neil young

Kind of torn btw backing Neil and hoping other artists do the same vs not wanting to get caught in a crossfire of losing access to music over politics. I'm kind of all in on streaming and haven't had a proper full blown CD or record collection for a while now, which is admittedly short-sighted of me.

Unless he leaves the Internet altogether, forever, which seems unlikely. think we'll be okay. Right now I'm listening to a new Bandcamp purchase, the Jeffrey Lewis & Peter Stampfel Band's 2021 release of Both Ways---The Great Lost 2017 Double-Album, and wondering what Neil would think. They just finished a suitably extended string band excursion around "Marquee Moon," and currently it's "Internet," based on "Heroin."

"Internet," based on "Heroin."

do you mean someone is singing "in-terr-ne-et" like Lou Reed?

Yes, and dark fiddle intro, and then Stampfel starts, "I/Don't Know/Just What I've Loaded," gets to the fast parts pretty quick, and then back, and then you know. Very appropriate for today.s discussion.

lol frogbs

I am using SongShift to move my playlists now from Spotify to Apple Music and so far I'm pleased with the matching results.

Ah, thanks for the tip!

I just moved an old 40-song playlist over without too much trouble (couldn't match "1,618" by Charlotte Adigéry... but it's right there, I played it last week! And then the playlist is frozen and you can't add or delete from it on the target platform).

But then I tried the 310-track ILX Classical 1900-09 list... 26 matches, 284 fails :( And I'm sure that's just a metadata thing, because Qobuz's C20th classical catalog seems pretty deep.

So, yeah, this would be a heck of a slog and then there's all the collaborative playlists...

Yeah, I haven't tried much classical yet. I imagine that's uniquely challenging.

The Buck 65 guy did a "deep dive" into Harvest on CBC radio today. Putting aside how much I hate that phrase, can you even do a deep dive into an album that famous? His deep dive amounted to playing every track, even the really famous hits...can we just call it, like, Album of the Day or something? Anyway, as I listened to "Alabama," and the line "Your Cadillac has got a wheel in the ditch/And a wheel on the track," it occurred to me that a) that's the origin of the phrase "Ditch Trilogy" (via Neil's liner notes for Decade), and b) Harvest itself has a wheel in the ditch ("Words," "Are You Ready for the Country," "Alabama," "Needle") and a wheel on the track (the rest). It's not really as polished as Neil seemed to think it was when he wrote those liner notes.

Neil Young always wins in the end

Spotify lost $4 billion in market value this week.

— scott budman (@scottbudman) January 28, 2022

SiriusXM reviving his channel

lol. as variety notes:

SiriusXM hosts multiple conservative radio shows that espouse views similar to or more outspoken than Rogan’s — particularly on SiriusXM Patriot channel, which features Sean Hannity, Breitbart News, Andrew Wilkow and others

though it should also be noted that siriusxm operates under a radio license which gives it the right to play anything it wants, no permission or license needed from artists and songwriters. so nothing neil can legally do about that one. he could write more open letters though!

I haven’t followed the background of this too closely, but it seems to me like the public relations aspect of this is a big win; even if not Spotify doesn’t end up actually removing the Rogan episodes or canceling his podcast. In other words, why not more open letters? Neil has a big soapbox now, he can call out those other clowns as well. The more that folks are aware of specific misinformation sources out there, the better.

https://neilyoungarchives.com/news/1/article?id=Spotify-More-Songs-Less-Sound

ok lol at him bringing back the sound quality complaints into this "SPOTIFY plays the artist's music at 5% of the quality"

does anyone actually use amazon's music streaming, i feel like i never hear it get mentioned at all

I do, I mentioned it on one of these other threads.

also my housemates.

(to play the same dozen or so songs over and over on tipsy saturday evenings. no beef, just kind of lol c'mon guys, "land of confusion" again??)

gotta be honest here— i piggyback off of a friend's premium account (they offered). i thought it would be a wonderful way to check out a lot of new (to me) things and it has been. also i mean, idk how the streams/artist revenue get counted for premium users, but at this point i'm using it a lot so i'm kind of mad at myself for starting to rely on it more often. if it goes away, oh well. i'll adapt and make do like i did before this current arrangement.

funny (to me) sidebar: when spotify first started to gain recognition about a decade ago i used to joke that real fans bought the records, but listened on spotify to make sure that the bands saw as much money as possible. how mad the "low paying" aspect of it made me back then seems quaint now.

final thought—

unsurprisingly, i'm with neil across the board on this one. spotify sucks for a myriad of reasons and this joe shitforbrains situation is the breaking point. if me losing the ability to shuffle twelve hour lover's rock playlists means dickheads like this get muted, i'm all for it.

also it would be really funny if some memey type person pulled their stuff. like i wanna see rick astley take a fucking stand and title his open letter to spotify: "rick roll, part two. i'm rolling tf off this platform lol."

popcorn at the ready.

twelve hour lover, eh? your poor partner.

I vaguely remember Neil Young talking about GMOs, vaccines and Autism. I'm curious what you guys think of this? https://www.thedailybeast.com/neil-youngs-long-record-of-spreading-scientific-misinformation

he's a crank on gmos but i don't remember him ever saying anything about vaccines & autism or any shit like that, and this article doesn't give any evidence of that either, only loosely tying anti-gmo crank beliefs to anti-vax crank beliefs.

& there are real issues with gmos but largely around intellectual property rights and corporate control, not young's crank safety concerns, which the article totally ignores

This is also the guy that responded to 9/11 with that "Let's Roll" song - I don't think of him as a particularly sophisticated or consistent political thinker, he shoots from the hip and sometimes (like now) he ends up on the right side of the issue, so why complain?

yeah i'm just glad he didn't turn into an antivaxxer, it wouldn't have been that weird (aging hippie with some existing crank beliefs)

the property rights and corporate control of GMO's seems like the really dire issues to me

Yeah Daniel_Rf otm. Neil has obviously embraced conservatism and anti-science beliefs on other issues in the past. But for me, its the same thing as the issue of other platforms like Youtube etc also promoting misinformation & reprehensible content. Like, thats all fair criticism, but if this specific situation results in one platform being less shitty, or at least being punished for being shitty bc people start to realize that they can make conscious choices about who gets their streaming dollar, thats a net win imho.

Neil Young’s Long Record of Spreading Scientific Misinformation

"long record" lol the article is literally about one thing that he did, once.

curious choice to include numerous links in that piece that refute its premise

eye otm. totally agreed.

and neil has had "old man yells at cloud" energy for going on at least two decades now. kind of one of the reasons i can still tolerate him, tbh.

wow that Neil is anti-science article is in bad faith

!

it's misinformation itself really

Sounds like Foo Fighters are pulling their music from Spotify

Joni too: https://jonimitchell.com/news/newsitem.cfm?id=1592

That Daily Beast article is pure trash. Even for them.

A reach linking his misguided GMO views to suggesting they created anti-vaxxers.

The two aren't neatly linked either. I have a ton of friends who are anti-GMO and pro-vaccine. There is the potential for overlap, sure, but they're different issues

Most anti-Big Pharma folk I know aren't anti-COVID vax either

Sounds like Foo Fighters are pulling their music from Spotify

― Blues Guitar Solo Heatmap (Free Download) (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Saturday, January 29, 2022 11:37 AM (thirty-four minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Where are you seeing this? There are some tweets suggesting as much, but I can't find anything official.

Yeah, I saw some tweets last night congratulating Grohl for doing it, but didn't see one single thing about him actually doing it.

ah okay that's just what i saw

That's actually a good idea, if you hear praise on musicians for doing something they haven't actually done, they have no choice but to do it!

*heap

you know i was pondering this on my walk yesterday and it occurred to me that dave grohl (much as i don't care for him) is one of the last of the big "legacy" artists that could really start to turn the tide. i should think his audience has a lot more overlap with rogan's than neil or joni ever would. just imagine if he really got a stick up his butt and attempted to pull the nirvana catalogue. it would never happen, of course. but that's the kind of thing that would really resonate.

I mean, he may get out in front of this and actually do it soon, considering the Foos weren't afraid to play vax-only shows last year, but he hasn't made a peep yet afaik. xps

I realize shameless grifters like Rogan don’t give a shit about anything beyond the money, but I gotta say that I would feel like an absolute shitheel if people like Neil Young and Joni Mitchell were specifically targeting me, like in a, “holy hell, where did I go wrong with my life” kind of way.

As in, holy hell where did I go wrong after signing that 100 million dollars deal ?

am i crazy to think it's cooler to decline 100million than to take it?

i mean, i don't want that much money. ever.

this drawing of Neil by Joni Mitchell is great

https://www.instagram.com/p/CZUR6nYlgCF/?utm_medium=copy_link

Already seeing the censorship whines. Lol fucker kept his podcast, who TF was censored.

Same people who are silent on book bannings and CRT bannings

xp i've always wondered if joni knew about joan around then
both having been on fire for years

Christgau has a big Neil thing today you can access for free:

https://robertchristgau.substack.com/p/the-big-lookback-neil-young?s=r&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email

Didn't realize--written in 1997! (With some update, it looks like.)

his analysis of hawks & doves is pretty off because he doesn't know that the acoustic side stuff dates back to as early as 74, so it's not a reaction to anything going on in 1980

Also, considering that he has dismissed every album of new original music released in this century---before Barn, his album of the year---for apparently extra-musical, anti-Rogin etc. reasons, since he didn't say much about the music, typically enough in latter-day grading sessions---think I'll take my time about reading that.

And I'm pretty familiar with his takes on 20th Century Neil, from the Consumer Guide books.

yeah i'll have to go back i can't digest xgau in my minutes of fucking off at work