Neil Young - Homegrown (June 19, 2020, at long last)

ftr i do like florida, i just think it would sound better as a weird dispatch in the middle of something like le noise. the content of his dream/story definitely fits in with homegrown, but musically it's a patch of discordance in an otherwise cozy album.

I'm a huge fan of songs that are happy landing spots after noisy, rough, or stressful songs, like "Have You Ever Been (To Electric Ladyland)" after ". . . And the Gods Made Love". Kansas is like a warm hug after the nightmarish Florida.

The one album I think "Florida" would make the most sense on would be Journey Through the Past.

T/S: Homegrown Side A or Homegrown Side B?

Separate Ways
Try
Love is a Rose
Homegrown
Florida
Kansas
-
We Don't Smoke It No More
White Line
Vacancy
Little Wing
Star of Bethlehem

very tough, at least for me!

Fuck, I forgot Mexico on Side A!

that might tip the balance toward Side A for me

I was thinking about this over the weekend. I think "We Don't Smoke It No More" is my least favorite song so that might make me lean toward Side A, but this is very hard.

also my least fave. in general i'm not a big fan of the singalongs designed to make the people in a mid-70s arena crowd yell "woo", although neil's versions of those kind of songs are my favorite

https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-oCF4TSXS4us/XwiF_2A31BI/AAAAAAAAZ68/oyq8slHcX9Qj9x5O3KTiGd8nogdgkp_fQCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/nya-florida-letter.jpg

!

Maybe you're supposed to listen to this while watching The Wizard of Oz.

Side A of this smokes Side B, especially given that 1) the first two songs are excellent, 2) side B has more songs we've all heard before (3 as opposed to just two on Side A) and 3) side B has We Don't Smoke It No More

Vacancy is probably the only reason I will ever play side B of this ever again

Somebody definitely needs to stop smoking it.

I'm more likely to go to Side B of Homegrown than I am to go to AS&B or H&D for those same songs.

what is this weird obsession that good songs that have already been released now cease to be enjoyable?

it's like this weird "product" mentality

plus the version of "Homegrown" here smokes the other one

;)

I like all the different versions of the older songs (though I'm pretty sure Star of Bethlehem is the exact same version as the one on Decade), but they also serve to make this feel less like some big event to me somehow

Side or Side B? New songs or old songs? It's all because of that love for Homegrown, babe. That makes the world go 'round and makes the thread go separate ways.

should have said "Side A or Side B?" Better file this post away in the archive for a few decades.

what is this weird obsession that good songs that have already been released now cease to be enjoyable?

Not sure if that means me or not. Not really what I meant...I still love "Little Wing"; I can't pretend not to notice, though, that I associate it with another album. If Bob Dylan had stuck the Highway 61 version of "Like a Rolling Stone" on his new album (to use an extreme example), it wouldn't stop being what it is, and I'd still love it. But it wouldn't be ideal, either.

but they also serve to make this feel less like some big event to me somehow

I'll second that, too. This album has been hyped and hyped for years. 25% of it--the three songs in their original versions (I won't count "Homegrown"), I already have.

Anyway, I said I like the album, and I'm glad I bought it. What I don't understand--I went through this with the last Tarantino film--is that sometimes, with very large and revered names, that's not accepted as enough; it has to be a masterpiece beyond reproach.

honest q: are people saying that? i'm not sure i've read any piece on it other than tyler's. personally i wouldn't call it a masterpiece...(though i would be comfortable calling OTB and TTN and ATGR masterpieces and pretty comfortable calling EKTIN and Rust Never Sleeps masterpieces)...but i think it's just really great

i guess don't worry about it being a "big event" and just enjoy it for what it is — a (mostly new) Neil Young record from the mid-70s. No one is saying it's beyond reproach. maybe live with it a little while? I felt a little bit underwhelmed when I heard it back in March, but it might be what they used to call a "grower."

even if you somehow discount the tracks that surfaced elsewhere, 8 "new" peak-era songs from one of our greatest living artists isn't an event?

An event that feels a little anticlimactic, at least to me. (And, to be fair, the almost constant flow of new and rumored and abandoned Neil projects probably contributes to that.)

even if you somehow discount the tracks that surfaced elsewhere, 8 "new" peak-era songs from one of our greatest living artists isn't an event?

not to be a pedant but I count seven new songs and one of them is a spoken word piece. And part of my being underwhelmed could also be blamed on archival / reissue / remaster fatigue in general. It isn't exactly novel these days to see "unearthed" studio recordings from artists of this era. I mean, there are box sets of the stuff...

We are home, groaning itt

that ol' light whine is a friend of mine

we got lots of time
to groan together if we try

lol you squares are just not getting it

this is the FOLLOWUP TO HARVEST. it's a context thing. who gives a shit what happened to some of these songs afterwards? it was all 100% new when released. you can look through your shit-colored glasses of historical reassessment and alt-version snobbery, but the true heads all know what's up here.

y'all need to suck down some honey sliders and make like you've been eagerly awaiting this moment without any preconceptions, you are hippies who dig Neil and it is 1973, time to put the new album on.

this was recorded after on the beach was released

Paul go forth and be unhappy

xp whatever, you see my point. read Tyler's article!

same producer, same musicians, same cover artist, anyone seeing this back in the day if it had been released as planned would have seen the similarities immediately.

from Tyler's article:

“To be honest, I remember Harvest much more than I remember Homegrown,” Elliot Mazer says as he tries to cast his mind back to the sessions that began in November of 1974 at Nashville’s Quadrafonic Studio, the same spot where “Heart of Gold” and “Old Man” had been cut a few years earlier. And who can blame him? Harvest topped the Billboard charts for two straight weeks and ended up as the best-selling record of 1972 in the U.S. “It gave me a whole new career,” Mazer says.

But where the making of Harvest was relaxed and joyful, the Homegrown sessions were markedly different. “It was a different feeling — there was more stress,” Mazer recalls. “I didn’t think the songs were as good. He didn’t have ‘Heart of Gold.’ But believe me, you do not tell Neil Young that song A is not as good as song B.”

Mazer and Young had brought several of the Harvest musicians – loosely known as the Stray Gators – back into the fold: pedal steel master Ben Keith, ace session drummer Kenny Buttrey, and rock-solid/no-frills bassist Tim Drummond.

“Those guys lived off their ability to play well,” Mazer says. “The Nashville guys listen to the song. They hear a song and they communicate, saying, ‘You take the verses, I’ll take the choruses.’ There was always a meeting of the band. With Harvest, Neil just sat down with the songs, the guys played great, and he went ‘WOW.’ But Homegrown wasn’t quite like that, as far as I could tell.”

All her friends call her Little Whinge

At the risk of soliciting a heap of scorn, I definitely prefer Harvest (which I think has gone from being an album that was probably slightly overrated at the time to being--after Neil dismissed it in his notes for Decade--decidedly underrated). I will say, the opening to "Separate Ways" really reminds me of the opening to "Out on the Weekend."

In Christgau-speak, I'd give Homegrown an A-minus--that's a good, solid album. (As a point of comparison, my three A-plusses are Everybody Knows, Gold Rush, and Zuma, with a number of A's.)

Sleeve gets it.

A- is probably accurate, but people are complaining like it's a B-.

i feel the need to do a 60 seconds or less, gut feeling christgau style ratings rundown of neil's classic period in the homegrown thread. i am setting the timer AFTER i get the album names typed and in chronological order and if i don't get to the end, those are the rules. 11 albums, 60 seconds. 5.45 seconds per album. 0.1835 albums per second. 11 albums you know by heart. because if you don't know them all already, you're not even a fan. GO!

Everybody Knows This is Nowhere A
After the Gold Rush A+
Harvest A
Time Fades Away B-
On the Beach A+
Tonight's the Night A
Homegrown A-
Zuma A-
American Stars n Bars B
Comes a Time B+
Rust Never Sleeps A

ok that only took me 23 seconds, sorry to build that up so much

I have to join you:

Everybody Knows This is Nowhere A+
After the Gold Rush A+
Harvest A
Time Fades Away A
On the Beach B+ (kill me now!)
Tonight's the Night A
Homegrown A-
Zuma A+
American Stars n Bars B
Comes a Time B+
Rust Never Sleeps A

Left a few of yours as is--less than a minute.

Make On the Beach A-. I think it has undeservedly become this sacred album, but for "Ambulance Blues" alone, I can't rate it lower than Homegrown.

Everybody Knows This is Nowhere A
After the Gold Rush A
Harvest A
Time Fades Away A-
On the Beach A+
Tonight's the Night A+
Homegrown B-
Zuma B
American Stars n Bars B-
Comes a Time B
Rust Never Sleeps B

(I do understand ending that run with Rust, but I tend to stretch it out through Hawks and Doves and Reactor, both A-minuses for me. It all comes crashing down with the next one.)

I've been listening to reactor a lot lately,the closing track (shots?) is killer but I even enjoy the hell out of t-bone

fact: There are no C+ or below albums during the Neil Young undisputed classic era

(I do understand ending that run with Rust, but I tend to stretch it out through Hawks and Doves and Reactor, both A-minuses for me.

i considered going all the way to Trans (which i like better than the previous 2, but decided to cut them off, especially given the *absolutely impossible!* 60 second time limit

s/t being unfairly left out imo

that is a very fair opinion! but i'm going undisputed classic run, undisputeds only!

wait is "neil young" the "david bowie" of neil young ?

Missing Long May You Run (which ultimately is an EP of Neil curios saddled with Stills cocaine fantasies) as well.

uh oh

wait is "neil young" the "david bowie" of neil young ?

― budo jeru

i'm willing to say that yes, "neil young" is the "david bowie" of neil young