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Part of being a Neil Young fan is trolling through his bad albums in search of buried treasures. So here's the ultimate Neil Young mix CD -- seventy-eight minutes of stellar songs on not-so-stellar albums. Remember: It's better to burn CDs than fade away.

1. "I'm the Ocean"
Mirror Ball, 1995

A heavy-stomping nightmare about Nineties psychosis from a session with Pearl Jam, with Young ranting about Kurt Cobain, O.J. Simpson and Bill Clinton. One of his strongest and scariest songs ever.

2. "Razor Love"
Silver and Gold, 2000

This much-beloved ballad has been bootlegged since the mid-Eighties. So, naturally, when Young decided to make it available, he buried it at the end of a twee country-rock album. This is why fans treasure bootlegs.

3. "Big Time"
Broken Arrow, 1996

A lost classic from an album everybody hated at the time: Crazy Horse thuds away, as Young sings a sad, lazy yarn about his lost youth in "the land of suntan lotion."

4. "Captain Kennedy"
Hawks and Doves, 1980

After the blood and thunder of Rust Never Sleeps and Live Rust came a throwaway folk record, but among the gems was this acoustic ditty about a young terrorist who sings, "I hope that I can kill good."

5. "Will to Love"
American Stars 'n Bars, 1977

Young uses his boombox to overdub his voice into a happy glee club, chirping about how he's a salmon swimming upstream in search of love.

6. "Slowpoke"
Looking Forward, 1999

How bad was this CSNY reunion album?

It has Stephen Stills rapping on it. But Young's three ace ballads included this lament for aging hippies.

7. "Soldier"
Journey Through the Past, 1972

This harrowing piano lament is stuck on the butt-ugly soundtrack to a self-directed movie nobody ever saw. He later put it on Decade, but the damage was done.

8. "Surfer Joe and Moe the Sleaze"
Re-ac-tor, 1981

The album was just a bunch of synthed-up, mechanical feedback jams, but this record-company complaint stands out as first-rate crackpot fury.

9. "Mideast Vacation"
Life, 1987

If Young sounds like he's stuck in Eighties overproduction hell, that's because he is. But at least he has Crazy Horse to keep him company, and they blow off steam in a nutty bad-politics travelogue.

10. "Kinda Fonda Wanda"
Everybody's Rockin', 1983

Young in a string tie and pompadour, imitating the Stray Cats with a band called the Shocking Pinks? You have to hear "Kinda Fonda Wanda" to believe it really happened.

11. "Goin' Home"
Are You Passionate?, 2002

One Crazy Horse song pops up in the middle of this Sixties R&B tribute and blows the rest of the record away.

12. "Slip Away"
Year of the Horse, 1997

Just another live album -- he's got six of them -- until you hit this track: the Horse in total slow-motion clod mode, with a strange grandeur staggering out of the guitar fuzz.

13. "Out of My Mind"
Buffalo Springfield, 1967

Not nearly as famous as "Mr. Soul" and "Expecting to Fly." Just so beautiful it hurts.

14. "Stringman"
Unplugged, 1993

Unplugged sets are just a way for rock stars to resell some oldies, right? Wrong, if you're Neil Young: It's where you unveil one of your most haunting piano ballads, dating back to 1976 but never released until now. Not that anybody noticed. A typical Neil Young mind-fuck and the perfect place to end this journey through his past.

Listen to the playlist