one evening in the summer of 1976, neil – along with his longtime producer david briggs and actor dean stockwell -settled in for the night at indigo studios in malibu. the idea was to capture neil doing ten new songs in acoustic solo fashion. recorded in one night, the set list features many songs that would eventually be well known to his fans, but not because of this recording. when it was pitched to the record label, it was dismissed because they felt that it sounded like a bunch of demos, as opposed to a finished product. and to an extent, they have a point. the project was shelved, until now. of the ten tracks, eight would eventually be recorded on a later release. it opens with the first known version of ‘pocahontas’ which, along with ‘ride my llama’, would be included on the ‘rust never sleeps’ album. ‘powderfinger’ is stripped to the bone here, as opposed to the revved up crazy horse version. ‘campaigner’ is offered, otherwise not seeing the light of day until his ‘decade’ compilation. ‘human highway’ was originally pitched as a studio project for csn&y in 1974, recorded here, and eventually wound up on ‘comes a time’. the only two unreleased tracks are ‘hawaii’ and ‘give me strength’, the latter being a song about his breakup with actress carrie snodgrass.

this is pretty raw stuff, complete with studio banter and uneven production. but neil sounds great and for the most part plays these cuts with conviction and depth. so why has it not been released till now? neil has certainly not been shy about slowly releasing items from his vast archives, much like dylan. and the session has been known to young aficionados for a long time. i have never come across an explanation, but i suspect it might have something to do with the recording quality. it is a very good historical marker in his career, but i get the impression from interviews that the three people in the room might have been a little too far gone to make good studio decisions. but being a big neil fan, this is a welcome addition to my archives.