As the current Chaplain of Canterbury House, I can offer a little bit of history on this performance.

Canterbury House was then and is now the Episcopal campus ministry at the University of Michigan. In 1968 the Chaplains were the Revs. Dan Burke and Martin Bell, and the student House Manager was Ed Reynolds. These three remarkable persons turned Canterbury House into an innovative coffee house ministry, oriented toward those who were turned off to all things establishment, including main-line churches. The stellar musicians who performed here included Joni Mitchell, Richie Havens, Odetta, Tom Rush, Gordon Lightfoot, the Byrds, and Janis Joplin. Many of these concerts were recorded, and the tapes given to the artists. The venue was intimate, as can clearly be heard on this recording of Neil Young's performance here on Saturday, 9 November 1968. This was his first performance as a solo artist after the breakup of Buffalo Springfield, and indeed this recording includes many of the songs that were hits for the group, including "On The Way Home," "Mr. Soul" and "Broken Arrow." All of the songs on this album, stripped to the bare essentials of voice and guitar, demonstrate the purity and simplicity that has made Neil Young a wonderful songwriter for decades. The dialogue on the recording demonstrates a youthful shyness and a natural ability to connect with his audience.

Canterbury House remains to this day a venue for prophetic music. Our concert series features primarily jazz and experimental idioms. Those of us who were young people in 1968, Neil Young included, "can't be twenty on Sugar Mountain" any more; but it's nice to know Sugar Mountain is still there.

If you are a Neil Young fan my advice is not to hesitate in buying this. Granted it is not as an assured a performance as Massey Hall but as a historical document of one of the most important artists of the 20th Century it is essential. This is Neil Young as a shy unsure 22 year old stepping out of the shadow of Stephen Stills in his first solo concert since the break up with the Buffalo Springfield, It's fantastically intimate with a lot of amusing anecdotes and stories even taking requests at one point. He audibly displays a nervousness in his ability that no release has ever highlighted, it is utterly compelling. The material is taken mostly from his first solo album but includes his best known Springfield tracks (a lot of which were sung by Richie Furay and not Neil) also includes Birds which was re-recorded for After the Goldrush and Sugar Mountain the same version which was included on Decade.

A word of warning....the DVD is a DVD-Audio disc (commonly abbreviated as DVD-A) and is a digital format for delivering very high-fidelity audio content on a DVD. DVD-Audio is not intended to be a video delivery format and should not be confused with video DVDs containing concerts and music videos. In saying this it's actually very good value for money and gives you the same material on 2 different formats. If you don't have a DVD-Audio player then play the CD, as someone who has a DVD-A player I have the CD to enjoy in the car.

I picked up my copy at Best Buy on December 2nd - the sticker price was $19.99, but it rang up for $14.99 - I would have paid the higher price. Like most fans, I was hoping for some video content, but I do appreciate that as an artist Neil respects his fans and his music enough to give the option of a better sounding alternative for free.

If you are a fan, then you already have your copy or it is on your Christmas list.

As to the recording, I was intrigued by the venue, the place in time, and the song selection. A little disappointed with the hiss - it is audible on the first few tracks afterwhich I must just get used to it or I tune it out.

Out of 70 minutes, 16 minutes of it is Neil talking. I am a little mixed on my feelings here - sometimes the less we know the better. Plus he sounded very nervous/shy and in need of the audience acceptance. He even made excuses for his songs being too down. Just not the take-no-prisoners Neil I was expecting. But it was early days for him, and he was out on his own after the breakup of Buffalo Springfiled. In the end, I really didn't learn anything other than Mr. Soul took 5 minutes to write and he once worked in a bookstore for 2 weeks before popping pills and getting fired.

As to the 54 minutes of music, well, it is bare bones - a guitar and a voice, but it works. Certainly a little more instrumentation would have been welcome, but that's not really the point. The point is that we get to hear and unfortunately not see Neil perform some very enduring classic songs at the valley between the peak of Buffalo Springfiled and the peak of Neil Young the solo artist with or without Crazy Horse.

In recent years we've had several new live albums released by Neil Young. All but one of these records has been solo-acoustic. A hardcore fan may go out and buy all of these records, but for us regular joes you might be asking... "Should I be getting any of these live albums? Are they really good or are they just also-rans in Neil's vast collection? Which one is the best?" I'm here to tell you that if you only buy one of the new acoustic live shows from Neil Young, Canterbury House 1968 is the one you need to get.

Much ado is made about the 1971 Massey Hall show which was also released. Granted, that show does present pristine, vital performances of some of Neil's most loved songs, plus the added novelty of hearing Neil perform before an audience who has never heard of "Heart Of Gold" and would rather hear "Broken Arrow" (as Harvest had yet to be released at that time) -- the complete reversal of just about every Neil Young concert since.

But Canterbury House is truly the most notable of these acoustic performances. It's novelty is off the charts, what with it being the first show Neil Young performed after the final breakup of Buffalo Springfield, and for capturing certain material from Buffalo Springfield and Neil Young's oft-overlooked debut record which would be all but stricken from his setlists for the rest of eternity.

More importantly, what we have here is Neil Young at his uttermost youthful, with spry and daring flourishes that can only be born of genuine naiveté. Make no mistake, I mean that in the absolute best way possible. I've never heard a more sincerely candid performance from a major artist. To hear this album is to witness Neil Young exploring this new realm of solo performance and being a solo artist. Neil Young is an artist who would later become infamous for refusing to play the material that the audience wants to hear. But at Canterbury House he literally asks the audience what they want to hear and then plays the request, because that's just how candid and off the cuff this performance is. Listen as Neil chats with the audience like a close friend, describing (in the most intriguing "rap" titled 'Bookstore rap') a bookstore job he had where his drug use made him alternate between completely useless and epically competent. He even queries the audience to make sure there are no cops present before launching into his story... When I say it's a candid show, I mean it's a bloody candid show!

What we have here is, in my mind, the closest thing to a Crazy Horse gig that I've heard Neil Young play solo-acoustically. That may sound weird, but what I mean is that the guitar parts here are at their most raw and fluid. In the midst of tunes like The Last Trip To Tulsa and The Old Laughing Lady, Neil drifts off into tangential territory, absent-mindedly transversing whatever cosmic planes are reachable with a lone acoustic guitar. As time would pass his guitar chops would improve somewhat but they would lose some of their ragged glory, presented here in full force, half-way between stunningly virtuosic and rather rudimentary.

In conclusion... Massey Hall is quite good as well, but if you've been a Neil fan for quite some time, and are already acquainted with records such as 4 Way Street and Live Rust, Canterbury House is the record that will provide you with the most unique and meaningful experience.

There is a school of thought among rock journalists (and rock fans) that Neil Young did the right thing by going solo right after the demise of the Buffalo Springfield instead of forming another group like Stephen Stills did.He was one of the first artists signed to Frank Sinatra's Reprise label.The rest,as they say, is history.There was no such term as a "singer-songwriter" in 1968.Dylan,Freddy Neil,Richie Havens and other songsmiths of the times were still being called "folk singers";Jimmy Webb was writing NOT singing and James Taylor was still an unknown commodity. Enter Neil Young...twenty two years old and armed with only a Martin acoustic guitar. Despite the fact that this recording is over forty years old,the songs hold up.If you know Neil Young,you already know these songs.This is THE birth of a solo career that has kept him and us "forever Young".1969 was just around the corner and Neil was just a few months away of joining the biggest group in the world. Cherish the fact that these recordings are still around for us to savor and enjoy...1968 was truly an eventful year in the history of our planet and this man's music helped dispel some of the darkness.An awesome preservation...and yes,Rassy,he did kinda look like a dark John Davidson in those days.