Dig This Neil Young Rarity!

Song: Houses
Album: Elyse
Artist: Elyse Weinberg

Sometime back in 1968, the same year he released his debut album, Neil Young hooked up with an old Canadian pal by the name of Elyse Weinberg. Also in Los Angeles recording her first record, the singer employed Young’s signature guitar squeal on the country-folk ballad “Houses.” This song is a total stunner -- emotionally raw and savagely honest. In a lot of ways its gritty, stripped-down vibe predates Young’s rustic work on After the Gold Rush and Harvest.

The rest of Weinberg's debut -- an eclectic collection of Dylan-inspired folk-rock, Baroque pop and sitar-tinged psychedelia -- is equally good. With the record cracking Billboard's top 50, rock critics were even mentioning the singer alongside the new wave of female singer-songwriters, namely Joni Mitchell and Laura Nyro. But alas, Weinberg's fame was short-lived. She eventually dropped out of the music biz and changed her name to, uh, Cori Bishop.

Elyse, meanwhile, became one of them rarely seen dollar-bin artifacts -- until 2004, that is. That's when Elf Power's Andrew Rieger discovered one of them dusty old copies and flipped out. This led to a wonderful reissue produced by Georgia's Orange Twin, a label and "artist co-op" centered around the Elephant 6 collective. But that's not the end of the story. In 2007 Vetiver contributed to Weinberg's revival by recording a version of “Houses” for his all-covers album Thing of the Past. That’s a good one, too, even if the band turned Young's guitar into more of a George Harrison lick.