Production on Harvest, Neil Young album

Can hardly hear what’s going on on this album - do I remember the LP sounding a lot better? You can hardly hear the weedly little fecker’s singing, and the slide guitar on Alabama is inaudible. Has this by any chance been remastered?

Ooh. Needle and the Damage Done. Super. Let me get my rubber band…

You haven’t been downloading illegal stuff, now have you?

I always thought that album sounded like crap. Like most of his albums. And I like him musically. Kind of.

Harvest is one of those real gems that has tickled my spine “down through the ages” so to speak. I had it on album and now on CD and though the album is long gone so I can’t compare I’d say the CD sounds pretty nice. I’ve “taught” a couple of the songs of that one and am delightfully suprised how well the music travels not just through time but across cultures.

Nope. I am talking about the CD I paid 15 quid for after owning the record for which I paid a similar amount.

My record is buying Rumours on every format it has ever come out on at a total cost of over GBP100. The CD is the only one that has not survived. The 8-track even outlasted the 8-track player.

I hate CDs. But I hate mp3 even more.

Harvest was pants on vinyl too. He must have recorded it up Demis Roussos’s arse or something.

This is surely the kind of dirty little secret one should keep to oneself. No outing, please, Lord Lucan!

There are a number of albums from that period that sound rather muddy…like they were recorded in the bottom of a barrel. For example CSNY’s Deja Vu and the Jefferson Airplane’s Volunteers (Bark and Long John Silver sound the same)…I think it had more to do with the recording style…the “San Francisco sound” of the late 60s and early 70s. I got these on album when they were released and I remember not being thrilled with the sound then.

I think a lot of the stuff must have been recorded live in some hippie’s bedroom with one microphone and a four track.

I only ask because Dylan has come out to say that modern production is rubbish and that recent albums might as well be free (before becoming poster boy for iTunes…)