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

Hitchhiker - B+ if that counts

Can't say I expected anyone to rate ASnB over Zuma, but hey.

Zuma is uneven and lacks the pathos of previous Crazy Horse albums (maybe blame Pancho for this), also "Stupid Girl" is an abomination

AS&B is great

paul, coming in with the wrong takes left and right in this thread!

is there something I'm missing in the lyrics that makes "Stupid Girl" abominable?

it's not called "girls are stupid"...it's addressed to one person the narrator is calling stupid!

anyway it's a jam

i agree. i still wouldn't put it on a mixtape for someone i saw in mercedes benz or is a girl, though.

It's not just the lyrics (which are, come on, pretty dumb), it's the double high / low vocal, so grating

haha I can see that

xp oh ok, I like those vocals! Anyway I'm guessing maybe about half of neil's best songs have pretty dumb lyrics

surely a heart of gold could not even contract and relax to perform its primary function!

for real and what cowboy ever had anything to do with computers

it's not called "girls are stupid"...it's addressed to one person the narrator is calling stupid!

Yeah--I think the worst you can accuse it of is rock-star pettiness, Neil getting his back up over some perceived but specific slight, the kind of song Dylan wrote routinely in the mid-'60s (not all directed at a woman, but some were, I think). It's not a sweeping indictment of women. Wasn't Neil in general pretty good in that area during the '70s?

I know, "A Man Needs a Maid"...which is more complex, I think--because of the Carrie verse--than a quick reading suggests.

right...but you don't have to be a rock star or even petty to be upset with a person and vent in song. Maybe the slight was legit! We just don't know.

I think for the generally assumed baseline of 70s rock guys being terrible to women Neil was relatively good

Can't imagine him writing a lyric like the Faces' "Stay with Me."

He could, but it'd be about a car he only drove once.

Neil strikes me as someone who probably avoided a lot of potential groupie interactions by being weird and remote

Can't imagine him writing a lyric like the Faces' "Stay with Me."

― clemenza, Wednesday, July 15, 2020 9:06 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

He could, but it'd be about a car he only drove once.

― "...And the Gods Socially Distanced" (C. Grisso/McCain), Wednesday, July 15, 2020 9:24 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

Thank you.

That was great, yeah.

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 B+
Homegrown A-
Zuma A-
American Stars n Bars B
Comes a Time C
Rust Never Sleeps A-

For me, every album in that rundown would get at minimum a solid A except Harvest (A-), American Stars 'n Bars (B+) and Comes a Time (B+).

is anyone else struggling to get hold of a vinyl copy of this? I've had one on order for nearly a month. Is Neil pressing them himself perhaps?

Home pressed is a good thing
Take that bell and let eewarpskopskip

mine came in the mail last week, ordered it around the time the album came out

the store I got it from (Deep Thoughts in JP/Boston) got 20 copies on release day and they were all gone within 48 hours

There's been a bandwidth issue in the vinyl industry for years and it's going to get worse

I'd imagine something like Homegrown is particularly in demand on vinyl

I'm in the UK, and my supplier said they would have copies available in "early July", and no sign.

I knew about that UMS, I think Record Store Day really exacerbates those shortages, perhaps even this year when that event was online only.

I should have just go the Pono version and a Pono to play it on!

i would like to know if the number of Pono listeners is greater or less than 500 people

Xpost - oh yeah everyone who puts out records talks about the RSD bottleneck

I guess what I should have said is the label probably estimated how many copies to press based on previous archives releases and there ended up being way more demand than anticipated

even WB can't just snap their fingers and make new vinyl appear in a week

this happened with Le Noise as well, Discogs prices on that are still completely insane

recent Neil LPs do seem very pricey, anything from Freedom onwards goes for ridiculous money. I was lucky to find a copy of Harvest Moon for £10 fairly recently.

I've come around on this album.my wife got me the vinyl for my bday a month or so ago and I've grown to love it!

I listened to it a ton in spring and early summer, but not for a couple weeks now. I think I will be playing it a bunch this fall; it has that kind of feel.

I've played it quite a bit, often within the context of his other LP's from that era. Not Harvest and Comes a Time, but the other three surrounding it and in chronological order: so Tonight's the Night, then On the Beach, then Homegrown and finally Zuma. I just love the progression from one to the next, just beautiful.

This was the perfect album for me this summer, played it a lot in the car June & July... my first cautious forays into the outside world after months of fearful quarantine, driving around in the afternoon sun seeing which things in my city have been closed and abandoned and which have remained, feeling anxious & scared but also safe in my little personal bubble, feeling the gutpunch of everything that's gone wrong but trying to remain thankful for what I have, playing this album with the windows down. One of those time & place listening experiences I'll always remember.

otm. great timeless album. should have played it more often.

big LOL that Robbie Robertson is the only musician on the album not mentioned in the special thanks section of the liner notes

ahahahaha good catch

would not be at all surprised if “We Don’t Smoke It No More” is a winking nod to the honeyslider

I was just imagining if Neil tried to have it both ways back in '75, and put Homegrown out as the front half of a double w/Tonight's The Night as disc two. He probably had the clout to pull it off, and it vaguely makes sense as the most extreme of the big doubles of the era (Exile, Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, Physical Graffiti, Quadrophenia etc.).

Ultimately, going forward like that isn't Neil's thing, but it would have been an interesting timeline if he had.

ugh, that would have been kind of amazing

also, it would have been a highly RELATABLE double album. he's had so many concept-adjacent albums over the years, but homegrown+TTN makes 100x more sense than something like quadrophenia

yeah kind of funny that neil *didn't* put out a double album (aside from the triple Decade comp) any time in the 1970s ... he was one of the few major artists who really had the material for it!

right, and also i feel like he would have been a perfect fit for the kind of sprawling double-album that finds space for a few oddities/novelty tracks on it that are actually good, like a proto-pavement

nowadays his versions of those tracks (looking for a leader 2020) really are kind of bad (imo), but in prime ditch trilogy-era, they were all gold (imo)

You're not counting Journey Through the Past, I assume?

I feel like Tonight's the Night is its own universe and would not benefit by being part of a double album

Haha not counting journey through the past