The winter of 1983 found Neil Young at the receiving end of legal action by his own label, Geffen, who’d rejected his last studio offering for being too countrified for its own good. Young responded in typically contrary style – rounding up a bunch of crack Nashville sessioneers and heading for the road to deliver hard-nosed honky-tonk and roustabout country at state fairs and halls along the prairie belt.
A Treasure, sewn together from a range of live shows across 1984-85, is by no means pristine, though that only adds to the gloriously raw feel of these fiddle-heavy, open-throated recordings.
There are at least a couple of throwaways, but most of these songs prove that Young was far from the spent force his mid 80s studio output often suggested. Amber Jean and Grey Riders, two of five unreleased tunes here, are terrific, the latter finding him in stampeding form, backed by what passes for a hayseed Crazy Horse.
Meanwhile, Are You Ready For The Country invests his old Harvest staple with some barn-burning licks, hi-steppin’ piano and a heady solo from fiddler Rufus Thibodeaux.
