Review of Neil Young And Crazy Horse: Rust Never Sleeps

Introduction

My father is a big Neil Young fan, he has been for years, and has a large collection of LPs and CDs spanning Young`s career. Personally, I`m not so keen on Neil Young, a view which probably stems from the artist`s inconsistency, and that my dad subjected me to some of his less acclaimed work when I was younger...

Young`s career has spanned five decades, including stints with Buffalo Springfield, Crosby Stills & Nash, before turning solo. His varied repertoire includes folk, folk-rock, grunge and rock and roll amongst others.

This DVD features a recording from the Rust Never Sleeps tour, filmed in 1978 and widely acclaimed as a classic live concert.

Video

The video comes in 4:3 full-frame and is atrocious, akin to home video footage at best, unfortunately, this is clearly a case of the source material being of very low quality.

Visually, like many other concerts, the show features Young and the band on stage performing, and isn`t earth-shatteringly exciting.

Audio

The soundtrack comes in a choice of Dolby Digital 5.1, DTS 5.1 and Dolby Digital 2.0. I tried all three, and the Dolby Digital 2.0 is true to the CD version of the concert, but obviously much flatter. Both multi-channel soundtracks are quite good, and although there is a bit more depth on the DTS track, I couldn`t really decide whether I preferred it over the Dolby Digital 5.1 track, which is a little less boomy. Both however reproduce Young`s wonderful voice well.

The DVD concert runs for two hours, but the CD version is just 74 minutes in length - although a lot of this is due to elements of the stage show that wouldn`t be appropriate for the CD, some of the songs are longer, featuring longer solos etc.

There are plenty of good tracks on the disc, but I prefer the latter half of the concert, with Powderfinger, Cortex the Killer, Cinnamon Girl and Hey Hey, My My rounding off the show.

Features

Extras consist of a photo gallery, slides and a script.

The disc is packaged in a black Amaray style case.

Conclusion

Despite my reservations, I enjoyed this DVD, and in fact have now gone out and bought the CD version to listen to in my car!

Having said that, the video is not very good at all, and aside from slightly longer versions of some songs and a lot of messing about on stage, the DVD doesn`t really have to offer over the CD album, which I`m much more likely to listen to in the future than I am watch this disc again.

Overall, this is an excellent performance with quite good sound, but the poor video is very disappointing and looks like a bad VHS copy.