#I think the cd version is a font and not handwriting but I only have my vinyl currently

[kingofmyborrowedheart]

Not enough people are talking about the fact that Stevie Nicks wrote a poem that opens THE TORTURED POETS DEPARTMENT.

[musiconanironingboard]

7 May 2022: Tuscaloosa, Neil Young + Stray Gators. (2019 Reprise release of 1973 recordings)

This copy of Tuscaloosa, My eight billionth Neil Young purchase, “#04″ in his “Archives Performance Series” (that’s fourth based on recording chronology, not release chronology) is actually my third copy of the album. I seem to gravitate toward CD first with Neil Young, and then pick up vinyl copies of things I really like (or that are available for cheap). In 2019 I bought this album on standalone CD, and then earlier this year I started listening to his 2021 box Archives Vol. II (1972-1976), which also includes a copy of Tuscaloosa. One of the many maddening things about collecting Neil Young is he’ll release an archival album, you’ll go buy it, and then a year later he comes out with an Archives box that contains half a dozen things you’ve already bought, but half a dozen other things exclusive to the box, so you end up double-dipping. My brother came up with a good scheme for this: buy Young’s archival standalones on vinyl, and that way when the next Archives set comes out, which are always CD-only, you at least aren’t buying the same format twice.

One of the many refrains among Neil Young collectors is that he seems to have released so many albums containing live material from the early ’70s. It is true that he does, but sometimes one of them will really stand out. For instance, the last three discs of Archives Vol. II that I’ve played are this (1973), a freaky and spooky alternative version of his album Tonight’s the Night (1973), and then one called Roxy: Tonight’s the Night Live (1973). That’s three albums of material from the same year, with a fair amount of overlap. You’d expect a person would get tired of it all, but I don’t. When I can buy a 32-disc set of a single Bob Dylan tour featuring the same songs on every disc, I can certainly handle a small stack of 1973 Neil Young material. However, favorites do rise to the top. The Roxy set, for instance, I think I also own three copies of, but it’s not one I particularly groove to. That alternate Tonight’s the Night I groove to immensely; if that existed on vinyl, I’d be buying it in a second. Tuscaloosa is sort of alternate version of his album Time Fades Away that actually came out in 1973; I haven’t heard Time Fades Away in a while so I can’t tell you off the cuff exactly how they stack up against each other, but even though it hadn’t been that long since I spent time with my standalone CD of Tuscaloosa, during its Archives II stint I enjoyed it so much that I wanted to keep going with it. It never hurts to find a copy of a Neil Young vinyl release for under $20; that’s an instant purchase.

The Stray Gators was one of Young’s many fluctuating bands, and its members will be familiar to anyone who has perused Neil Young credit sheets: Ben Keith, Jack Nitzsche, Tim Drummond, and Johnny Barbata. Everyone but Barbata continued to work with Young periodically well beyond 1973; he had already served as drummer for the Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young group.

Above we have the front and back covers of Tuscaloosa.

Below is the opened gatefold.

Next we see both sides of the first inner sleeve (this is a 2-LP set).

The second inner sleeve also has a nearly blank back, so I’m showing only the front side.

Here is side one’s label. They’re all the same.

There’s only music on the first three sides, and on side four they’ve done an etching, which every record company seems to love to do. It’s hard to capture photos of these, but it’s got the band name and album title in a font that looks like nothing Neil Young would ever use, and then a drawing of a gator. Anyone who knows anything about Neil Young album design would know they should have used his handwriting, and a picture of an alligator is just typical record-company foolishness and looks like it came from someone who knows nothing about the artist.