Sometimes a camera just happens to be there in the right place, at the right moment...

This was such a time and moment - the Cow Palace in San Francisco, October 22 1978, with cameras on hand to capture one of the greatest singer-songwriters of our time, Neil Young, at the height of his powers.

Rust Never Sleeps opens with a bracket of acoustic numbers, then moves to present Neil with one of his longest serving backing groups, Crazy Horse (he still performs with them, though just as often now he's seen with Booker T and the MGs) in some of his most powerful songs, including Hey Hey, My My, his acknowledged anthem Like a Hurricane, and my personal favourite, the rending Powderfinger.

These are great performances, sung with total commitment, fire and passion. There is some really annoying college-juvenilia here, with stage assistants dressed as small hobbit-like creatures with fiery eyes. There are exaggeratedly large props, and some really corny humour - but nothing ultimately can take away from the power of his music.

Like Bob Dylan, Neil is still out there today, as potent a performer as he ever was. So this film isn't commemorating a performer who is past his peak - it's chronicling an artist as he was, so that we can enjoy all the more the artist he has become.

This is rock'n'roll in the stratospheric heights. Neil Young is one of the few artists of undoubted genius the genre has thrown up, to be mentioned alongside, Hendrix, Townshend and Dylan, and this DVD gives us an essential part of his legacy.

At first glance the DVD is dark and murky and grainy - but then I remember way back seeing this on cinema, and realising that the grunge atmosphere was intentional back then, and we're just seeing probably as accurate a rendition of that original grunge as we're ever going to see.

So don't try to adjust your set - this is meant to look dark and dirty, just the way his music sounds. A warning - someone whose opinion I trust tells me she thinks this is one of the worst transfers she's seen. I guess it boils down to saying you have to really like Neil Young to tolerate this one!

There are no real special features or extra footage - mainly some photo galleries which add nothing to the overall experience.

But there is sensational sound. The two-track Dolby stereo sounds just a tad flat, but kick in the DD 5.1 and there's an incredible gain in sound quality - this reprocessing has achieved a wondrous strong and spatial quality. The DTS track is similar, though maybe a bit too bass-oriented compared to the beautifully balanced DD 5.1 track.