SOUNDTRACK: NEIL YOUNG-Arc (1991).
Arc came with Neil Young’s outstanding live album Weld (and then later on its own). It contains one 35 minute track called “Arc (A Compilation Composition).”
This album was recorded during Neil Young’s tour with Sonic Youth opening (MAN, I wish I had seen that tour).
Because it was 1991 and you couldn’t really look up this kind of information, I just assumed that Neil and Crazy Horse had created some kind of 35 minute jam (even though it doesn’t really sound like all one song, but how closely does one listen to Arc?).
Of course, listening to it now, it is pretty obvious that it’s pieces of shows strung together. (the subtitle also gives it away, although I don’t think that the subtitle was on the actual disc).
Wikipedia talks about an interview that Neil Young gave in which he says he recorded a film in 1987 called Muddy Track
which consisted of the beginnings and endings of various songs from his 1987 European tour. Young placed a video camera on his amplifier during the 1987 tour and recorded the beginnings and endings of various songs, and later edited them down into the film’s soundtrack. “It was the sound of the entire band being sucked into this little limiter, being compressed and fuckin’ distorted to hell,”
And in what makes 100% sense, on this 1991 tour,
Young then showed the video to Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore, who suggested that he record an entire album in a similar manner. However, Arc was not recorded through video camera microphones, as was the case with Muddy Track, but instead was compiled from various professional multi-track recordings made throughout the tour.
So what you get is 35 minutes of noise (not so much feedback, as guitar rumblings that a band might do as a song slowly grinds to a rumbling halt).
You can hear snippets of vocals. In particular, you can hear him singing “Like a Hurricane” and “Love and Only Love” in what definitely sounds like the end of a take–as the band’s instruments ring out.
There’s occasional moments where the rumble is interrupted by a burst of drums from Ralph Molina or you can clearly hear some of Frank “Poncho” Sampedro’s guitar and univox stringman.
There’s a little bit of audience response. At the opening of the disc but especially at the 25 minute mark as a song feedbacks out and the crowd cheers before the band puts out rocking drum-filled cacophonous ending.
At 28 minutes the “song” actually sort of turns into an actual song with Billy Talbot playing a simple four note bass line. But that doesn’t last too long before another ending is tacked on.
The last few minutes has someone singing “No more pain” and then shouting a story that is somewhat inaudible although I think I hear “mom” and “post office.”
This is certainly not something to listen to much. But I found it an interesting sonic experience today. if nothing else, it made me really wish I had seen that 1991 show.
[READ: August 30, 2019] “Beyond the Pale”
I really like Nick Hornby’s music (and book) reviews. He and I don’t share the same taste, but we have a lot of moments that overlap (he’s more traditional while I’m more experimental).
In many ways it is no surprise that he hated Radiohead’s Kid A, but the amount of savagery he does to it is quite astonishing.
He essentially compares it to Lou Reed’s Metal Machine Music and Neil Young’s Arc. Not in content, but in the giant middle finger he feels it is to fans of the band. Although he does admit that Kid A is “nowhere near as teeth-grindingly tedious” as Metal Machine Music.
He feels that the album stems from the idea that fans are interested in “every twist and turn of the band’s career no matter how trivial or pretentious.” Although a valid question is what has earned Radiohead its huge audience. I have not figured that one out myself. (more…)
I Just Read About That... 