What's the best concert film?  That's a tough one. It depends. Many would say Stop Making Sense , it's a good performance, but it is edited together from three separate shows. Others would say The Last Waltz , but the running order of the show has been altered, probably timed to give viewers a bathroom break during Neil Diamond's segment. Consider, however, Neil Young and Crazy Horse's Rust Never Sleeps, filmed this week (10-22) in 1978 at the Cow Palace. It is a single show. Neil has some sort of concept in mind. the Jawas from Star Wars manage the stage. There are some gigantic trunks that Neil climbs around on. I guess he is a child, or maybe an action figure to fit in with the Jawas. The title was suggested by one of the guys from Devo. We get a flashback to Woodstock. It seems to be uncut. Note that there are some slow parts as Neil washes the spit out of his harmonica by sloshing it around in a bucket of water. It sounds like the bucket is miked.  It's Nei...

Happy 75th birthday to Linda Ronstadt.  She doesn't have the same alt-country cred as Emmylou, but she deserved it. She didn't have that direct link to Gram, but she probably did the best job of pulling off his mix of rock, country and soul. Maybe our ilk holds the Eagles against her. Maybe it's because there was nothing "alt" about her. Growing up, her music was everywhere, whether it was Dad's country station - WMAQ, or my aunt's pop station - WOKY.  Her last two "rock" albums - Mad Love and Get Closer - ventured away from the country. Perhaps too established to be new wave or power pop, she put some punchy covers by the Cretones and Billy Thermal and Elvis Costello. While her earlier cover of "Allison" featured the anodyne west coast production values of the time, two of the three covers on Mad Love  hold their own. Even her oldies covers are primarily British Invasion era pop of the type favored by the skinny tie set. Over the pas...

About 50 years ago Miles Davis opened for Neil Young at the Fillmore. First of our lists here is Neil Young and Crazy Horse at the Fillmore , from March 6th and 7th, 1970. This tour, in support of Everybody Knows This is Nowhere , was the last undertaken with Danny Whitten before his sad death from an overdose of...well...horse. Neil actually played four shows over the two days, from which this release was put together. One song, Cinnamon Girl, did not originally appear but was subsequently released as part of the Neil Young Archives. Setlist fm  shows that the song appeared before Cowgirl in the Sand at each show. The Youngians among you will note two songs that had yet to see an official release: Winterlong - which came out on the Decade retrospective, and Wonderin' which came out on Everybody's Rockin' ' during the Geffen years. "Why is the set so short?" you ask. It is short because Neil played a solo acoustic set - not included here - before bring...