The Comes A Time album must be one of Neil's of which the largest
number of variations are around. Innaresting as well as intriguing,
that's why I'm announcing a survey (see below):


Mike G2CU mentioned Jerry Osborn's column in
>On many LP's named after one of the songs featured, the title tune is the
>1st track on side 1. With this LP, "Comes A Time" is the second track on
>side 1. The song chosen to open the program,so to speak is "Goin Back".
>Do you think that "Goin Back" is the original title of this album? I think
>it's a pretty good one!

I don't think this reasoning holds. Neil is not by any means
consistent in this field. Some albums have the title track as the
first track (TFA, LMYR even AD), or the first and the last (TTN)
quite a lot have it as the second track (EKTIN, ATGR, Harvest, CAT,
S&G, LWW, TNFY even LF), or in a different position (PW, OTB, H&D,
Eldorado, HM, OW, AYP?, SWA), albums with names of no song whatsoever
(Greendale, RNS, MB, ER, LOW, Life, ASnB, R*, Trans, Zuma) and even
albums with titles of songs that are on different albums (JTTP, BA).
So based on this there's no substantiating evidence that the original
title of CAT (the album) would have been Goin' Back.


The reply of Jerry, as mentioned by Mike G2CU, was:
>"Comes A Time" is definitely a substitute moniker, and "Goin Back"
>is an excellent title. Briefly here's what happened during the
>summer of 1978 with this project: Most of this 10 tune collection (
>reprise MSK-2266) are sample copies showing the title as "Comes A
>Time." But, inexplicably, a handful show the title as "Give To The
>Wind," which, as you might know is not a song on this LP or any
>other Neil Young record. Most have a plain white label with very
>little printing, but at least one of these gems exists with a
>commercial orange Reprise label- the same as on "Comes A Time" and
>Neil's other Reprise LPs. No sales of this unique "Give To The Wind"
>pressing are known, But it's value must be at least $ 5000.00!!

Apparently a few GTTWs were sold already before Neil decided to pull
that one, bought the entire stock himself, stored them all at his
ranch and legendarily put a bullet through all the boxes. I don't
think the ones with the regular Reprise label mentioning GTTW are
that rare, you see them regularly on Ebay, and they go for not too
much (anywhere between 50 and 100 bucks I think). I picked up two
(one of them for 15 bucks IIRC), and gave one away again. Or perhaps
Jerry is talking about a promo version with GTTW labels, which could
indeed be very valuable. The WLP of this (as mentioned by Jerry and
in a subsequent message by Michael Jacklitch, to me seems the rarest
of them all. Striking to me is that even both GTTW labeled albums
I've had in my hands have a Comes A Time sleeve. I cannot recall of
ever having seen a GTTW sleeve being mentioned.


Much of the history of CAT and it's first incarnation "Give To The
Wind" can be found on the ecellent Sidestreet Records site
(www.sidestreetrecords.com), which I currently unfortunately cannot
reach; I receive an XML error; I know Jef is in progress of updating
the site, so I guess something's not going exactly as planned).


Actually, a few years ago I'd started a small survey of all the
different versions of GTTW/CAT around. I did so with the two Tony
Parkers on this list (one from Oz, one from NZ), but the survey
stalled in an early stage. So why not do it right now. So, if you own
any or various versions of GTTW and/or CAT on LP (including promo
versions), please do me a favour and dig them up, and send me, of all
different incarnations you own:


- the name of the album mentioned on the sleeve (I think there were
never any "GTTW" sleeves but heck);
- the name of the album mentioned on the LP labels
- the song order (side 1 only) mentioned on the LP label;
- the song order (side 1 only) mentioned on the back cover;
- the song order (side 1 only) actually on the record;
- does the back cover of the sleeve have a big sticker with the song order?
- the full LP ID (both sides) as scratched in the runout groove.
- any other thing you'd like to mention to me (gold promo stamp on
the cover, plain white sleeve, remarkable issues with the inner sleeves, etc).

I'll collect all the responses and make an overview of all different
versions we can find of this beautiful album.

Looking forward to seeing this and being curious what it will deliver!

Joost, I am a child