Fred Neil: Sessions (Capitol)
Pete Johnson, Capitol Records, 1968
EIGHT TRANSCRIPTS of Fred Neil's life rise from a grey-crinkled formica counter, plastic on plastic, half-inch dun highways which had whispered through the antiseptic jaws of a tape recorder. The tapes should have been cigarette butts, empty bottles, shaggy maps, sea-worn pebbles, asphalt, trees, warm creatures, almost anything other than rust-red synthetic stuff coiled in a synthetic shell resting on a synthetic table top. But you cannot replay a pebble or a cigarette and Neil is mortal and never again will be the person he is on this warm cloudy Los Angeles night and might not even exist next week and the plastic ribbons can remember his voice long after he has evolved past this night.
Total word count of piece: 623
