Archives

For decades, Neil Young has been working on his "archives" project. There have been a few times that I recall a serious release date was being considered and then of course, the date came and went. Finally, the fall of 2007 was supposed to be the one for "Archives Volume 1" with a list of some of the content being announced in some press releases.

In typical fashion, the release date is now February 2008. This newly revised date may be real. Why did it get pushed back again? Well, one can assume artwork delays, mastering or even late song additions. Certainly Warner Brothers would have preferred to issue a large and expensive box set of Neil's archives during the 4th quarter of the year to capitalize on the holiday shopping season.

The real bummer here is that Neil is releasing a new studio effort this fall entitled "Chrome Dreams II" that will now contain a bonus disc with a song from the upcoming archives project. Hey Neil, you could have pushed your studio album back to winter 2008 and cleaned up the loose ends with your archives project so it could be issued in 2007. How much material is Neil going to leak ahead of time? The 2 archival concert titles issued so far, "Live At The Fillmore East-March 6&7 1970" and "Live At Massey Hall 1971," are now going to be part of the archives box when issued as well as the track that will be on the "Chrome Dreams II" sampler disc. Nice move Neil. Fans love nothing more than having to repurchase material they already own just to get unreleased gems.

And what does this really tell you? That Warner knows sales of "Chrome Dreams II" will most likely be weak, so maybe they can entice or sucker a few fans who are on the fence to spend $15 on the new CD just for a taste of the archives, because after all, most fans at this point want the archives, not another new studio album from their man Neil.

So, in February 2008, me and many other Neil Young fans will be shelling out a lot of money for his long-awaited "Archives Volume I" project - a release that we will have 2 discs + 1 song worth of material from already. Nothing like getting tag-teamed by Neil Young and Warner Brothers.