Neil Young & Crazy Horse — “Buffalo Campaigner,” Recorded live at Memorial Auditorium, Buffalo, New York, February 16, 1991
DISC ONE (69:01): The Star-Spangled Banner (Opening), Hey Hey, My My (Into The Black), Crime In The City, Blowin’ In The Wind, Love to Burn, Cinnamon Girl, Mansion On The Hill, F*!#in Up, Cortez The Killer, Powderfinger
DISC TWO (65:07): Love And Only Love, Rockin’ In The Free World, Encore, Campaigner, Welfare Mothers, Like a Hurricane SOUNDCHECK BEFORE THE CONCERT: Gone Dead Train, Love To Burn, Guitar Riffs, Country Home, Over and Over.
The humming you heard in your head when Neil Young and Crazy Horse embarked on their 1991 tour in support of “Ragged Glory” could be attributable to a few things: Neil and the Horse plugging into their massive Marshall stacks; Neil and the Horse jamming at full volume through those behemoth amps; or the tinitus-inducing blown eardrums that lingered, some fans swore, for months and years afterward.
But there was also the buzz beforehand, when Young announced that he would once again be taking his trusty Crazy Horse on the road, and also bringing a pair of younger, decibel-loving acts with him to warm up the audience’s ears (or scorch them): the roots-punk swashbucklers Social Distortion, and the alternative post-punk pioneers Sonic Youth. Neil chose wisely. Both the “Ragged Glory” album and tour were meant to be monuments to the glory (ragged and otherwise) of noise, feedback, distortion, and, at the heart of it all, the wild, woolly spirit of unhinged rock & roll.
If Young’s previous solo album, 1989’s “Freedom,” had been a harbinger that Neil (after spending much of the 1980s exploring new textures and techniques) was in the mood to hark back to his halcyon days of softer, more rustic works like 1972’s “Harvest,” the noisy arrival of “Ragged Glory” in 1990 was a tempest that connected his electrical and creative circuits back to the majestic sonic mansions previously found on 1969’s “Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere” and 1975’s “Zuma.”
Reportedly, all but one of Young’s 50-plus shows for “Ragged Glory” were recorded for posterity, and presumably, for the double live album, “Weld,” that followed a year later (along with a bonus disc, called ‘Arc,” which consisted of an album’s length collage of feedback and rolling waves of distortion and guitar sustain; never let it be said that Neil Young does anything half-assed).
The dedication to documenting Young and Crazy Horse in all of their “Ragged Glory” live and on the road comes as great news for fans of this period. Beginning with “Freedom” from the previous year, it’s an era that revitalized and re-energized the singer-songwriter, and renewed Young’s sense of mission and purpose. “Buffalo Campaigner,” therefore, is a huge, satiating treat for fans famished for a high quality recording of this tour; appetizer, dinner, and dessert rolled into one sitting.
Out of the slew of recent unofficially released Young live recordings and titles that have hit the collector’s market over the past few months – a number of which likely originally began life as Wolfgang’s Vault website downloads – “Buffalo Campaigner” (whose subtitle on the back reads “Weld Outtakes”) is surely one of the best and most essential.
Issued on factory pressed silver discs by a no-name mystery label (the only identifier here is the catalog number: NYCH-21691, with the acronym letters being self-evident), this powerhouse release documenting a February 16, 1991 show at Memorial Auditorium in Buffalo, New York, looks as good as it sounds (and by good I mean great).
Besides the professionally screened picture disc art, the release includes full-color front, inlay, and back cover artwork featuring era-correct photographs and a track list typeset that makes it virtually indistinguishable from the official “Weld” release from which it springs. But this dressing is all really just the proverbial icing on a many layered cake made of meat, heat, muscle, heart, blood, guts, and precious little fat.
“Buffalo Campaigner” presents us with a magnificent stereo soundboard recording of the complete show, featuring a balanced, vividly clear mix that listeners will immediately associate with Young’s classic live albums: Young’s and Frank Sampedro’s electric guitars crunch and crash; the crackle of feedback and amplifier hum echoes at the edges; the meaty rhythm section of bassist Billy Talbot and drummer Ralph Molina drives the locomotive along the tracks; and Neil’s keening vocal howls in the maelstrom; the head and heart of the beast.
Also included as a bonus on disc two is a five-track, pre-show soundcheck, recorded in the same superb quality, that includes a Crazy Horse song sans Young, “Gone Dead Train,” and two songs from “Ragged Glory” not performed that night: “Country Home” and “Over and Over.” While not essential to the quality of this release, the bonus cuts make for a nice addendum for completists and the curious. Overall, on its own and as an unofficial companion piece to “Weld,” “Buffalo Campaigner” succeeds and beautifully.
The show opens with a recording by one of Neil’s peers and idols, Jimi Hendrix, whose war-torn and iconic recording of “The Star Spangled Banner” sets the stage for the raw, soul-baring personal and political anthems to come (with Young, it’s always a blurry, bleary blend of the two).
“Hey Hey, My My (Into The Black)” kicks things off (in a video of this show, Neil is seen wearing an Elvis Presley-emblazoned T-shirt while he sings the line “The King is gone / But he’s not forgotten”). And before long, a majestic reading of Bob Dylan’s ‘Blowin’ In The Wind” hits with the kind of wallop to one’s humanity and consciousness that the lyrics call for. The backdrop to this concert and tour at the time, of course, was the U.S.’s involvement in the 1991 Persian Gulf War (as well as who knows how many other covert military operations), so the timing and potency of the material is at a premium.
Here, as he did two decades earlier with Richard Nixon, Young namechecks then-President George H.W. Bush on “Campaigner,” and offers implicit forgiveness by claiming that “even George Bush has got soul.” (Alas, that sentiment and gesture was and is, for some of us familiar with the Bush Administration’s hawkish polices on a number of fronts, unconvincing at best).
Speaking of old men with (or without) soul, there is no “Old Man” or “Heart of Gold” anywhere to be found on this tour – leave it to Young to ditch some of his biggest hits and best-loved songs. But most of the other big, cobweb-blasting classics are here: the ever-questing runaway “Cinnamon Girl”; the gorgeously slow, methodically building blaze of “Cortez The Killer”; “Like a Hurricane,” brought to roaring life and wrought to epic proportions; the noble, tragically brave “Powderfinger.”
The four “Ragged Glory” tracks Neil and Crazy Horse toss into their blistering blender – “F*!#in’ Up!”; “Love To Burn”; “Love and Only Love”; and “Mansion On The Hill” – mix well with the sustained feeling and mood of ferocious freedom on display. A searing, scathing “Rockin’ In The Free World” closes the set pre-encore set as a devastatingly pointed, perfect distillation of one of Young’s most enduring subjects as a songwriter: the scarred, lost, and lonely souls who struggle to survive amid a violently cruel or callously indifferent world.
It can never really be a free world that we live (or rock) in, as long as heartlessness and a lack of humanity exists, some of Neil’s best and most heart-wrenching songs seem to say. We are either blind or kidding ourselves, or we simply don’t want to hear the truth. Maybe finally, that’s why Neil and Crazy Horse keep turning the sound up and up and higher still. On “Buffalo Campaigner,” they reach for a mighty volume that’s impossible to ignore.
