News Flash: Hell Freezes Over

In case the whole Obama/Clinton thing is getting old, here is a new debate, that in fact, is far more important. Did Neil Young embrace Blu-ray because digital audio is finally good enough to satisfy his musician's keen sensibilities, or did he embrace Blu-ray because he wants to make money selling records?

At a Sun Microsystems Inc. Conference (of all places) in San Francisco, vintage rocker Neil Young announced that he will release his entire music archive on Blu-ray discs (note that S&V entertainment editor Ken Richardson gave you a heads-up on that a couple of months ago). (In case you are wondering, Sun makes the Java software that is the platform underlying Blu-ray, giving it, among other things, its web and interactivity chops). In any case,the first installment, a 10-disc set from Reprise/Warner Bros. Records, will contain everything the rocker recorded from 1963 to 1972. The saga will continue chronologically, and include unreleased songs, handwritten manuscripts, video, and probably a bit of Young's own philosophical outlook. Which brings us to his well-documented hated of digital audio recordings and the CD in particular.

Neil Young Votes for . . . Blu-ray!

Seven years ago, when we launched our coverage of DVD-Audio in the February/March 2001 double issue, we ran an exclusive interview with Neil Young, where the "legendary rocker and CD-hater" sang the praises of the new format.

"There's absolutely no comparison with CD," he said. "DVD-Audio is the best way you can listen to music that you can buy en masse. The mid-level quality of a DVD-Audio disc is where the CD should have been when we went digital. For the last 20 years, I've been forced to put my whole art form through something that's inferior to what I listen to in the studio. DVD-Audio is simply the best format that exists today."

Well, today, Neil has moved further forward. According to Billboard.com, he said the following at the recent Sundance Film Festival, explaining the latest delay in launching his Archives series: "I know it's in technical production now, but it's only coming out on Blu-ray and DVD. There won't be CDs. Technology has caught up to what the concept was in the first place [and] how we're able to present it."

Neil actually gave up on DVD-Audio some time ago, after using it to release Road Rock Vol. 1 and reissue Harvest in surround and a few other titles in stereo. But thankfully, he remains dedicated to the concept of music in high resolution. After all, as he told me in 2001: "Napster sounds bad. MP3 sounds bad. All of that stuff sounds bad. It's a joke that they're worrying about charging for it; no one should ever sell it, it's so bad." —Ken Richardson