Starting off the 90s hit parade with an oldie but a goodie from an artist that I fully respect and enjoy yet oftentimes confuses the hell out of me, but I’ll be damned if he didn’t go off and release one of the better albums in his career in Ragged Glory.  Released in 1990 and recorded with his comrades in Crazy Horse, ol’ Neil pretty much cemented his “Godfather of Grunge” image with this one, especially after releasing and odd melange of albums in the previous decade that flirted with rockabilly, blues, hard rock, country, and electronic new wave.  With 1989 album Freedom hinting that Neil had plenty of gas in the tank courtesy of the menacing “Rockin’ In The Free World” it wasn’t until his first album in the new decade pieced everything together via ten solid tracks of garage rock tunefulness and extended guitar workouts.  This was Neil Young at his fiercest and most rocking in years, cooking up an excellent batch of catchy songs like the twangy grunge of lead track “Country Home”, the crunchy “Mansion On The Hill”, or the sweetly melodic yet ballsy “Days That Used To Be”.  But for my money, the best cuts on here are the heaviest ones:  the venomous bite of “F*!#In’ Up” and the absolutely killer two headed monster in “Love To Burn” and “Love And Only Love”, all three cuts feature some of Neil’s best playing in ages-  guitars are loud, nasty, and ugly and feature a unit just JAMMING.  The Horse is the rock steady backbone, giving Neil much freedom to bob and weave with lead/rhythm playing that runs the gamut of tuneful chord structures, hammering feedback, and distorted crunch with as much passion as anyone can wring out of a guitar.  A fantastic album and a great kickoff to the decade as Ragged Glory offers up a bit of a clarion call, leading the charge for no nonsense rock music that was starting to bubble up in the Seattle area and soon to take over the world within just a couple of years.