Search and destroy: Neil Young

"There was a band playing in my head/and I felt like getting high" just punches me in the gut

lol, i'm sorry, but this actually punches me in the gut

xxp, i couldn't tell if you were being serious or sarcastic!

"I was thinking about what a friend once said/I was hoping it was a lie"--no explanation, nothing leading to or from that line--is brilliant. Beyond brilliant. I don't know how else to say it.

it's not a bad line, but "i felt like getting high" is in the genre of Things That Make the Crowd Go Woo

serious as an mfer, if you were referring to me

usually i get high, and then the band plays in my head. that would be my only complaint

lol, gotcha

I've gotta paraphrase Christgau here: you haven't lived until you've been at a packed Neil Young show for "And I felt like getting high." Corny as can be, I suppose, but a thrilling teenage memory.

if you're hearing a band play in your head and you're already high, wouldn't that make you want to get higher

i was actually thinking about how that song resonates with a previous me (depressed, 20s, too serious) in the same way that Talyor Swift's songs about being young and in love do. Sort of embarrassed at first but then fully in that moment. it helps me see that younger self in a more empathetic way

His 1989-1994 comeback coincided with the CDs blowing out running times - Freedom and Sleeps With Angels could be very good with a trim down to 40 minutes.

I like Prairie Wind from 2006 even if it’s a bit overly sentimental.

I grew to love Prairie Wind after seeing the Heart of Gold film directed by Jonathan Demme. (Looking through the discography, the Greendale: Live at Vicar St. DVD, Prairie Wind, Le Noise and Americana would be the only four newly recorded albums that I enjoy post-Sleeps with Angels - everything I else I have on a homemade compilation.)

I forgot that Freedom was so long - I actually don't listen to it as-is, I went back to the original Times Square LP and swapped out the horrid "Someday" track with "No More" (also from Freedom), replaced "Crime in the City" with the live version from Bluenote Café and added the electric "Rockin' in the Free World" as the final track.

Silver & Gold is great

The title track and "Razor Love" are awesome. I also have a soft spot for "Good to See You."

The Eldorado ep is even better! "Cocaine Eyes" is a top five Young tune, hard to find anywhere (you can download the EP anywhere, though).

even better than Freedom

I haven't bothered with a lot of his recent stuff, tbh, but there are a lot of highlights hiding on albums that are themselves not particularly highlights.

Listening to "Psychedelic Pill" right now and it rules. I love the absolutely perverse indulgence of opening with "Driftin' Back." I love that the first song is nearly 30 minutes long, yet there are *still* two 16-minute songs waiting to get cha later.

The lyrics to Albuquerque are some of my faves
It’s so specific to NY’s experience but also still very relatable to my own life


I've been flyin' down the road
And I've been starvin' to be alone
And independent from the scene that I've known
Albuquerque
So I'll stop when I can
Find some fried eggs and country ham
I'll find somewhere
Where they don't care who I am

The Eldorado ep is even better! "Cocaine Eyes" is a top five Young tune, hard to find anywhere (you can download the EP anywhere, though).

Exactly, that's why I went back to Times Square. Eldorado is basically a 5-song sampler of that album.

Listening to "Psychedelic Pill" right now and it rules

I did the same thing on a drive to the beach today and it also ruled - colour me dumb/inattentive but I hadn't really registed that Driftin' Back was like a press release for Pono - and despite being mostly a gnarled old dude grumbling about MP3 players it still manages to attain some kind of mystic epic status

I like "Unknown Legend" (from Harvest Moon and "I'm the Ocean" as much as anything Neil did in the 70s. MuchMusic used to keep the video for "Harvest Moon" in pretty heavy rotation when it was new, and that was actually my intro to him--a function, I'm sure of my being born in the late 70s and him being irrelevant throughout most of the 80s.

― Les hommes de bonbons (cryptosicko), Monday, December 13, 2021 6:59 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

A good factoid about this video (possibly posted elsewhere, if so apols) is that it's Dale Crover from Melvins playing the Neil character

xxxpost Albuquerque is so beautiful

iirc there's supposed to be an Archives series release covering the El Dorado/Times Square era, but you know, who knows when and if it ever comes out

yeah there's something Neil's referred to as AMAZING FREEDOM (lol) which covers the 1988-89-ish period. I think it'll probably end up being a disc on a future archives box. there was a sneak preview of "fuckin' up" with the SNL band a little while back, sounded killer.

amazing freedom is too funny

omg @ Amazing Freedom.

When's Lionel Dreams being released?

So I think there's something to "Chrissie Hynde and Crazy Horse," along with other mentions of Crazy Horse in comments on Bandcamp page for Rosali's 2021 No Medium---although she doesn't emphasize the tremolo like Hynde w Pretenders, sounds more like the Hynde Dylan covers set, also doesn't warble like Neil (and this CH, provided by "members of the David Nance Group." and sometimes War On Drugs dude. on good piano and organ, is kept on a medium-sized leash, no caveman stomps, though vivid enough)--but mainly I'm struck by how she can indeed produce some striking Young Neil-worthy vocal melodicism, esp, on opener and closer: can even be--exquisite, yeah I said it. Maybe too much of the same thing at medium tempo etc., but more to choose from for keepers---just see what yall think: https://rosali.bandcamp.com/album/no-medium

omg @ Amazing Freedom.

to be followed by Glorious Ragged Glory

Rosalie is great

David Nance Group probably comes closest to capturing the Crazy Horse vibe of any band on the planet right now, great records, amazing (freedom) live

Yeah that Rosali album is really great, definitely Crazy Horse vibes all over that (as ums points out, due to Nance's group backing her up).

Times Square could have been a pretty good album but the sequencing is insane. "Cocaine Eyes" is the album opener of all openers; to put it next-to-last like that is something only Neil would pull. I would probably sequence it like this:

Cocaine Eyes
On Broadway
Crime In The City
Someday
Box Car
Don't Cry
Heavy Love
Wrecking Ball
Eldorado

Pleasant surprise, I actually like the new one quite a bit. It's a really good "old master" record, what I would realistically hope from someone of Neil's stature who's also closer to 80 than 70. At that age with so much work from the previous decade setting expectations, it's unlikely Neil's going to bust open a lot of new territory, and just physically he's not going to be raging like he was 50, 40, 30 years ago. An A- seems more about right, but xgau isn't far off either.

Will have to check it out, esp. since I've been listening more to Rosali, who now sounds even cooler, like Hope Sandoval, or even Karen Carpenter--times Crazy Horse, yes, and it's a fine balance, and I no longer wonder it's too much of the same thing: there are fine differences, as they continue to get their groovy groove on, across the prairie, street, and Great Divide---yeah, some The Band slipping by toward the end, or at least, "Tender Heart" has a Young Neil-Richard Manuel touch, while getting psychedelicized--

Karen Carpenter and Crazy Horse--Where was that Christmas Special?

Here

Have we discussed the weird 420 reference on "They Might Be Lost"? I can see Neil not realizing what it is a weed thing and just calling out the time as 4:20 and I can equally see Neil making it as a pointed reference, who knows

I generally like the record more than I thought I would, though it sounds a little weird to me, the mix feels slightly off in a way I have a hard time articulating

Well, as ums pointed out the other day:

I used to attribute it to him quitting weed but I just looked and I guess he stared up back in 2019.

100% that's a weed reference. the venn diagram of people who tell large audiences people about honey slides and people who know about 420 is a complete overlap

I mean was pretty sure Neil was "420 friendly" it just is kinda of a jarring to hear him sing it

neil is definitely smoking plenty of pot in the BARN documentary. I think he says something like "I'm addicted!"

weed barn

Yeah--well, if I'm catching his mumble right, the uncertainty of this delay seems to have spread to "the jury's still out," and he can't remember what he forgot or something like that---now he's got me doing it----which is a good idea for a song: the book that's been sitting on the shelf since '85--right here between this one and this other one, the book I was probably gonna read over Christmas---is gone. Looking and looking for it and I QUESTION MY LIFE man
---But this song is just standing around and mumbling, not freaking out, not nothin much---maybe it's very very special weed, dusted with powdered elixir--maybe he paid very much up front and now it's gone solid gone---so, put out another deluxe from the vaults, recoup and reinvest, try again, so what.
Several others just seem like run=throughs, low-impact stylistic exercises, despite the evident, also predictable, sincerity---but cherrypickin' tyme is no surprise, and I do find freshness, of little turns and sufficient definition, even some flair, as written and played, in "Change Ain't Never Gonna Come," "Shape of You," "Tumblin' Through The Years, "Welcome Back,"---that's my fave---and "Don't Forget Love." "Camerican" is pretty good stylistic exercise. but ends soon and abruptly, like several others

a lot of the fade outs on this record are weird and abrupt

...“We have recently found a collection of originals from 1987 named Summer Songs at the time of recording,” Young explains on his website. “That time was about 35 years ago. We are not sure of the exact original dates of these recordings yet. They were all given the same date in the NYA Vault’s records, but they all have a very similar unique sound. To give you an idea of place and time, Farm Aid and the Bridge School Concerts had just begun their long runs.”

“This group of songs had just been written and put down in the studio at Broken Arrow (as far as we can figure),” Young continued. “We cannot completely be sure of the engineer who was recording these, and I don’t remember the sessions at all! Every song in the collection was with acoustic guitar or piano and simple added embellishments — sketches of arrangements we made to preserve the initial ideas.”

“These originals were first introduced in their final master versions on the albums Freedom, American Dream, Psychedelic Pill and Harvest Moon. They will be included in NYA Volume 3 and may be released as a separate Archive album before that. It is a beautiful listen, created over a short period of time, that influenced four albums.”

Young provided the list of songs that will appear on the new release: ‘The Last of His Kind’, ‘For the Love of Man’, ‘American Dream’, ‘Name of Love’, ‘Someday’, ‘One of These Days’, ‘Hangin’ on a Limb’ and ‘Wrecking Ball’. Young also adds that “The words of these originals are significantly different from their subsequent master album releases in many cases. Several completely new and unheard verses are found in the songs of this collection.”

Summer Songs doesn’t yet have a release date, as research is still going on to decode some of the information regarding the sessions. Still, you can listen to the later versions of some of the album’s tracks as they appeared on future albums and live performances down below.
from https://faroutmagazine.co.uk/neil-young-to-release-lost-album-summer-songs/

Archive subscribers can listen to at least some of it, dunno how much.

Another list but some pretty good writing:

https://uproxx.com/indie/neil-young-best-songs-ranked/

Hyden is good at hiding a reasonable piece of criticism in the form of a list.

I'm laughing now at the thought of a Neil novice checking him out on the basis of the list and the first thing they hear is 9 minutes of "T-Bone".

Well he's completely wrong about "T-Bone", that guitar tone is monumental.

I'm laughing now at the thought of a Neil novice checking him out on the basis of the list and the first thing they hear is 9 minutes of "T-Bone".

― Halfway there but for you

I wish that had been the case when instead I heard goddamn "Tell Me Why"!

aw I love tell me why :(

Tell Me Why fuckin rules

maybe his best opener

hyden and i just experience music in entirely different ways (thankfully). i can't imagine listening to "tell me why" and thinking "he sure is showing those suckers cs&n"