Neil Young : Live At Canterbury House 1968 : Review
Forty years after its initial recording, ‘Sugar Mountain – Live At Canterbury House 1968’ gets an official release. The performance achieved notoriety because of the single version of “Sugar Mountain” which appeared first as a B-Side to the 1970 single, “The Loner.” It reappeared as a B-Side to “Cinnamon Girl” in 1970 and then on the double disc greatest hits ‘Decade.’ Surviving as a bootleg for years, this album presents the entire concert with the omnipresent stage banter by Neil Young.
The performances throughout this concert are jaw-droppingly earnest and endearing. This set seems a lot more intimate than the previously reissued “Massey Hall” recording. It has been written that Neil had to be coaxed out of his hotel bed to perform that night. His stage dialog is an indication of his nervousness, as he rambles on about everything from working in a bookstore to an impromptu mystery music quiz surrounding “Classical Gas.”
Young’s work with Buffalo Springfield is well represented; he performs “Mr. Soul,” “Expecting To Fly,” “Broken Arrow” and gives “Nowadays Clancy Can’t Even Sing” a goose bump-inducing read. The majority of the performance is dedicated to material that would later appear on his S/T debut and subsequent releases such as ‘After The Gold Rush’ (Birds). ‘Neil Young – Live At Canterbury House’ depicts a young artist at the precipice of greatness and is definitely worth a listen.
