Here's Braden's "introduction" to Neil Young - A Perfect Echo:
NEIL YOUNG: A PERFECT ECHO [1-8]
This is a compilation of soundboard recordings from 1967-2001. The term
soundboard is a bit of a misnomer. By soundboard I mean, basically, not an
audience recording. Some are true soundboards, while others are FM, TV, ALD,
or video-sourced recordings. The recordings were all taken from CDRs or
videos that are circulating in the trading community.
Each track was checked out in Cool Edit with headphones, and may have
had some cleanup done to remove any odd clicks, hiss, or other sound quality
problems. The volume was set on each track so as to have them at similar
volumes. Fades were added at the beginnings and ends of each track, so the
tracks don't segue, for the most part. There are a couple of segues where
successive songs were taken from the same concert, so it still needs to be
burned DAO. Most of the banter between tracks was removed to make room for
more tracks.
There are a total of 115 tracks (109 songs, as 6 get repeated). Some
years were heavy with available recordings (1976 and 1989 come to mind).
I tried to balance the set by not using too many songs from a single show.
The entire 8 discs run in, roughly, chronological order.
Originally, I started making this as just a personal compilation from my
collection. It took about a month to put together, including the planning
of what would be included, the remastering of the tracks, and, finally,
the creation of the artwork. At first, I didn't have a title and was just
going to call it "a soundboard archive." While fixing some soft static in
Natural Beauty, the title came to me, when he sang "I heard a perfect
echo die...". I was going to call it Perfect Echo Die, but Jim Leonard,
our friendly AOTW coordinator, persuaded me to leave off the word "die," so
now we have the title A Perfect Echo.
The intent was to make a nice sampling of soundboard recordings from
throughout his career. It's sort of like an expanded Rock 'n' Roll
Cowboy, with the intent to keep the sound quality higher and more
consistent.
NEIL YOUNG: A PERFECT ECHO [9-10]
This is a new volume of the well known compilation A Perfect Echo
which was compiled by Braden in 2001/2002 and made available in early 2002.
Meanwhile this compilation is considered as one of the basics for every
collection and is well known among all friends of the music of Neil Young.
Now Vol. 5 is available, including Soundboard recordings from the years
1970-1999 (Disc 9) and from 2002-2003 (Disc 10)
Some of the earlier soundboards were "discovered" only recently and
consequently Disc 9 is the result. Disc 10 includes tracks from shows which
took place after the original Perfect Echo was finished.
Meanwhile even more shows are available in SBD quality (Bonnaroo 2003...),
so let's hope for another volume in the future.