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Neil Young sets a date for Archives V2

By Paul Sinclair

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44

Nine years after volume one was issued Neil Young has set a date for the second volume of the Neil Young Archives.

In response to an enquiring fan in the ‘Letters to the Editor’ section of his NYA Times-Contrarian section of his website, Neil had the following to say:

“May 2019 the NYA V2 CDs and a separate book by Toshi Onuki will be available. Blu Ray is no longer viable for economic reasons. NYA can give you what the blu ray had though, including Hi Res audio. Thanks NY.”

The Archives Vol. 1 1963–1972 was issued on three formats: CD (eight discs) and DVD and blu-ray (10 discs apiece). From Neil’s statement it seems clear that both hi-res/video formats have been scrapped and he will concentrate on his new online archives for audiophile quality audio. Volume 2 is expected to span 1972 through 1982.

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44 thoughts on “Neil Young sets a date for Archives V2”

  1. Pingback: Neil Young and Crazy Horse in the studio to record a new album | superdeluxeedition

  4. I’d really like to have Homegrown before I die. Same with Oceanside/Countryside, Island In The Sun, all the songs from the Time Fades Away tour and all the rest. Come on Neil, I’ve been buying all your stuff since Buffallo Springfield came out. You said you were “re-assembling” most of these. Let us have it. Please!

  5. Lookin forward to this. For me, 72 – 82 is pretty much the cream of the crop. Can’t wait. If it’s mostly stuff I already have, that’s cool. Whatever. I’d love to hear some Ducks, the original version of Tonight’s The Night, the original Trans, a good show from the Time Fades Away tour, and maybe something from the Rolling Zuma Revue in ’75, where they played some Crazy Horse songs that were eventually on Crazy Moon. But whatever Neil puts out is cool. I’m not gonna complain. Glad to see it’s gonna be on CD. I’m not the DVD, Blu-Ray, etc. But that’s cool for everyone else. I can understand that.

  6. It seems that at least the fans who have posted on this site would like two things:

    1) The new Archives to include Blu-Ray Discs – perhaps with less elaborate structural elements. Why? Not everybody has access to unlimited amounts of high-bandwidth internet, and collectors would prefer physical discs. After all, this blog does reach a lot of people who care about “holding the music in their hands” – not just the package…
    2) The first Archives set to be reprinted/repressed.

  10. As much as I want to believe this I will have to join everyone else here. As I am sitting here I can see my Official Release series box sets. The artwork totally doesn’t match. There’s the whole debacle about which copies were numbered. The CD sets for these were made available on Gold CDs for the first but I don’t believe so for the second set. It’s all very random and haphazard.

    The archive volume 1 is really nice but wait a decade and guess what.. Formats change! Ironically BLURAY still exists and is the method for physical release of a high res these days (I don’t expect SACD – he never championed that but rather DVD Audio which he did strongly support. And Warner wasn’t into SACD at the time). So why no bluray?? Yeh there were little video snippets and turntable bits which were really nice touch on Volume 1 Are those THAT expensive to produce? The box cost the price of a kidney…

  11. Neil with his Blu-Ray updates to Archives Vol. One was on the opposite end of the spectrum from McCartney with his Flowers in the Dirt deluxe mess: from one guy who thinks he’s being cool and modern to another who thinks he’s being cool and modern, in two opposite variations of haplessness. Neither of them know what they’re doing when it comes to an orderly reissue program. Neil’s catalog has been preserved in the most slapdash, sometimes foolish ways that it beggars belief. Can’t any of these guys hire an archivist consultant with some sense to manage their important catalogs?

  12. The real gem on the Archive Vol. 1 is the Bluray format. It is the only format where you can navigate inside the track memorabilia at the same time the track is being played (on DVD you can navigate only through the menu option). This gives you the a full perspective of the song, being able in some cases to listen to diferent mixes, spot radios, acces lyrics, photos, memorabilia, etc… It is a pity Neil spends so many years to release Vol. 2. That´s because ( I suppose) all energy he putted on pono (witch he has gave up). Vol 1. just being played as a playlist let the Archive out of contest. The same is going to happen with Archives Vol. 2 and it is going to be worse with the download files. Pity.

  13. Having just bought a near mint NYA V1 Blu Ray box this very week to upgrade from the dvd box, I’m now going to treasure it all the more as we clearly won’t see it’s like again – from any artist I suspect!
    Shame on you Neil, I for one won’t be “subscribing” to the website so it’s a disappointing V2 cd set for me next year.

  14. As much as I love `ole Shakey that statement about Bluray is bollocks.

    There have also been many Archive releases since Vol.1 so expect a lot of repetion with a Vol.2. Vol.1 had it`s fair share.

    Will I buy it?

    Err, yes.

  15. I agree with the comments that no blu ray is a bummer but it is also true that Neil is correct. Have you noticed that most of these endeavors have gone by the wayside (DTS, MVI, Dual Disc, Quad, High-Resolution Pure Audio, etc.)? The biggest issue is demand. In general, consumers for this offering are small in number (basically it is just us). Skipping all the technical stuff (which is huge), it is very expensive to find qualified people and the associated equipment to do it right. And it is VERY time consuming to mix it right. When artists (Pink Floyd, Genesis,etc.) do these projects it is a gift to their fans & is not a money-making endeavor.
    We do not know what the content will be in this box. If it is just some cds we already have & no book it would hard to get excited about it. So I think it would be best to have patience & see what Neils comes up with. Afterall we have only been waiting for a decade.
    J

  17. Well, I thought Neil Young’s original intention was to reissue all his albums with bonus material where applicable. I didn’t buy the ARCHIVES VOL. 1 set because Blu-ray was an untested format, like 3-D is now). Now, it is proven that the format is amazing, but VOL. 1 is well out of print. In a world where some items stay in print for a few weeks and then it is gone, how can we invest in anything? My hope, again, is that Neil just reissues each album or continues the box sets of all his albums without bonus tracks. Let’s face it, Neil is probably just as confused and in the dark as most consumers, and that is why it seems to all fans as if Neil has no attention span. The industry is kicking him in all directions, and that is a shame! Needless to say, I’ll be looking to this site to update us whenever there is good (or bad) news on this front. I really enjoyed the Buffalo Springfield set and consider it a high point of this year’s reissues. The albums are all I’m after, and I would hope that the sound quality will be the highest possible without the chore of actually having to remix each album. Bonus material from each era would be fine, but if this is becoming a daunting task for both the artist and the record company, and they just will *NOT* listen to the fans, as fickle as we can be at times, where is the neutral point? I’m just interested in the albums in proper chronological order; those alone are documents of the time and the place.

    1. Blu Ray was a tested format a decade ago. As to 3D it is also a tested format. I don’t think either argument holds any water.

      As to the set, no blu-Ray, no dice for me. I find the Archive a poor second choice.

  18. With no Amazon doing business with us in Australia, could you imagine what this one will cost if it comes in the tower/ condo box that Vol One did all those years ago

    1. There are other options that will be around the Amazon price.JPC and Importscd to name two of the most obvious.If you aren’t looking at options outside Australian retailers for box sets in particular you are giving your money away.

  19. I agree with the comments that say because Neil says something is going to happen with the Archives doesn’t mean it will happen.As someone who has been hanging on every development of this since Neil first mentioned it in 1979(when it was called Decade 2) it has been a source of frustration but also delight at the quality of what has been released.The biggest problem is Neil wants to tinker indefinitely with every aspect of it.He needs to outsource the whole thing to someone the equivalent of Jeff Rosen (Dylan Bootleg Series).In Joel Bernstein he had someone that could have done that job.Of course he won’t do that.
    A big irony here is that if he had been content with cd release only we could have had the whole thing 25 years ago.By then Joel had assembled all the content up to that date.Neil then spent 15 years waiting for a format that matched his vision.The cost of Volume 1(before the time of mega box sets remember)meant sales were a lot lower than expected and they apparently lost money on the project.So another 10 years to get us to this point.
    I will disagree with some posts in that Archives Volume 1 in Bluray or DVD format is my favourite box set of all time and I have nearly 200 of them.It is an incredible multimedia dive into Neil’s music from this period.Cannot be judged on a track listing.The best recommendation I can give is that on 3 occasions I have had friends who are Neil Young fans around for a day going through the Archives.All 3 finished up buying it within a few days.Just as disappointed as anyone else that the Bluray/DVD format is not going to be repeated but that was announced 5 years ago.
    Let’s hope Vol 2 happens next year.By the way Hitchhiker and Roxy Live will both be included.

  20. How is Blu-ray no longer viable for economic reasons? If a physical format for music is more expensive, then the cost is passed on to the consumer, and it’s the consumer’s choice to pay the extra money for one of their favourite recording artists being offered in a special deluxe package. I have NY’s Archive Vol. 1 in Blu-ray, which sounds fantastic, and was hoping Vol. 2 (if it was to ever come out) would be issued the same way. What a disappointment.

    3. It was the cost of authoring all the stuff in the interactive filing cabinets and setting up a video game equivalent operating system that made it expensive to produce.It was not the packaging or putting out music in a Bluray format.

  21. I read the first words from Neil about putting together an archives box in 1988 . We saw how long THAT took to materialize … He’s now like 5 months late in doing a subscription service on his own website . Neil has he attention span of a 6 year old . Like someone else said , I’ll believe it when I see it listed for sale on Amazon .

  22. If Neil had his way this wouldn’t be coming on CD at all, seems like record company meddling.
    Anyway, looking forward to Songs For Judy, Homegrown, Chrome Dreams, Oceanside-Countryside, Dume, Time Fades Away 2 and Odeon-Budokon which all should be on this release. Wonder if Roxy Tonight’s The Night Live and Hitchhiker will be included.

  23. Wow, this is disappointing! I have been looking forward to V2 ever since V1 was released. Remember Pono? That was Neil’s answer to the digital downloads in hi-res format to compete with iPods and other MP3 players. I almost got sucked into buying a Pono player at triple the cost of the iPod classic a few years ago, and am glad I didn’t bite. While I do support hi-res digital downloads, I also prefer to have the option to purchase my digital versions in hi-res on physical media such as Blu-Ray. V1 was packaged well and sounds great on Blu-Ray. I’ve never downloaded anything from NYA, so I’m not sure if I want to for this set. I’m sure it will be expensive and I would end up burning the files to Blu-Rays anyway to archive them. Not sure what this accomplishes, at least for me, in the long run.

  24. The first one was a complete rip off and basically a glorified hits box set. The packaging seemed to be where all the cost came from because the content included that was new could have been released on a two disc set. Since no track listing is provided for the set yet I’m expecting more of the same.

    Few artists rip off his fans more for product than Neil, I say that with love for his work, however, its true none the less with what his vinyl cost until recently, etc. Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin round out the top three.

    1. Christine I don’t understand why the first box was a rip off. There is a wealth of unreleased / diff. mixes songs etc. Plus all the original artwork / notes / pictures. This was a treasure for us fans. No box in history took that route and I doubt it a future box will ever come close to this beauty.

    2. You misunderstand what the Archives was/is all about.Neil said from the start that it would include “everything” and that meant all released stuff as well as large amounts of unreleased material.What was frustrating in Volume 1 was that he deliberately excluded one track from each of the key albums so it wouldn’t be complete(The Losing End from Everybody Knows and Out On The Weekend from Harvest).Now that was cynical exploitation of his fans who were paying big money for the box.Also not having the electric CSNY Southern Man from 4 Way Street was a bad decision.
      I’m guessing Volume 2 will include large amounts of the albums rereleased last year on the Original Album Series Volumes 5-12 as well as Hitchhiker and Roxy Live.Unreleased live stuff should be Time Fades Away 2,Songs For Judy,Odeon/Budokan and Boarding House.Chrome Dreams,Homegrown,Oceanside Countryside and Dume should form the basis for the unreleased studio material although hard to see them releasing it in the album structure as a number of tracks from the first 2 were on Hitchhiker in those versions.
      I should know better than to get excited about this after 40 years of following this soap opera.

    3. Live albums from V1 were released both before,during,and after the release of V1. It’s already the same with V2 (Hitchhicker, Roxy),but definitely NOT all the box

    1. Absolutely seconded! Andy Partridge’s handling of the XTC catalogue on Blu Ray has been exceptional. Neil .. have your people talk to Andy’s people.

    1. @Marco, agree. But if it does happen I hope it won’t include any of the material from last two studio CD box sets or single live CDs, that we have already bought from that era. That first volume of Archives was a mess on that front IMHO.

    2. Hear, hear, Marco. Neil Young cannot be trusted to act on anything that he says. I love his music, and the first NYA Blu-Ray box was, at the time, the best-sounding collection of music I had ever heard. And the online archives is terrific. But I wouldn’t believe Neil if he told me to bet on tomorrow’s sunrise. He just does whatever, whenever, doesn’t care whose hopes (Richie Furay) or bank accounts (Lionel Trains) are burned in the process. And then there was all the downloads he was going to give to NYA box owners using Java. That lasted about a week. With the progress he is making now at the NYA site why bother with CDs, or even calling the additions a ‘volume’? Why not just do it all at the site, adding new songs weekly, and charging for the subscription? As much as we like a tangible set, if the music contained by it is online at a higher resolution for free, what is the motive to buy CDs?

      1. To be fair, he never promised any particular volume of additional downloads with the Blu-rays, just that he would add them as he found stuff from that era. And after ten or so finds, I guess he didn’t find any more.

        Except for Live At The Cellar Door, which WAS from that era, but which he then proceeded to sell separately. So that was a bit of a slap in the face there.

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