It simply doesn't get much better than this. 'Live Rust' presents one of the three greatest male rock artists of all time (Dylan and Springsteen being the two others) and his estimable backup band, Crazy Horse, in all of their full raging and tender glory on what was probably their best tour ever. The set sequencing is perfect and builds to a raging finish --how can you top ending your set with the triumverate of "Like a Hurricane", "Hey Hey, My My (Into the Black)", and "Tonight's the Night" ? The acoustic set comprises all phases of Neil's career up to that point, including early standouts such as "Sugar Mountain" and "I am a Child". The album, in fact, works just about as well as 'Decade' in being a comprehensive 1970's career summation and shows why many critics picked Neil at the end of that decade as its greatest rock 'n roller --- few artists can sound equally as comfortable going from acoustic folk to hard rock and a punk/grunge sound and back again. He would temporarily lose his footing in the 1980's before 1989's excellent 'Freedom' album put him back on the right path, but 'Live Rust' captures Neil Young at what may remain his all-time career peak as a singer and songwriter.

Now, the question remains: why have so many of rock 'n roll's greatest live performers --- Springsteen, the Who, and U2, just to name three as a start --- yet to put out a definitive commercially-released live album that's as good as the bootlegs ? If Neil can do it, these other guys can as well.

I would argue this is Neil's best live album. It starts out with Neil on 12 string guitar and harmonica doing his classics 'Sugar Mountain', 'Comes A Time', and then 'I Am A Child' (in my view his best versions of these songs). Neil then moves to his piano for 'After the Gold Rush' and onto some of his best rock masterpieces, doing songs like 'Powderfinger' and 'Cortez the Killer', again my favourite versions of these songs. He also does other classics such as 'Cinnamon Girl', 'Like A Hurricane', and 'Hey Hey My My'. Apparently some of these tracks, especially 'Cortez' are edited quite a bit from their original LP versions, but personally I don't believe you could ever complain of their quality - they are truly amazing. The guitar work is some of Neil and Crazy Horse's best, the sound and music quality considerably better than his 'Weld' live 2CD album. The DVD is also excellent (I own both), and is a true classic. You can't know Neil until you've heard this.

Imagine, if you will, that Capitol Records chose years ago to put out the Beatles' "White Album" on compact disk when the format was in its infancy, and for whatever reason decided not to invest the funds to put out a double CD, instead choosing to cram the entire thing onto one CD, and advertising it as a "specially low-priced single disk." But in doing so, they found that the whole thing wouldn't fit onto a standard disk, so they hacked about a minute or so out of "Revolution #9" (thinking nobody would notice), eliminated or shortened the silence between songs (if any), and nickel-and-diming the album until it fit just under the time limitations of a single disk. Then pretend that Beatles fans were too blinded by their fanaticism for the album to objectively criticize, let alone realize, the absolute horror of this corporate hatchet job. If this fictitious story sounds too weird for you, then now you know how I feel seeing five-star review after review here, when Warner-Reprise has performed the ultimate sin right under all our noses.

I only recently started amassing a CD collection of Neil, preferring to stick to the vinyl. I figured there will eventually be a remaster job of these albums, although with Neil you never know, and I could wait until then. But I broke down and went ahead and bought "Live Rust" on CD, which is one of my absolute top 10 favorite albums of all time. Knowing the guitar majesty of "Cortez the Killer" on this album better than I know my own date of birth, and having heard it countless times note-for-note, I immediately fast-forwarded to that track and waited for my world to be sonically blown to bits by the digital clarity of the CD, which happened indeed. For about four minutes.

And then I stopped cold. I stared out the window. I was frozen, playing air guitar to notes that were no longer coming out of the speaker, singing guitar parts in my head that weren't happening. "Am I getting that progressed into Alzheimer's already?" I thought, or is this some sort of a defective joke? Well, my Neil fan faithful, I'm here to tell you: the actual track of "Cortez" is approximately a minute and a half shorter than not only the vinyl version, but a minute and a half shorter than THE TIME GUARANTEED TO ME ON THE CD INSERT by good ol' Warner-Reprise. And where did this extra 90 seconds come from? well, it was right there in the LEAD GUITAR parts of the song, right prior to the "hate was just a legend" lyric. They have AXED a huge section of Neil's guitar lead, digitized it out to save space, and done God-knows-what to the rest of the album to give us a low, low price.

I frantically fast-forwarded the track to the end and compared the ending times on my CD player to the one on the CD cover. I was right. And I was disgusted. Then I started REALLY losing it: who was responsible for this? And why in the living name of God could any self-respecting Neil fan put up with the absolute desecration of one of the greatest recorded versions of one of his most jaw-droppingly gnarly songs?

I for one took the CD back. It took me a while to explain to the clerk why, but he chalked it up to a bad mistake on WB's part. Personally, I think their strange urgency in reissuing four of his least-selling albums "remastered with the original cover art" on CD is unusually nice, but I would much rather have a full-blown remastered version of "Live Rust" than anything else in his catalog. Especially now that I know about this hatchet job that sits on the shelf indefinitely, with no plans to improve on it. And Reprise, while you're at the task of putting that 90 seconds of guitar bliss back into "Cortez" that you so thoughtfully took out, go ahead and put out some other songs from that tour that weren't on the original CD to restore my faith in corporate America, because this is more of a disgrace than Watergate, "read my lips", and Monica's dress put together. Get the President on the horn.

Neil Young's first ever double live album Live Rust was released in November of 1979.
This live album was recorded pretty much on October 22, 1978, at the Cow Palace in San Francisco(at the same time his film The Rust Never Sleeps was made).
Stragely enough, alot of this album had been recorded on the same tour and appeared as The Rust Never Sleeps released a few months earlier in July of 1979.
Live Rust repeats four of that album's best tracks(My My Hey Hey, Powderfinger, Sedan Delivery and Hey Hey My My) and are done better here than on its predecessor.
Many critics whined that Young was releasing yet another rehash of older songs when he had released the 3 record set career retrospective Decade in 1977.
This 74 minute plus album is a good somewhat live overview of what Neil was about from the acoustic gentleness of songs like Sugar Mountain, The Needle and the Damage Done and After the Gold Rush to the hard rock of Cinnamon Girl, Like a Hurricane and Tonight's the Night.
Also, this album contains the best version of The Loner I ever heard and is it me or does Sedan Delivery sound like a song AC/DC could pull off at that time(all I can see is Angus Young running on that stage to that riff).
Crazy Horse was a great backing band for Neil and they helped Neil rock out in a way he hadn't for awhile.
This album was a hit upon release hitting the US Top 20 and giving Neil another Platinum platter.
HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!

Neil Young's LIVE RUST is actually better than RUST NEVER SLEEPS because it includes songs from his entire career up to that point, including four songs from the prior album. Some critics downgraded this album on the grounds that he was simply recycling old favorites and repeating his newer songs, but their kids should be punished for their parents' sins in school with healthy doses of all-day Saturday detention, because this album is great. Two of the songs from RUST NEVER SLEEPS ("My My, Hey Hey (Out Of The Blue) and "Hey Hey, My My (Into The Black)") and the version here of "The Needle And The Damage Done" (better than the slightly soft-edged HARVEST version), along with much of TONIGHT'S THE NIGHT and the Lynyrd Skynyrd anti-drug songs "The Needle And The Spoon" and "That Smell", have inspired me to look at a picture of my favorite female celebrity as a motivation to be cautious in any situation conducive to overindulgence and/or dangerous behavior. Overall, this album is a must-have for any Neil Young collection, and along with EVERYBODY KNOWS THIS IS NOWHERE, AFTER THE GOLD RUSH, TONIGHT'S THE NIGHT, ZUMA, RUST NEVER SLEEPS, and several Edgar and Johnny Winter albums, proves that with a little effort, handicaps (Neil Young has epilepsy) can be overcome.