Neil Young was not kidding when he said he was going to start releasing archival material at a much faster rate this year. Just weeks after the release of the 10-disc set Archives Volume II 1972-1976 and the live album/film Return to Greendale, he has announced that “Way Down in the Rust Bucket”, a 1990 Crazy Horse club gig, will come out on February 26th as a film and double album. The show took place November 13th, 1990 in front of 800 lucky fans at the Catalyst in Santa Cruz, California, two months after the release of “Ragged Glory” and shortly before the start of a long arena tour with Sonic Youth and Social Distortion.
Recorded on November 13th 1990 in Santa Cruz, CA, where the band were rehearsing for their upcoming Weld tour, Neil Young and Crazy Horse played a club show at The Catalyst which is now released here for the first time. The show comprised three different sets along with a 12 minute encore of Cortez The Killer and all 3 sets including that encore are brought together here in over 2 hours of music.
The 20-song set ran more than three hours and is noted for being the first time Young ever played “Danger Bird,” a track from 1975’s “Zuma”, onstage. He also performed live for the first time six Ragged Glory songs – “Love to Burn,” “Farmer John,” “Over and Over,” “Fuckin’ Up,” “Mansion on the Hill” and “Love and Only Love” – and another obscurity, Re-ac-tor’s “Surfer Joe and Moe the Sleaze.”
Way Down in the Rust Bucket will be released as both a two-CD and four-LP set, with a Deluxe Edition that adds the video of that performance on DVD. The film was directed by Young using his Bernard Shakey pseudonym and contains a 13-minute performance of “Cowgirl in the Sand” that’s not available on the CD or vinyl versions.
You can check out a preview video of “Country Home” on the Neil Young Archives. “This show is one of my all-time Crazy Horse favourites,” Young wrote. “More songs will be added here before the official release. ”Way Down in the Rust Bucket” is the first in a long list of archival releases that Young is planning for 2021. There are no release dates at this point, but he’s plotting a third Archive Series box set, the 2019 Promise of the Real live album “Noise and Flowers”, the Eighties rarities collection “Road of Plenty”, and an extensive Bootleg Series that will spotlight fan-favourite shows like Carnegie Hall 1970, the Rainbow Theater 1973, and the Bottom Line 1974. Young hasn’t released a new album since 2019’s Colorado, but he recently said that new material is coming. “I have started a new album,” he wrote in response to a fan letter last month. “It’s solo. I’ve been waiting a long time.”
Way Down in the Rust Bucket—which is #11.5 in Neil Young’s Performance Series—is available in a number of variations. A numbered deluxe edition box set contains a DVD of the electrifying live concert—directed by Bernard Shakey and produced and directed for Shakey Pictures by LA Johnson—alongside four LPs and two CDs. The DVD contains one additional performance of “Cowgirl In The Sand” (13 minutes’ worth!), which does not appear on the vinyl or CD editions. The other versions released include a 4LP vinyl box set, a 2CD set and the DVD. Purchasers of Way Down in the Rust Bucket on CD or LP from the Greedy Hand Store
Recorded on November 13th 1990 in Santa Cruz, CA, where the band were rehearsing for their upcoming Weld tour, Neil Young and Crazy Horse played a club show at The Catalyst which is now released here for the first time.
The show comprised three different sets along with a 12 minute encore of Cortez The Killer and all 3 sets including that encore are brought together here in over 2 hours of music.What It Is: Two months after Neil Young & Crazy Horse released their excellent “Ragged Glory” album in September 1990, they played a bar in Santa Cruz, Calif. For three hours and three sets, they tore through a career-spanning show.
What’s on It: Ragged Glory songs like “Over and Over” and “Love and Only Love” are here, but so are “Cinnamon Girl,” “Like a Hurricane” and “Cortez the Killer.” The set is filled with raw, sprawling versions of old and new cuts, some making their live debut.
Best Song You Know: This is a previously unreleased record from Young’s archives, so you haven’t heard any of these particular versions before. But the set includes some of his greatest songs played by his greatest backing band during one of their best eras.
Best Song You Don’t Know: “Country Home” opened the original Ragged Glory album, and it was the first song performed at the Catalyst on November. 13th, 1990. There’s no slow build for Young and the band: They start strong and don’t let up at all.
A couple months after Neil Young & Crazy Horse released their great 1990 album “Ragged Glory“, they hopped onstage at a small bar in Santa Cruz, Calif., and played songs from the record for the first time in front of an audience. The nearly two-and-a-half-hour performance includes older classics like “Cortez the Killer” and “Like a Hurricane,” but epic run-throughs of Glory cuts “Over and Over” and “Love and Only Love” fuel this live album, one of Young’s best concert documents.
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