Music Arcades: Neil Young: Live at Austin City Limits 1985

Quite nice timing for this as Neil is about to release some live recordings of his International Harvesters band from 1984 and '85.

I paid a tenner for this when? Fifteen, maybe 20 years ago, It's an audio bootleg of what was a TV show (if you search, I think video bootlegs also exist), so there's no obvious reason why the quality shouldn't be broadcast quality. Needless to say, it's not. Hey, the photo on the cover is from the same period as the recordings, and most of the song titles are right (except Amber Jean has become Amber Gynn). You expect great sound, too? From a bootleg? It's mono and sounds like second or third generation; or perhaps someone just held a mic up to their TV.

It is great to hear hitherto unreleased songs like Let Your Fingers do the Walking, where Neil has left pastiche behind and really gone native with country music. But Treasure is going to blow this out of the water in terms of quality, and it includes the wonderful Nothing is Perfect.

Here's Neil promoting it in a wonderful presentation that is, in its own way, as playfully meta as Christian Marclay.