Lucky Thirteen

Neil Young | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (January 5, 1993)
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Geffen Records
• ASIN: B000000OSM
• Also Available in: Audio CD  |  Audio Cassette
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #109,772 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Track Listings

1. Sample and Hold

2. Transformer Man

3. Depression Blues

4. Get Gone [Live]

5. Don't Take Your Love Away from Me [Live]

6. Once an Angel

7. Where Is the Highway Tonight?

8. Hippie Dream

9. Pressure

10. Around the World

11. Mideast Vacation

12. Ain't It the Truth [Live]

13. This Note's for You [Live]

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

Strange to say, this retrospective of '80s recordings from Neil Young's lamentable stretch with Geffen Records is a must-own for true fans of the man. Though it's riddled with failed experiments in everything from proto-techno to rockabilly to blues-rock (thanks to a few tracks from Young's return-to-Reprise effort, This Note's for You), and offers up the most diluted rock of Young's remarkable career, Lucky 13 is fascinating on its own skewed terms--if for no other reason than it provides a perspective on a brilliant artist struggling to find his footing on alien terrain. The opener sets the scene: Young and Crazy Horse make like Kraftwerk as Young's drastically processed voice robotically intones, "I need a unit to sample and hold." One can imagine the response it and other techno-pop Trans (as in "transgression"?) tracks had on the "Heart of Gold" crowd. From there, Young and various groups ping-pong hither and yon, coming up with mostly head-scratchers in the process. Just look at Lucky 13 as a shortcut through a bad patch for Young, and be prepared for some hairpin curves along the route. --Steven Stolder

Product Description

Originally released in 1993 this album features notable guest artists including Gail Davies, Rufus Thibodeaux, Waylon Jennings and Crazy Horse to name a few. The album is subtitled Excursions Into Alien Territory, Lucky Thirteen is a compilation of material young recorded during the 80's, a time when he was roaming all over the musical map in search of inspiration. Some of the more unusual byways traveled by Young included Gary Numan-flavored electro-pop ('Pressure'), traditional country ('Once An Angel') and rockabilly ('Get Done'). Import only!

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars for avid fans and the insanely curious only, June 21, 2004

By 

Don Schmittdiel "running_man" (Clinton Twp., MI) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Lucky Thirteen (Audio CD)

Neil Young put together this compilation album in 1993 as a buy-out from Geffen Records. To Neil's credit, he did some manuevering to create a salable product, at least for his own loyal fan base. Unfortunately, the Geffen years were Neil's least prodigious, and some of Neil's choices for this project are wide open for second-guessers like me and you.

The Geffen years included Young songs copyrighted between 1982 and 1988, one year shy of the landmark 'Freedom' CD (Geffen must not be living right). 'Lucky Thirteen' opens with two songs from his 1983 release 'Trans', 'Sample and Hold' and 'Transformer Man'. While the extended version of 'Sample and Hold' (originally offered on the European import version of the album) is nice to have, 'Transformer Man' can be found on three other Young discs and two video releases. An unreleased composition from the 'Old Ways' sessions, 'Depression Blues' follows, a nice but unspectacular acoustic track. Two tracks from the officially released 'Old Ways' disc are also included, 'Once An Angel' and 'Where Is the Highway Tonight'. 'Once An Angel' is easily the better track chosen from this collection of acoustic country compositions.

Twice on this CD Neil wisely dips into some live material that wouldn't otherwise see the light of day. The 'Old Ways' tracks are split by two live recordings of Neil and The Shocking Pinks on their 1983 tour. Captured live in Dayton, Young offers two unreleased compositions, the rockabilly 'Get Gone', which fits in well with other retro-rockers from the 'Everybody's Rockin' disc, and 'Don't Take Your Love Away From Me', a pure blues-rock number in the same vein as 'After Berlin' from this same time period.

Unfortunately, the worst is yet to come. In the mid-1980's, Young produced two of his weakest efforts. From 'Landing On Water', released in 1986, we get the synthesizer driven 'Hippie Dream', which ironically lowballs the era and mindset that spawned Young's own career, with 'Wooden Ships' taking an undeserved broadside, and 'Pressure', which sounds like an adrenalin-laced bad Devo imitation. Young barfed on 'Landing On Water' with 'Life', and despite returning Crazy Horse to the studio, Young remained in songwriting misery. 'Around the World' and 'Mideast Vacation' are only mediocre by Young standards.

Numbers 12 and 13 return to the live recording strategy, and work well. Neil's last official production with Geffen was 'This Note's For You', a quality work that signaled Young's return to form. We're caught by two catchy tunes from the road, the first being the unreleased 'Ain't It the Truth', a song Neil first performed with his band The Squires in 1964. It's a nice little rocker with obvious historical interest for Young fans. We also get a live version of the title track from 'This Notes For You', an energetic protest number skewering commercialism, recorded in the World Headquarters for Commercialism, Hollywood, California and ending up on this all-too-commercial disc for entirely commercial reasons.

If you're into creating your own CD's, it's nice to have these unreleased and live recordings to add to other period pieces. For instance, try tacking the live Shocking Pink's tracks onto the end of 'Everybody's Rockin' to fill out that sparse disc. And if you wisely have not slapped good money down for some of Neil's misguided 1980's products ('Old Ways', 'Landing On Water' and 'Life'), here's your chance to possess proof of your wisdom. It's almost comical to compare this 'greatest hits' package with other Neil Young compilations such as 'Decade' or 'Live Rust', but at the same time Young has found ways to fire up the interest of his followers. Lyrics are included in this, one of the strangest compilations you'll ever come across.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars An Odd Collection, April 23, 2000

By 

Brian D. Rubendall (Oakton, VA) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Lucky Thirteen (Audio CD)

Neil Young went nuts in the 1980s, indulging himself in all sorts of weird projects including space rock and rockabilly as well as straight up country and blues albums. The records were for the most part mediocre and this collection purports to collect the "highlights" from them. If you want to hear an example of the problem with Young's genre wanderings, check out "Transformer Man" here from the space rock album "Trans" and its bizarre synthesized vocals. Then check out the same song on the album "Unplugged," sans the technology. You'll be amazed at how pretty the song really is. For all but diehard Young fans, this album suffices in place of his 1980s material. Even so, it is still a very uneven listening experience.

8 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars What was he thinking?, July 25, 2002

By 

P. Nicholas Keppler "rorscach12" (Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Lucky Thirteen (Audio CD)

Many great artists of the nineteen-sixties and seventies waned in the eighties, but how many released work so awful that their record label sued them because of it? By the time Neil Young's tenure with Geffen Records (to whom he signed in the early eighties) was complete, the record label had sued the singer/songwriter for three million dollars for making music "unrepresentative of himself." Listening to Lucky Thirteen, a compilation that collects highlights (and I use the term loosely) from his Geffen years, one can understand Geffen's frustration and disappointment at enduring consistently baffling creative decisions and sub par output from this usually outstanding artist.

Throughout his time at Geffen, Mr. Young bounced from genre to genre, adopting many sounds completely atypical to his characteristic gruffness and solemnity, often sounding utterly ridiculous. His Geffen debut, 1982's Trans, introduced "Neil 2," a peculiar musical entity who sang sci-fi inspired lyrics into a squeaky computer filter over hyperactive, Kraftwerk-ish synthesizers. Lucky Thirteen's Trans tracks, "Sample and Hold" and "Transformer Man," show Mr. Young's compositional skills still intact (The version of "Transformer Man" from his 1993 Unplugged album shows what a well-written song it truly is) but that is difficult to appreciate through the dense coating of blaring electronic effects. After Trans came 1983's Everybody's Rockin', an outrageously silly album a zoot suit clad Mr. Young recorded with a rockabilly ensemble called the Shocking Pills. Thankfully, Lucky Thirteen spares listeners from any tracks from that monstrosity. Next came 1985's Old Ways, a slow, mummbly country album stuffed with stereotypes of the genre. Just look at the song titles of Lucky Thirteen's Old Ways tracks. "Once an Angel." "Where Is the Highway Tonight?" Ugh. Next came 1986's Landing On Water, an album that bored listenors with its conformity to the lowest common denominator of the current new wave movement. One track, however, "Hippie Dream," smartly included on Lucky Thirteen, rages with intense cynicism and grinding guitars reminiscent of Neil 1. There was hope for more of the same when Mr. Young reunited with his on-again-off-again backing band, Crazy Horse on 1987's Life. Unfortunately dated eighties-style production and an obvious lack of creative energy bogged the album down. Life did feature two stand-out tracks, however, the startling, current-event inspired songs, "Mideast Vacation" and "Around the World," both of which are also high points on Lucky Thirteen. The compilations' final song is not from any of Mr. Young's Geffen releases, but the title track from This Note's for You, an 1988 offering that marked his return to his former label, Reprise. Although, his second tenure at Reprise would see a return-to-form, Mr. Young still had one last experiment to get out of his system. For This Note's for You, he teamed-up with a jazz group called The Bluenotes for an album of lumbering blues-rock. The effort was surprisingly pleasing (Make enough seemingly random creative decisions and eventually one has to work out right). The title track features an excellent bluesy rhythm and lyrics that cleverly mock musicians' product-endorsement deals.

After This Note's for You, Mr. Young released 1989's Freedom, his stunning comeback record and went on to a period of creative prosperity that rivaled his classic output of the seventies. Unfortunately, his eighties work comprises a valley as deep as his peaks of the seventies and nineties are high. Lucky Thirteen stands as a decent crash coarse for fans enticed by work from his better days and curious about this peculiar stage in his career, but expect to be more bewildered and disillusioned than impressed. Lucky Thirteen is a thorough display of a great artist at his most outlandish, confusing and downright bad.