archives’ have been ‘about to be released’ since Methuselah was a boy. In fact, at the time when they were first mooted the intended cutting-edge format was 8-track cassette.

Now, it is said that “Archives Volume One 1963-1972” will be released as a 10-disc Blu-Ray and DVD collection and is expected to feature previously released live sets including “Live At Massey Hall”, from 1971, and “Live At The Fillmore East”, from 1970, as well as never released studio tracks, demos and artwork.

What is the point in including live records that were just released a year or so ago? I’ve already paid for these discs. I don’t want to pay for them again.

But, more to the point, does anyone have the foggiest idea what Blu-Ray is? Please don’t tell me that we’ll have to invest in expensive new hardware just to hear this stuff – thank the Lord that I’ve got most of it on bootleg anyway.

Meanwhile, it is also reported that Young is also apparently due to release “Sugar Mountain” on September 29. Exact details of what this album will contain are unconfirmed, but it’s widely presumed to be another set of vintage live material.

A bootleg album, “Live On Sugar Mountain”, recorded at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in Los Angeles on the last night of Neil Young’s early-1971 solo tour, has long been in circulation, and it’s likely the material for this official release may well be drawn from that show.

So, like Dylan a few posts ago, there’s lots of goodies to look forward to, but with some trepidation about the price.

It Was 39 Years Ago Today

15 August 1969

By the time we got to Woodstock
We were half a million strong
And everywhere there was song and celebration
And I dreamed I saw the bombers
Riding shotgun in the sky
And they were turning into butterflies
Above our nation
We are stardust
Billion year old carbon
We are golden
Caught in the devils bargain
And weve got to get ourselves
Back to the garden

Quiz Time

Nae prizes.

This is just a wee nostalgic quiz for readers of the old Heart Monitor blog – I apologise if you find yourself locked out of it now, but it’s due to circumstances really beyond my control.

Here are some pictures from the old blog – can you identify them and, where appropriate, say what story was illustrated by them? -

How Local Government Works – Part 112

OK – the above leaflet was delivered to 360,000 homes in Birmingham last week, and it’s a message from the City Council congratulating the citizens on embracing the Council’s recycling policy.

The leaflet was delivered to the citizens of Birmingham.

Birmingham, England.

If you look at the cityscape in the photograph containing the words ‘Thank You Birmingham’, you will see that it is indeed of Birmingham.

Birmingham, Alabama.

Return of the Song and Dance Man

I’m rather late in reading the news from bobdylan.com that ‘Tell Tale Signs’ – the Bootleg Series Volume 8 – is to be released on 7 October.

If you go to that site you can download one of the tracks (Dreamin’ Of You) in its entirety.

This is the track-listing -

Disc One
1. Mississippi 6:04 (Unreleased, Time Out of Mind)
2. Most of the Time 3:46 (Alternate version, Oh Mercy)
3. Dignity 2:09 (Piano demo, Oh Mercy)
4. Someday Baby 5:56 (Alternate version, Modern Times)
5. Red River Shore 7:36 (Unreleased, Time Out of Mind)
6. Tell Ol’ Bill 5:31 (Alternate version, North Country soundtrack)
7. Born in Time 4:10 (Unreleased, Oh Mercy)
8. Can’t Wait 5:45 (Alternate version, Time Out of Mind)
9. Everything is Broken 3:27 (Alternate version, Oh Mercy)
10. Dreamin’ of You 6:23 (Unreleased, Time Out Of Mind)
11. Huck’s Tune 4:09 (From Lucky You soundtrack)
12. Marchin’ to the City 6:36 (Unreleased, Time Out of Mind)
13. High Water (For Charley Patton) 6:40 (Live, August 23, 2003,Niagara Falls, Ontario, Canada)

Disc Two
1. Mississippi 6:24 (Unreleased version #2, Time Out of Mind)
2. 32-20 Blues 4:22 (Unreleased, World Gone Wrong)
3. Series of Dreams 6:27 (Unreleased, Oh Mercy)
4. God Knows 3:12 (Unreleased, Oh Mercy)
5. Can’t Escape from You 5:22 (Unreleased, December 2005)
6. Dignity 5:25 (Unreleased, Oh Mercy)
7. Ring Them Bells 4:59 (Live at The Supper Club, November 17, 1993,New York, NY
8. Cocaine Blues 5:30 (Live, August 24, 1997, Vienna, VA)
9. Ain’t Talkin’ 6:13 (Alternate version, Modern Times)
10. The Girl on the Greenbriar Shore 2:51 (Live, June 30, 1992,Dunkerque, France)
11. Lonesome Day Blues 7:37 (Live, February 1, 2002, Sunrise, FL)
12. Miss the Mississippi 3:20 (Unreleased, 1992)
13. The Lonesome River 3:04 (With Ralph Stanley, from the album Clinch Mountain Country)
14. ‘Cross the Green Mountain 8:15 (From Gods and Generals Soundtrack)

If you’ve got another £55 or so then you can upgrade to a so-called deluxe edition which features glossy booklets and a 7″ single etc and includes this 3rd disc -

Disc Three
1. Duncan and Brady (Unreleased, 1992)
2. Cold Irons Bound (Live, Bonnaroo, June 2004)
3. Mississippi (Unreleased version #3, Time Out of Mind)
4. Most of The Time (Alternate version #2, Oh Mercy)
5. Ring Them Bells (Alternate version, Oh Mercy)
6. Things Have Changed (Live, Portland, Oregon, 2000)
7. Red River Shore (Unreleased version #2, Time Out of Mind)
8. Born in Time (Unreleased version #2, Oh Mercy)
9. Tryin’ To Get To Heaven (Live, London, England, 2000)
10. Marchin’ to the City (Unreleased version #2, Time Out of Mind)
11. Can’t Wait (Alternate version #2, Time Out of Mind)
12. Mary and the Soldier (Unreleased, World Gone Wrong)

The 3-disc deluxe edition seems ridiculously expensive and only a madman would consider paying that price.

I think that’s the one I’ll be going for.

Money doesn’t talk – it swears. Wanna buy the deluxe edition?

Defibrillating

Testing, Testing

(I’m just fiddling about here – I’m checking how readily I can import postings from the other blog).
The undernoted posting first featured on the other blog on 20 February 2006 under the heading

The Absolute Game Revisited – Part 1

For roughly ten years from about 1988 onwards, I contributed a number of articles to the best football fanzine around, viz: - The Absolute Game.
Here is an example (from TAG 20, October 1990)- more will follow if there is sufficient interest.

The Forgotten Ones – No 7 – Jim Baxter

Picture the scene. The Main Door at Ibrox Stadium at 2pm on a match day circa 1971. Yours truly, a scruffy, spotty schoolboy hanging about outside hoping for a glimpse of the stars. The portals open and the Rangers reserves emerge to board the luxury team coach to travel the short distance to an away game against Clyde at Shawfield. Lagging behind the rest comes a tall, dark-haired individual equipped with the expensive florid complexion and beer-gut of the seasoned drinker. He reaches into his tatty old duffle bag and produces a pair of heavily mud-encrusted boots and proceeds to ‘clean’ them by battering them off the hallowed red-sandstone building.

This was Jim Baxter towards the end of his second spell with Rangers. Despite his world-wide fame and celebrity he still had time for a few words with me and the othere wee urchins who were staring at him in awe. These few words were “Get oot the f***ing road boys“.

Something of my youthful innocence died that day.

Jim Baxter was God when Eric Clapton was still an apprentice cherub trying to figure out how BB King could bend those notes. It’s a cliche to say that Slim Jim had everything required of a great Scottish footballer. Outrageously skilled, totally irresponsible, supremely arrogant and thick as mince. Yup, he had it all. Even the fact that he featured in a successful Rangers team did not prevent him being universally admired (ie in the other end of the city as well), mainly due to his glittering performances in the national team. Jim getting both goals in the victory over England at Wembley in ‘63. Jim making monkeys out of the aristocratic Italians at Hampden in ‘65. Jim returning to London to rub the ‘World Champions’ noses in the dirt of Wembley ‘67.

Great moments all.

I become quite light-headed when I hear Billy Bremner telling the story of Jim parading up and down the dressing room before the Italian game saying, “Rivera? Rivera? Ah’ll Rivera ‘im when we get oot there”. And, of course, Jim did totally outshine Gianni Rivera, the biggest Italian superstar of his day.

Where did it all go wrong? A broken leg, a transfer away from Rangers to Sunderland, and the usual cocktail of alcohol, horses, women and Chinese take-aways did for Jim. These elements were merely aggravated by his well-known reluctance to do anything energetic, like turn up for training. His eventual return to Rangers was more in the nature of retirement to an Eventide home than a second coming. The only apt comparison between Baxter, Wembley ‘67 and Baxter, Shawfield ‘71, would be with Elvis, Memphis ‘55 and Elvis, Las Vegas ‘77. The name was the same, but the man himself was simply a parody of his former greatness. Premature retirement at the age of 30 beckoned, as by that time, in his own inimitable words, “I was getting beat by guys I wouldnae have sh*t on 10 years earlier”.

After his retirement Jim set the trend for some present day Ibrox stalwarts to follow by having some unfortunate brushes with the criminal courts. He also trod the well-used path of becoming a publican with himself as his best and most regular customer. Nowadays he occasionally makes the odd TV or radio appearance to reminisce about the old days, when he was, in Ian Archer’s phrase, “the greatest Scottish football show on earth“.

It is of course not strictly accurate to include Jim in the ‘forgotten ones’ series. For those of us fortunate to witness it, his performance at Wembley ‘67 will never be forgotten. Expecting another player like him to emerge in Scotland is as fruitful an exercise as waiting for the new Beatles. We are condemned to a footballing diet of Jive Bunnies. After each fresh humiliation for Roxburgh’s boys, why don’t you dig out the video of Jim playing keepie-uppie against Ramsay’s Robots. He did then what every Scottish boy who has ever lived has wanted to do.

The greatest player that I ever saw? Probably. The greatest player that ever told me to get oot the f***ing road? Definitely.

Footnote – Jim Baxter died, aged 61, in 2001, after having been in very poor health for a long time, principally due to alcohol abuse

Start Me Up

You may have come here from alastair’s heart monitor, or you may have just stumbled across this site by accident.

As soon as I am able, which may not be for a few months, I intend to begin posting here, but for the meantime it’s just a meeting place for former readers of the heart monitor and a dead letter box where anyone and everyone can leave suggestions for topics they would like to see covered on this blog once it’s up and running.

So welcome, all. Nothing to see in the meantime, but please check back in late September or thereby.