by Daniel Johnson

Created on: January 30, 2007   Last Updated: May 09, 2007

Jonathan Demme's work documenting Young's 2005 Ryman Auditorium performance is straight-forward and polished much like the music it presents. I'm far from a hardcore Young fan - I have I guess what you'd call the essential discs (Harvest, Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere, After The Gold Rush, Rust Never Sleeps, etc.). have seen him live a few times, but over the years have drifted away from his newer releases because of too many same-sounding songs. A few songs into the show - that complaint melts away. With a large band of ace players (including Emmyloo Harris, Dan Penn, Spooner Oldham, and wife Pegi Young) Neil plays the Prairie Wind album in its entirety then a smattering of crowd pleasing hits (like the title song especially) and it all sounds sweet to these ears. The DVD has some cool extras most notably a clip of Young on The Johnny Cash Show in 1970. Man, they need to release that show in full!

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