randy newman said something like "it sounds like a kid who thinks he's taken lsd" which is farrr more novel on top 40 than a country-pop song about looking for love in all the wrong places
― da croupier, Friday, 20 March 2015 19:55 (nine years ago) link
Man "A Horse With No Name" is weaker, weaker than the weaker Neil song. "Heart of Gold" may be overplayed but it has more poetry and meaning in one line than "AHWNN" does in the entire song. Just stupid lyrics. Stupid stupid stupid.
― ©Oz Quiz© (Adam Bruneau), F
the Young song is pretty dumb though. Nice harmonica and "and I'm gettin' old" though.
― guess that bundt gettin eaten (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, 20 March 2015 20:00 (nine years ago) link
gold has nice slide from ben keith too
― marcos, Friday, 20 March 2015 20:01 (nine years ago) link
yeah "heart of gold," lyrically anyway, is lite neil, bu it's a beautiful little shuffle of a song.
― he quipped with heat (amateurist), Friday, 20 March 2015 20:05 (nine years ago) link
It was a huge hit that paid for his next few albums, for which I'm grateful.
― guess that bundt gettin eaten (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, 20 March 2015 20:07 (nine years ago) link
my apologies if anyone here is their age, but i think most of us are also dealing with a hindsight awareness of neil's whole vibe. let's not forget "sugar mountain" was a b-side until the late '70s.
― da croupier, Friday, March 20, 2015 12:28 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post PermalinkI'm not as old, but old enough to remember that neil's whole vibe showed up pretty quickly. If he'd started talking about LinkVolt or PONO during a perfunctory Buffalo Springfield interview on The Ed Sullivan Show or American Bandstand, would have seemed right in character.
― dow, Friday, 20 March 2015 20:14 (nine years ago) link
"heart of gold" is very good. "horse with no name" is very bad. reformulating or complicating this is try-hard freshman-level challops.
― mattresslessness, Friday, 20 March 2015 20:15 (nine years ago) link
"Horse With No Name" feels like the equivalent of those pop folk songs with banjos and suspenders nowadays. The production is totally kick-ass, I do enjoy that early 70s close-mic room sound. But you can see why someone who played in Buffalo Springfield like 10 years ago thought they were posers.
Randy Newnan rules, I wish he and Neil would do an album together.
― ©Oz Quiz© (Adam Bruneau), Friday, 20 March 2015 20:20 (nine years ago) link
Newman
"Horse With No Name" feels like the equivalent of those pop folk songs with banjos and suspenders nowadays
otm
― he quipped with heat (amateurist), Friday, 20 March 2015 20:23 (nine years ago) link
"There were plants and birds and rocks and things" is in its way a hilariously great lyric
― totally unachievable goals and no incentive to compromise (Sparkle Motion), Friday, 20 March 2015 20:23 (nine years ago) link
don't care much for America but "Sister Golden Hair" is a nonsensical trifle that I love
― droit au butt (Euler), Friday, 20 March 2015 20:24 (nine years ago) link
"i don't know man / it was a desert / who gives a fuck / lalalalala-la"
― tylerw, Friday, 20 March 2015 20:24 (nine years ago) link
The ocean is a desert with it's life undergroundAnd a perfect disguise aboveUnder the cities lies a heart made of groundBut the humans will give no love
― marcos, Friday, 20 March 2015 20:25 (nine years ago) link
I have a hard time ignoring the lyrics, they are exactly what poseur hippies say. "I've been to the desert/in the desert you can remember your name". Neil Young was more subtle in his writing, he might sing about mountains and stuff but it is with prettier words than "Plants and birds and rocks and trees". I guess you could make a case for it being raw and unschooled but the performance is too whispery and light to come across with any vitality at all. The song doesn't develop anywhere. It's like a catalog of things you see in a landscape, it's just a bunch of descriptions, floating in space. Some hippie thinking he's spiritual and telling you about it.
"Heart of Gold" has this awesome folk song structure and it uses repetition ("I wanna live"/"i wanna give") to that end. It doesn't have clunkers like "Plants and birds and rocks and trees", relying not on telling the audience but showing them. He is a miner, his heart is gold. There are implied metaphors and relationships. As the song progresses he doesn't rely on description so much as comparison/contrast. Things happen, he travels, he experiences things that are actually pretty vague, and uses folk repetition of the "Heart of Gold". We come back to the title of the song, the metaphor that everyone probably can relate to (hence the song's massive popularity).
These new experiences describe the theme Heart of Gold. Which is basically whatever the listener wants to decide for themselves. It is a metaphor that must be arrived at by the listener. By juxtapositioning the "Redwoods"/"Hollywood"/"cross(ing) the oceans" with this theme Neil Young is engaging the listener in the act of creating meaning.
― ©Oz Quiz© (Adam Bruneau), Friday, 20 March 2015 20:32 (nine years ago) link
Oh another part of "Horse" is basically it is someone just aimlessly wandering. Trying to remember his name. It is a celebration of laziness. "Heart of Gold" is at least in someway about "a miner" whose work is never done. This is why Neil Young was a revolutionary and America was corporate rock.
― ©Oz Quiz© (Adam Bruneau), Friday, 20 March 2015 20:37 (nine years ago) link
oh that's why
― da croupier, Friday, 20 March 2015 20:46 (nine years ago) link
or could it not be that america was giving a truer account of what it was to be young & fucked-up, without the capacity to formulate coherent thoughts, while neil simply cloaked his lady issues in the vain trappings of the protestant work ethic
― da croupier, Friday, 20 March 2015 20:48 (nine years ago) link
I should hate "A Horse with No Name"--any Neil fan should--but as quasi-drug Top-40 silliness, I think it's funnier than "Puff the Magic Dragon" and more atmospheric than "One Toke Over the Line." And I have the advantage of first hearing it when I was 11.
"Sister Golden Hair"'s their best, though.
― clemenza, Friday, 20 March 2015 20:49 (nine years ago) link
i totally grant that "horse" is insubstantial hippie poseur fluff but i still enjoy hearing it and it is so amusing and enjoyable on many levels
― marcos, Friday, 20 March 2015 20:59 (nine years ago) link
i mean crosby's "MUSIC IS LUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUHHHHHHHVVE" from "if could only remember my name" is also insubstantial hippie (not poseur to be sure though) fluff too you know and i also love that
― marcos, Friday, 20 March 2015 21:00 (nine years ago) link
DC otm.
Yes I prefer David Crosby if we're talking 70s caveman stoner folk rock.
― ©Oz Quiz© (Adam Bruneau), Friday, 20 March 2015 21:04 (nine years ago) link
Aside from the lyrics "Horse With No Name" does not rock. It sounds like muzak.
― ©Oz Quiz© (Adam Bruneau), Friday, 20 March 2015 21:05 (nine years ago) link
What is the other America stuff like? I'd imagine lots of folk blueshammer.
― ©Oz Quiz© (Adam Bruneau), Friday, 20 March 2015 21:06 (nine years ago) link
Oh wow I am listening to "I Need You" it is like Harry Nilsson watered down and spun off into a successful 80s soft rock career. Nice arrangements and singing tho!
― ©Oz Quiz© (Adam Bruneau), Friday, 20 March 2015 21:09 (nine years ago) link
they worked a lot with George Martin. they have a pretty good song about the wizard of oz. i like america.
― mizzell, Friday, 20 March 2015 21:12 (nine years ago) link
ugh u wanna talk bad lyrics
― i blow goat farts, aka garts for a living (waterface), Friday, 20 March 2015 21:12 (nine years ago) link
and oz didn't give nothin 2 the tin man
that he didn't
didn't allllllready have
― i blow goat farts, aka garts for a living (waterface), Friday, 20 March 2015 21:13 (nine years ago) link
― totally unachievable goals and no incentive to compromise (Sparkle Motion),
oh like Neil's above this shit
― guess that bundt gettin eaten (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, 20 March 2015 21:13 (nine years ago) link
This is why Neil Young was a revolutionary and America was corporate rock.
― ©Oz Quiz© (Adam Bruneau),
is "Adam Bruneau" a pseudonym for "Jann Wenner"?
― guess that bundt gettin eaten (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, 20 March 2015 21:14 (nine years ago) link
oh like Neil's above this shithey now
― tylerw, Friday, 20 March 2015 21:15 (nine years ago) link
the Y in the biggest corporate rock band of the early and mid seventies wrote six dozen great better than "A Horse With No Name," so America should feel grateful that Neil Young finally wrote something at their level.
― guess that bundt gettin eaten (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, 20 March 2015 21:17 (nine years ago) link
ok lol @ neil young as revolutionary
― marcos, Friday, 20 March 2015 21:23 (nine years ago) link
I'm sure there were bigger corporate rock bands at the time (I know how to measure "bigger," not as sure how to determine "corporate"). Chicago, for one, comes to mind.
― clemenza, Friday, 20 March 2015 21:30 (nine years ago) link
if we're talking size and GDP and per capita income Europe and Asia were bigger.
― guess that bundt gettin eaten (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, 20 March 2015 21:32 (nine years ago) link
hey now now now
― totally unachievable goals and no incentive to compromise (Sparkle Motion), Friday, 20 March 2015 21:33 (nine years ago) link
"heart of gold" is graceful coherent songwriting with a good balance b/w float and weight. "horse with no name" is 100% awkward self-regarding plod, its only redeeming factor apparently being one-note hippie camp. p sure there are much clearer documents of fucked up youth from that era than a dumb hit song, archival truth factor minimal, rejected as evidence. and alfred where is a n.y. lyric as artless as "I was looking at a river bed and the story it told of a river that flowed made me sad to think it was dead". agree neil isn't above that level of inane faux-profundity but at least he always manages to get the picture across in half the words w/ a much richer profile.
― mattresslessness, Friday, 20 March 2015 21:47 (nine years ago) link
really they're both self-regarding but only "heart of gold" earns it.
― mattresslessness, Friday, 20 March 2015 21:54 (nine years ago) link
neil is obv a champ and a better songwriter and a hero and a patriot etc etc but man that line about the riverbed is awesome.
― da croupier, Friday, 20 March 2015 21:54 (nine years ago) link
kind of reminds me of the meat puppets
― da croupier, Friday, 20 March 2015 21:55 (nine years ago) link
lol. i have to admit just typing that out it grew on me a little bit.
xp good point
― mattresslessness, Friday, 20 March 2015 21:56 (nine years ago) link
in their case though the songs are a lot faster.
neil is obv a champ and a better songwriter and a hero and a patriot etc etc but man that line about the riverbed is awesome.― da croupier, Friday, March 20, 2015 5:54 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
― da croupier, Friday, March 20, 2015 5:54 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
Yes it is kind of cool. Like when GTA: Vice City glitches out and you fall through the beach.
― ©Oz Quiz© (Adam Bruneau), Friday, 20 March 2015 21:57 (nine years ago) link
But I think "sky of blue/sea of green" is a similar idea only more evocative.
pretty sure we're all convincing ourselves that america > neil young
― tylerw, Friday, 20 March 2015 21:58 (nine years ago) link
Neil would write "I was lookin' at the river/It flowed/She was dead/So the story goes"
― guess that bundt gettin eaten (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, 20 March 2015 21:58 (nine years ago) link
haha
― mattresslessness, Friday, 20 March 2015 21:59 (nine years ago) link
Donovan wrote that line iirc
― Οὖτις, Friday, 20 March 2015 21:59 (nine years ago) link