When we received news a little while back that Neil Young’s long-lost Hitchhiker album was finally going to see a release, we assumed that Neil Young must have found time in his busy schedule to make good on his promise of releasing a bunch of old rarities online. Instead, we’ve been given something even better; an online archive that includes all his music, both released and unreleased.
Having shared the title track to the lost Hitchhiker album yesterday, Young decided to go one better and announce his online archive. In a note posted to his website, Young details the contents and aim of the interactive service.
“The NYA Timeline shows when and how the music was made,” the note begins. “Every single, recorded track or album I have produced is represented. It is always current.”
“You can browse though the music I made between today’s date and 1963, when I made my first recording in Canada and it was released as a 45 RPM single. You can zoom in to the timeline and see a particular period in detail, and pull back to view the surrounding years. View all albums currently released and see albums still unreleased and in production just by using the controls to zoom through the years.”
In addition to this, the service also includes a ‘filing cabinet’ which contains “all of the songs in the archive presented chronologically; stored on Info cards with their associated credits, memorabilia, films or videos, press and photographs.” Young also claims that “information is still being added. The NYA is a living document,” and asks for anyone who has information that may be missing from the credits of the site to come forth.
While Neil Young hasn’t stated when exactly the archive will become available, considering the news comes less than a day after the release of the title track to Hitchhiker, it sounds as though Young is moving through things pretty quickly, and it should be here soon.
Check out ‘Hitchhiker’, below.
