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Young Man’s Fancy by Neil Young (Vinyl record album review)

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Record basics

  • Album name: Young Man’s Fancy
  • Artist name: Neil Young
  • Year: 1971
  • Number of discs: two
  • Label: Zerocks
  • Collection: Brenner / Gessner
  • Distinguishing characteristics: “Brenner” written on record, indicating that my mother owned it
  • Buy it on Ebay: $89.00

Young Man's Fancy by Neil Young

My review

Level of familiarity before listening

I’ve never heard of this Neil Young record before, but it will be his eighth that I’ve reviewed so far. The previous seven were:

What I expected

This is a live double album from 1971, and appears to include a bunch of Neil Young’s hits from the peak of his (early) career.

What it was actually like

This album was packaged like a bootleg, and the performance was entirely acoustic and definitely sounded intimate and really fun. I could hear audience members coughing at a few points, and laughing when Young joked, but I wasn’t able to make out much of his discourse between the songs. In general, I loved it.

My favorites were: Tell Me Why from side one, A Heart of Gold[1] from side two, Sugar Mountain from side three and See the Girl Dance from side four.

Grade

5/5: love it

References

References
↑1 I’m not sure why it’s called that on the album, since it’s Heart of Gold everywhere else.

Moby Grape (1967) (Vinyl record album review)

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Record basics

  • Album name: Moby Grape
  • Group name: Moby Grape
  • Year: 1967
  • Number of discs: one
  • Label: Columbia Records
  • Collection: Brenner / Gessner
  • Distinguishing characteristics: “GESSNER” written inside album cover and on LP, indicating that my father owned it
  • Buy it on Amazon: $145.00

Moby Grape (1967)

My review

Level of familiarity before listening

I have no recollection of ever hearing the name “Moby Grape” before, but my father groaned when I said that I would be listening to it, described it as “60s hard rock,” and said that I might recognize some of the songs.

What I expected

1967 seems like it might have been slightly early for 60s hard rock, but not that early: this record was released a couple of days after the famous Jimi Hendrix hard rock rendition of Sgt. Pepper in London. So I’ll guess some psychedelic rock and some hard rock.

What it was actually like

This was a really interesting record because I definitely liked it and thought it was very good, but no songs really stood out.

They were clearly great at writing and recording parts of songs – guitar parts, intros, bridges, riffs, vocals, solos, bass lines – but I’m utterly baffled at how un-catchy these songs all were. That said, most of the songs were lively, trippy, and kind of reminded me of the MC5, with a strong proto-punk sound (that would only have made sense in the context of punk coalescing after a decade).

Was it hard rock? Not by Hendrix standards or Led Zeppelin standards, but it was definitely a lot harder than most of the music from that part of the 1960s.

The fastest and most punk-like song was Omaha, but others were also quite up tempo, like Come in the Morning.

My favorite was Ain’t No Use, which almost had a bluegrass sound, except done with rock instruments (as far as I could hear), which was very cool.

There were no bad songs, but Someday was less electric and sounded kind of confused, and Naked, If I Want To was less than a minute long and sounded kind of pointless, as if they came up with a bit of an idea for a song but were not quite able to work it into a whole song.

One thing that really stood out to me from watching the Beatles’ Get Back documentary was the extent to which they would keep messing with their material over and over and over again, and still leave it off the record if they didn’t quite feel like it belonged. Maybe Moby Grape would have benefited from that sort of approach.

Grade

4/5: would listen again

Godspell: Original Australian Cast Album (Vinyl record album review)

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Record basics

  • Album name: Godspell: Original Australian Cast Album
  • Composer name: Stephen Schwartz
  • Performer names: Domenic Luca, Paul Reid Roman, Colette Mann, Jillian Archer, Colleen Hewett, Christopher Pate, Chris Sheil, George Spartels, Karen Corbett, Virginia Geraghty
  • Year: 1971
  • Number of discs: one
  • Producer: Ian Meldrum
  • Label: Lewis Young Productions
  • Collection: Brenner / Gessner
  • Who owned it: my mother
  • Buy it on Amazon: $12.99

Godspell: Original Australian Cast Album

My review

Level of familiarity before listening

I have heard of Godspell before, and I guess I would have assumed it was a musical, but I do not like musicals and have never seen it. My mother laughed when she heard that I would be listening to this record, which describes itself as “a sweet rock musical based upon the Gospel according to St.Matthew (sic),” though she professed to have no idea why she would have owned it. Also, I swear that it is a complete coincidence that I’m listening to this on Friday 7 April 2023 (טּּ׳ז ניסן), the second day of Pesach.

What I expected

An XX century musical drama about the Christian bible.

What it was actually like

Every minute of this was terrible.

I recognized Day By Day, though I have no idea from where.

Grade

1/5: horrible enough that I couldn’t make it through

Song for Juli by Jesse Colin Young (Vinyl record album review)

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Record basics

  • Album name: Song for Juli
  • Artist name: Jesse Colin Young
  • Year: 1973
  • Number of discs: one
  • Label: Warner Records Inc.
  • Collection: Brenner / Gessner
  • Who owned it: my mother
  • Buy it on Amazon: $6.75

Song for Juli by Jesse Colin Young

My review

Level of familiarity before listening

When I saw this record next on the shelf, my first thought was that I had no clue who Jesse Colin Young was, but then I was looking through my old reviews for something else, and accidentally discovered that I reviewed Light Shine by Jesse Colin Young (1974) late last year. I didn’t think it was good.

What I expected

My mother vocally claimed this record as belonging to her collection, told me that it would be folk rock, and that I may recognize some of the songs, but that she didn’t think I would like them.

What it was actually like

Several of them – Mornin’ Sun, Evenin’, Country Home – were folk rock style with a strong country rock sound, and not bad at all, but the auto-harmonized vocals were crap. He should have just recorded himself singing into a microphone instead of messing around with fancy techniques that messed things up.

The title track Song for Juli was pretty bad, with a long instrumental beginning, turning into jazzy elevator music with a terrible flute part.

I also disliked Ridgetop, which at 7:02 minutes, was over twice as long as it needed to be. It had an awful saxophone part that easily could have been replaced by another guitar (preferably electric, and with distortion). I did like the tempo, though.

Miss Hesitation was basically three songs in one, with two (the first a country song with harmonica, and the second elevator music) alternating back and forth, and the third (like the first, but Oompa Loompa) appearing at the end.

On the second side, there was a stretch of three great songs in a row, all covers. The first was a great and fun version of the blues classic T-Bone Shuffle with harmonica and piano (and here is the original). The other two, Clifton Chenier’s Lafayette Waltz and Hank Williams’ Jambalaya (which was the only song that I recognized), ran together as one song and were outstanding, but maybe that’s just because I think Zydeco (or maybe Creole, or Cajun) music is great. Here are originals of the former and the latter, and here are some covers of the former and the latter too. If I were Jesse Colin Young 50 years ago, I would record an entire record of covers like these.

Grade

3/5: interesting, but not for me

Entrance by Edgar Winter (Vinyl record album review)

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Record basics

  • Album name: Entrance
  • Artist name: Edgar Winter
  • Year: 1970
  • Number of discs: one
  • Label: Epic Records
  • Collection: Brenner / Gessner
  • Distinguishing characteristics: “G” written on top left of album, indicating that my father owned it
  • Buy it on Amazon: $25.39

Entrance by Edgar Winter

My review

Level of familiarity before listening

I have never heard of Edgar Winter or this record.

What I expected

Rock.

What it was actually like

This was pretty bad, and after listening to the first side, I almost did not flip it over to listen to the reverse. I was glad that I did, though, because the best song on the record by far was an excellent cover of the blues standard Tobacco Road (here’s another by The Animals).

A bunch of these songs had the tendency to run together, and it was seldom clear when one ended and another began. The title track Entrance, for example, was not easily distinguishable from Where Have You Gone, and I hated both of them. I would call the musical style progressive rock, but the sound was really weird and disjointed, and kept changing every 15 seconds or so, as if he couldn’t decide if he wanted to make a rock song or a show tune. Actually I would have a hard time calling it a “song” at all.

Rise to Fall, which was more jazz fusion and ran into Fire and Ice, was a bit better, sounding all right for most of it, but I strongly disliked the first saxophone part, which was totally out of place. When the saxophone came back later, it was good, and had more of a jazz sound.

Hung Up, Back in the Blues and Re-Entrance all also ran together, though the first was more of a progressive rock and jazz fusion sound, while the second was more of a blues sound with harmonica, and the third was elevator music.

Back on the second side, Jimmy’s Gospel had a saxophone part that sounded like it belonged on a Barry Manilow record.

Grade

1/5: horrible enough that I couldn’t make it through