On why things just aren't the same as they used to be....

Apparently, the early 70s and I are having a wee love affair at the moment, as the vinyls that I got my grubby little hands on yesterday will attest to. The first, a remastered edition of Neil Young's monumental 1971 concert at Massey Hall. The second, a 1972 recording, again remastered, of the unparalleled Nick Drake's Pink Moon album.

Listening to this stuff is like listening to pure magic, or walking through places long ago abandoned that have rooms and decay and wafts of things-that-were and and and.

Neil Young has always sounded like coming home to me, even if I didn't start listening to him until later on in life. And Nick Drake is somehow the same, but a different home, one that instead of actively living in, you visit after being away for a long time. Young is the homestead, Drake is the hearth-of-times-gone-by. Hard to describe, really.

All this to say I had no idea these albums were put out so close in time to one another, as the two have some similarities but ultimately seem to live in totally different realms. But how blessed I am that I can go traipsing through both, and settle down and watch the clouds, making patterns with each that are parts sentimental and fleeting, equally.