Neil Young - Road Of Plenty (The Unreleased Songs 1966-2010 & Live Rarities 1969-1984) (2011)

Road Of Plenty is perhaps the most ambitious unofficial Neil Young release in recent memory. It is a comprehensive six disc collection of songs which have never been released (and probably never will). A majority are sourced from excellent live audience recordings (since that is the only source we have for them), but there are other excellent quality studio outtakes included as well.

According to the label: “Putting together this collection helped us to understand why Neil has taken so long to put together his Archives… A complex, interesting, fluid, prolific & also frustrating artist. This amazing compilation is the result of over six months of planning, editing, writing, researching and assembling and was done as a labor of love. Deciding which version was the best certainly took up a lot of time.

“This is one of those things we’ve wanted to do for a long time…and it was a hell of a lot of work putting it all together. Many of these recordings are fantastic, but like any old tapes / archive recordings some songs are subject to wow and flutter, tape damage, or simply in some cases Neil and the band’s performance doesn’t cut it, or at least what they did on the night wasn’t captured that well to tape.

“So putting together a compilation like this is our way of enjoying our favorite moments from a tour… the selections were culled from the highest quality recordings. Some of the selections we have used do too, but the ones we kept in were very much unique, or at least unique in their high quality.”

The first four discs “are limited to unreleased songs. These songs would remain unheard by the public until now (June 2011). Many unreleased songs have only been heard by the select group of people very close to Neil, and are unlikely ever to surface to the world at large. Some songs Neil will write very quickly, just as the muse hits him, perform only once, then reject and abandon, leaving (if we are fortunate enough) a rare live tape to present the performance for posterity.”

Discs five and six collect “together some of the higher quality recordings of Neil Young live, some are recorded with his musician friends (1969 – 1984). Fifteen years of rarities from the once-played to the infrequently-played, all in one place. This set is all about the songs you haven’t heard that often and haven’t grown tired of, culled to create a listening experience. This was an ideal way for us to collect some great Neil Young performances that don’t easily fit on any other compilation….a great selection of high quality recordings.”

One or two tracks are taken from inferior recordings, but since they are the only source available they are included for completeness. Much like the official recordings, these songs reveal the eclectic nature of his composition and tendency to push the boundaries of musical styles. “You can call me erratic,” Young said when asked at the time about his tendency toward musical shape-shifting, “but I’ve been consistent about it, consistently erratic.”