Neil Young and Crazy Horse
Chicago Auditorium
Chicago, IL
November 15, 1976
Late Show
Soundboard Upgrade via JEMS

Lineage: lowest-generation origin cassette > Nakamichi CR-7A azimuth-adjusted playback > Sound Devices USBPre2 > Audacity 2.0 (24/96 capture to .wav) > iZotope RX6 and Ozone 6 mastering > iZotope MBIT+ resample and dither to 16/44.1 > Audacity > TLH > FLAC


01 Heart of Gold
02 The Old Laughing Lady
03 Journey Through the Past
04 Too Far Gone
05 Give Me Strength
06 The Needle and the Damage Done
07 A Man Needs a Maid
08 Tell Me Why
09 Sugar Mountain
10 Country Home
11 Don't Cry No Tears
12 Peace of Mind
13 Lotta Love
14 Like a Hurricane
15 After the Gold Rush
16 Are You Ready for the Country?

Neil Young - vocals, guitar, keyboards, banjo, harmonica
Frank Sampedro - guitar, keyboards, vocals
Billy Talbot - bass, vocals
Ralph Molina - drums, vocals


After a year of constant posting, it's time to say thanks to all of you, and what a way to do this.

This year that is almost at an end, we had a hell of a time sharing gems with all of you; some of those were upgrades to common shows and others were absolutely uncirculated.

Today, we're going to share what we expect to be the final and absolute upgrade of this beautiful concert.

But before going into the details, I’d like to say something.

I'm sure that, like myself, most of you take these days to reflect on everything done through the year 2017. Well, we, the extended JEMS team, certainly do too.

And that's why we are posting this show at this very moment. We want to say thank you to all of you for your continuous support, especially to those who entrusted their tapes to our archives, as well as to those who encouraged us every time, to those who helped us with shows we didn't know about or artists where we didn't have a clue or weren't familiar with.

2017 passed by really fast, but what we did, believe us, we are really proud, because this passion we all share, like music archivists, listeners, fans or even just casual ones,is what unites us, it is what makes this great site where we choose to share, so special. Once again, thank you to all of you.

And now, about this recording. I’m sure this is one of those Neil Young recordings that all of you are familiar with, but this marks the first time this specific source has been shared. During all those years there has always been the same underlying version of this concert, but always from a bootleg release, never a version with known generation, let alone a source with known lineage to the master.

But that changes now. BK of JEMS explains:

“This cassette comes from the collection of our longtime friend and ally SS, and given everything we know about the provenance of this famous and fabulous recording and the person from which SS received it, we strongly believe this cassette is the point of origin for every known version of the show. Meaning, all copies in circulation go back to this tape. It is ground zero. What we do not know for sure is if it is THE actual soundboard master. My assumption is that this is a first-generation tape made off either a cassette or reel master. Regardless, I believe it to be the best known version of the recording and the first with a lineage back to analog source with no digital tape or CD generation in-between.”

Firstly, this version, although it had several of the noises and minor sonic defects also present in the bootleg releases, unlike those, in this version they are barely perceptible, able to be heard only if you pay full attention or if you are fully interested in those details, either because you are someone interested in those type of issues or because you're planning to fix them yourself.

In my opinion, sonically this transfer sounds much warmer, with more clarity both in the vocals as much as in the sound of the guitar. It feels more natural, unlike the bootleg releases that surely, at some point, had some kind of noise reduction. Here the mastering has no residue of such a process.

And although, honestly, I am a dedicated uploader here on DIME, this time I felt the need to require the help of a well-known member of this community, kneesfudd, who kindly agreed to help me to fix a number of problems that, frankly, beyond the extent of my abilities. Thanks kneesfudd for lending a hand.

I am very happy to know that this recording is finally getting a release worthy of its quality. Samples provided.

As always, I thank the JEMS team for their eternal confidence in me (and those who support me) in releasing recordings to the public. Huge thanks as well to SS for loaning BK his cassette source and blessing its dissemination.

If you, like me, are grateful to this, do not hesitate to show your gratitude in the comments, I know that this recording will be appreciated by all of you.

And last, but not least, we want to wish all of you happy holiday.

frogster