Wearing what has become his uniform of the day, Neil Young made a surprise appearance on Friday, March 19 at SXSW in Austin, Texas.
The singer-songwriter attended a special screening of his 1982 movie Human Highway at the Paramount Theatre and participated in a Q&A session after the film.
According to NME News, Young is quoted as saying about the film: “It has a life of it’s own. It refuses to die – we tried to kill it a couple of times,” said Young of the surreal movie, which was shown in a newly re-cut and re-mastered format. “It was never satisfying to look at, because I knew there was more than what we were seeing… I always wanted to make it what it could be.”
He wore a black hat, black leather jacket over a baggy black T-shirt, black pants, and what looks like a Native American medicine bag around his neck.
Of the band Devo, which appeared in the movie, Young said:
“They’re geniuses – they had something that was totally unique,” said Young yesterday. “When I met them I freaked out.”
Speaking about his work outside of music, he commented: “You’ve got to do other things, because just music is not enough.” He added that the new version of the movie, which includes previously unseen footage, will be touring film festivals throughout the year, before getting a DVD release. “I like people to look at it in the theatre – I like people to look at it with other people. I’m not a fan of the solitary art. I like to hear people react.”
Neil Young will be in Austin, Texas on Thursday, March 19 to attend a screening of his 1982 movie “Human Highway.”
According to Noise 11, “Human Highway” will screen at the Paramount on Congress at 5 p.m. in Austin and it will be followed by a Q & A session with Young himself.
Young starred in and co-directed with his friend Dean Stockwell the alternative-comedy, bizarre, eclectic movie that featured appearances by Young, Stockwell, Devo and Randy Hopper. In the movie Young sings “Hey, Hey, My, My” with Devo.
60s fold singer David Blue also made an appearance in the movie. He died shortly after in 1982.
The movie received poor reviews and was once released on VHS video but has not resurfaced yet on DVD or Blue-Ray.
(Maybe it will be on PONO)
Young plays Lionel Switch, a nerdy gas station attendant who dreams of being a rock star.
South by Southwest (SXSW) is a set of film, interactive, and music festivals and conferences that take place early each year in mid-March in Austin, Texas, United States. It began in 1987, and has continued to grow in both scope and size every year.
A review of the new movie “Inherent Vice” in the magazine “Uncut” says Neil Young’s Young’s “Journey Through The Past” is critical to the film.
But we learn little else about the soundtrack, other than it is provided by Jonny Greenwood, and is said to be: ” a beguiling mix of his own compositions (check out the loose, burbling rhythms of “Shasta Fey”) alongside Can and Neil Young.”
The film by Paul Thomas Anderson is based on a Thomas Pynchon novel, and is described as: a crazy, out-of-whack principality where the funky hippie vibes of the previous decade have been replaced by Nixon, Manson, Vietnam, urban riots and assassinations. Anxiety and remorse are the principal emotions. There’s a sticky, faintly claustrophobic tone to the film, with its talk of “karmic thermals” and heroin addicts, midday naps and shapeless days. As one character says in voiceover, “American life was something to be escaped from.”
Uncut critic Michael Bonner writes: “in the middle of all this is muttonchopped private eye Larry ‘Doc’ Sportello (Joaquin Phoenix), sporting what look conspicuously like a succession of Neil Young’s cast offs from the Buffalo Springfield days.
Bonner says Anderson uses the soundtrack to highlight flashbacks of Sportello and Shasta in happier times. “But it also serves to articulate a deeper subtext at work in Pynchon’s novel; the sadness of lost potential. Pynchon seems to suggest that “the ancient forces of greed and fear” at work in today’s world have their roots in California during the period the film is set in,” he writes.
This review is steeped in jargon and if you can get much out of it, more power to you. Really annoying when writers don’t just talk straight, instead of the pseudo-intellectual jargon.
Music Times ranks Neil Young’s “Dead Man” music score number 2 out of 7 top rock music scores of all time.
Guess which one is number 1#.
The publication writes:
“Neil Young’s score for Jim Jarmusch’s western Dead Man wasn’t actually composed. Rather, Young stood in a recording studio with some instruments and simply improvised music while watching a cut of the film. The resulting music is at times atmospheric and chaotic.”
A Greenpeace movie that Neil Young will present during the week’s concerts at Honor-The-Treaties. Neil said “Petropolis” was “probably the most devastating thing you will ever see.”
A trailer and more info can be found here:
http://www.petropolis-film.com/#
Shot primarily from a helicopter, filmmaker Peter Mettler’s “Petropolis: Aerial Perspectives on the Alberta Tar Sands” offers an unparalleled view of the world’s largest industrial, capital and energy project.
Canada’s tar sands are an oil reserve the size of England. Extracting the crude oil called bitumen from underneath unspoiled wilderness requires a massive industrialized effort with far-reaching impacts on the land, air, water, and climate.
It’s an extraordinary spectacle, whose scope can only be understood from far above. In a hypnotic flight of image and sound, one machine’s perspective upon the choreography of others, suggests a dehumanized world where petroleum’s power is supreme.
“Find out that now
Was the answer to answers
That you gave later.” by -- Neil Young
Neil Young on Tour
Sugar Mountain setlists
Tom Hambleton provides BNB with setlists, thankfully. His website is the most comprehensive searchable archives on the Internets about anything Neil Young related setlists. Goto Sugar Mountain.
memphish on 
Albert Stromann on 
liza on 
Baz on 
