May You Live in Inneresting Times: The Neil Young Voting Thread (deadline July 8)

There's so much from throughout his entire career I'm compelled to acknowledge that I don't think I could do anything as indulgent as vote for entire albums. Gotta spread the love.

Was listening to some Neil yesterday and one song suddenly clicked from "will probably be on the ballot" to "wow, this is top-5 at least".

"Motorcycle Mama"?

Surfer Joe and Moe the Sleaze

Both currently locked in a raging 871-way battle for 150th place...I'm afraid to go back and check, but I think I kind of liked "Surfer Joe" at the time.

Ha, that's on my list too ... except spotify cut off the title so I had to guess the last word ('syzlak')

any love for "Like an Inca"? Always my favorite Trans number: Santana boogying in Peru.

I'm having the weirdest experience of hearing a song on album I once owned that I have NO recognition of at all - "Loose Change" on Broken Arrow. While I can see why I tossed, you'd THINK i'd remember there BEING a 9 minute track between "Big Time" and "Slip Away" at the very least, or recall it upon hearing it.

xpost "Like An Inca" is no "Cortez the Killer" but better than "Inca Queen"

oh wait now I vaguely remember the "one chord played for a couple minutes" "climax" of "Loose Change"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tJLAyrTN5Fc

any love for "Like an Inca"? Always my favorite Trans number: Santana boogying in Peru.

Would probably make my Neil top 50, but didn't quite make the cut for the top 30 I actually sent. If he'd used a vocoder on it, maybe.

xpost "Like An Inca" is no "Cortez the Killer" but better than "Inca Queen"

But where do you stand on "Like an Inca" vs. "Hitchhiker"?

"Like an Inca" has an outside shot at making my ballot. That and "Transformer Man" are my favorites from Trans.

does this qualify as a challop?

Everybody's Rockin/Old Ways/Landing On Water >> Broken Arrow/Silver & Gold/Are You Passionate?

at the very least, Silver & Gold and Are You Passionate? has to be my least favorite two album run in his career.

Any opinions on Hawks And Doves? Don't think I've heard it for about 20 years.

Heroic performances from Nils here :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M15RA1ft3Bc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3XphZydaPj4&feature=related

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=om2Lt94Ltw4&feature=related

I dunno, part of me wishes that NY had abandoned guitars and moved into purely electronic music after Trans. He could have been one of the pioneers of techno, but as it was he followed it up with Everybody's Rockin'. Oh well.

I don't have Broken Arrow, and the 9/11 song scared me away from Are You Passionate? "Razor Love" was the one song that saved Silver & Gold for me--I just don't remember the rest of it. The '80s albums you mention I dislike for different reasons. Landing on Water I consider inept; it will always be the nadir for me, because if Neil ever makes a worse album, I'll find out about that in advance and simply will never hear it. Everybody's Rockin' seemed really corny at the time--"Wonderin'", as always, excepted. Old Ways didn't register. I probably gave it two listens at the time, and have never taken it off the shelf since.

I don't think I'm leaking state secrets when I say that none of those records will impact the results at all. The albums that you would have expected to dominate this poll are, so far, dominating this poll.

I liked Hawks and Doves when it came out, "Little Wing" and "The Old Homestead" especially. It was still part of that decade-plus run of hardly a misstep--just minor ones here and there.

H&D is sort of American Stars'n'Bars II, with the trippy outtake side and the NEIL YOUNG BONAFIDE COUNTRY SINGER side flipped

admittedly the haphazard '80s stuff i'm seeing in a "what was that about?" youngun's rearview mirror where i was actually paying attention when Neil got boring. i'm sure watching neil stumbling around syn-drums was less fun when everyone was doing it.

I dunno, part of me wishes that NY had abandoned guitars and moved into purely electronic music after Trans.

Landing On Water and Life still have a hell of a lot of synth, though! Considering the Joe Lala shit on Trans, I feel like those later two are just as "synth" as Trans, even if they don't have the vocal effects.

two from those albums i'm considering for my ballot (also "prisoners of rock'n'roll")

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o0DfNtocIa4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nPVHE0ip0fk

"Prisoners of Rock 'n' Roll" is such a fantastic song (and such a terrible title). It took a lot of confidence and/or obliviousness to close the book on all those Geffen albums with the line "That's why we don't want to be good"--great line. It's on my ballot.

nils lofgren looks like he's straight up auditioning for the e street band in those trans clips. did he act like that much of a jackass in the Grin days?

woah! @ tha mideast vacation vid there. TREMENDOUS performance, completely outrageous unhinged Neil solo. compelling argument for a ballot

yeah the contrast between neil wilding out and billy talbot trying to make sense of his keytar is just amazing

i was rambo in the disco, i was shooting to the beat
when they burned me in effigy, my vacation was complete

yeah Pressure is great, like a weird Wipers/XTC mashup.

"Mideast Vacation" is semi-classic on the chord changes alone (STTTTYLE CHAAANGE).

the synth solo was dated in '87 though

whether something is dated or not is soooooooooooooooooo low on my priorities with any sort of music

It's not a priority for me either but using "Simon Says" synth sparkles in '87 five years after demonstrating he could handle the technology warrants the term.

turns out I was initially referring to "Around The World" -- my bad. Synth sparkles still dated.

nils lofgren looks like he's straight up auditioning for the e street band in those trans clips. did he act like that much of a jackass in the Grin days?

The story in ... was it in "Shakey?" Anyway, the story is that in the '70s Nils had to wear heavy weights around his ankles, because he moved around so much more than everyone else on stage.

somebody quoted in Shakey claims that "When Your Lonelly Heart Breaks" could've been the "I Believe in You" of the eighties. Anybody wanna agree?

i agree but i don't care about the ____ of the _____ premise -- i just love that song, esp the second "lonely!"

(when your lonely (lonely!) heart breaks)

Neil Young flunkies stopped listening to new music in the early seventies.

then again maybe the premise doesn't mean what i thought it did
anyway, i like that song

While in general I trust David Briggs was right about whatever he was yelling about, I like "Lonely" in both it's Life and YOTH renditions

I assume all right-thinking people like "Winterlong," but how much? (Like, do I need to vote it top 5 to make sure it gets in?)

nils lofgren looks like he's straight up auditioning for the e street band in those trans clips. did he act like that much of a jackass in the Grin days?

Nils was a competitive gymnast in high school; Bruce gave him a chance to show that off a little:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=su959eEFnnA

ok now I'm bummed Neil did not rig up a Trans-poline for the tour

i like winterlong but not top 5 by a longshot (sorry)

Not for me either, but I might vote it high strategically. It's a great, self-contained song.

I got a couple of ballots in today and discovered that unranked lists of 20 or 40 would both involve decimals according to the point system I set up above. A couple of suggestions:

For a ballot of 40, (15 x 10) + (25 x 7) = 325...identify your 15 favorite from your list of 40.
For a ballot of 20, (10 x 15) + (10 x 10) = 250...identify your 10 favorite from your list of 20.

Mr. Math, Mr. Big Shot--hope you're happy.

I could also slightly penalize an unranked ballot to produce an even split:

40 songs gets you 320 points (8 per)
20 songs gets you 240 points (12 per)

Don't think of it as a penalty, though--it's a tax.

ballot sent.

xpost Also explains why Nils had both hips replaced a couple of years ago.

Voted, I had to draw a line under this. Apologies to Neil Young, Sleeps With Angels and the others I didn't get round to.

I liked @rocketmail too, that's a nice touch.

Tempted to listen to Americana a ton since I think it could get a song if not two on my ballot, but it'd undoubtedly make my ballot more of a fool's errand than it already is (currently decade make-up is

60s: 7
70s: 14
80s: 9
90s: 6
00s: 4

but I'm still tinkering with it).

Hadn't thought about that. I've had a Rocketmail account (bought out by Yahoo at some point) for 15 years.

Some notes after 20 ballots (with one pending because of a scoring issue):

--167 different songs, 172 versions--curious as to how that compares to the Rolling Stones poll
--#1 has opened up a bit of a lead over the next four
--I think there's still only one album where every song's received a vote; three others are within a song or two
--among songs with multiple votes, #4 and #32 are tied with an average of 15.5 points per vote
--highest post-Rust song has dropped to #37
--non-solo songs: Buffalo Springfield (6), covers (4), CSNY (3), Stills-Young Band (3), Crazy Horse (1), Mynah Birds (1)