Cuttings

NEIL YOUNG & CRAZY HORSE Ragged Glory ( Reprise ) LIKE BOB DYLAN (HIS CLOSEST CREATIVE COUNTERPART) Neil Young likes to keep his audience on its toes. For every critically acclaimed ‘classic’ that is punched out he will usually follow it up with a more relaxed offering, a set of rough sketches that sound equally ingenious as his more full-blown projects such as ‘This Note’s For You’ and last year’s stunning ‘Freedom’. This LP is one of those... a rock ’n’ roll reunion with his old partners Crazy Horse, a band that he has worked with sporadically since the early days of his solo career. 1987’s ‘Life’ (the last record they worked on together) was, for many, a disappointment. It had its moments but somehow the natural flow of the players was bogged down with an ‘environmentally conscious’ concept that weighed heavily upon their collective shoulders. ‘Ragged Glory’ is thankfully free of all inhibitions with both Young and Crazy Horse enjoying each others’ company, content to simply hor

SOLDER OF FORTUNE NEIL YOUNG & CRAZY HORSE  Weld/Arc-Weld  (Reprise/All formats) I GUESS you just really had to be there to fully appreciate the surge of power that has been captured on these two discs, but for those devoted Neil Young & Crazy Horse fans who just couldn't make it to their US tour last spring, 'Weld' manages to give the illusion that you had a front row seat. Live albums are usually hit and miss affairs, a fusing together of all the best bits from a successful tour in the hope that a valid and perhaps valuable document will be the end result. If it charts then that's a bonus! Neil Young & Crazy Horse have had a couple of stabs at making a live album, with varying degrees of success. 'Time Fades Away' from 1973 featured an all-new set of songs never released on record before, a shock tactic that baffled all those who were expecting a run-through of 'Harvest' and 'After The Goldrush' nuggets and a bitter blow