When none of us are generous enough to just buy an album (or join his notoriously unwieldy streaming service) there’s been a surge of reinterest as Neil Young makes his dizzyingly dense catalog freshly available on Spotify. Likely coinciding with his greatest exposure in years is the uncovering, by Creep director Patrick Brice, of Hal Ashby’s 1984 concert film Solo Trans, which spans some of Young’s earliest recorded music (“Ohio,” “Helpless”) to then-new masterpiece Trans––my pick for his greatest work, which devoted fans have characterized with words such as “untenable” and “insane”––and controversial rockabilly period, which indeed sounds like a joke from Walk Hard.
Among these performances are skits in the tone of Young’s more-than-a-little-amazing feature film Human Highway, albeit (like most things) not as good as Human Highway. More devoted Ashby auteurists will surely find things to identify as distinctly his; it’s easier to admire the many angles covered in these performances, most ecstatically those sequences shot from the stage looking onto an adoring crowd.
Watch below: