Neil Young’s message for this holiday is an environmental/political one targeted at the health of his homeland:
Today, I am thankful for all of the people world wide who work tirelessly for a good future on Planet Earth. And to my Canadian friends I say this, along with Elizabeth May:
STEPHEN HARPER IS NOT CANADA. When he became Prime Minister, he cancelled all climate programmes, repudiated our Kyoto targets, chose far weaker targets, weakened them again, legally withdrew from the Kyoto Protocol, and then failed to meet the weaker targets.
Harper’s Conservatives now compete with Australia’s pro-coal government for the worst climate record in the industrialized world. As a result Canada’s international reputation has been severely damaged, but I must emphasise again: STEPHEN HARPER IS NOT CANADA.
80% of Canadians want climate action. 80% of Canadians continue to be very concerned about tackling the climate crisis. It is not too late — Canada can be part of an international solution, we can repair our reputation on the world stage. We cannot give up on our own and our children’s future with a collective shrug.
Album reviews of Neil Young’s newest soon-to-be released “Cellar Door” can be churned out ad nauseam. How many can we read?
Henry Hauser’s review at Consequence of Sound, an on-line music publication, tells the story of what happened in 1970, starting with a failed CSN&Y recording session at Young’s home in Hawaii.
Instead, band members went their separate ways and put out their own solo albums that made Billboard’s top 15. Young’s released “After the Gold Rush,” but, Hauser writes – not surprisingly – not everyone got behind it.
“Langdon Winner dismissed it as unlistenable, likening Young’s voice to ‘pre-adolescent whining.’ Not to be outdone by his erstwhile bandmates, the competitive Canadian continued writing new material and scheduled back-to-back concerts at Carnegie Hall.”
“Hoping to shake off the cobwebs following a five-month layoff, Young played a series of warmup gigs at The Cellar Door, an intimate D.C. music club. Live at the Cellar Door, the most recent installment in Young’s Archive Performance Series, captures these six solo sets.”
Of the music, Hauser gets sappy, using words like poignant, purposeful, ardent, penetrating, enthralling, dreamy, superb, wistful. There may be a record number of adjectives used in this review.
“The introspective ‘Tell Me Why’ finds the singer grappling with unsolvable quagmires in a wounded, elegiac timber (‘Is it hard to make arrangements with yourself?’).”
Not that anyone ever would believe that Neil Young could “suck,” but according to Nick DeRiso at Something Else! Reviews there were certainly moments, and they seemed to come in bunches, when Neil Young stumbled so badly in the 1980s that it was difficult to imagine he’d ever regain his footing.
But, not always.
“It was a period of principled stands against the record-label intrusion of the day, and — alas — of unlistenably noble experiments. Still, if you dig deeply enough, you’re likely to discover something of value even on the occasionally intolerable techno-focused Trans,”DeRiso writes.
The author lists five of Young’s works that didn’t suck during that era, leaving out the justifiably celebrated 1989 project Freedom, since by then Young was rounding back into shape, he says.
We won’t tell you which ones he picked as shining stars in a decade that some feel was less than lackluster as far as muic goes. But there were some choice moments by Young
Just as an aside, 1983 was the year Young said that being sued by his new record label for making records that were “not commercial” and “unrepresentative” was “better than a Grammy” because it cemented his ornery maverick reputation.
David Geffen, who thought Young’s quixotic early 1980s records were sabotaging his career and making Geffen look stupid, emerged as a heavy-handed fool. He quickly dropped the suit and apologised. “He’s a big man for saying he was so fuckin’ wrong,” said Young, who responded, to his manager’s horror, by insisting that his deal was slashed in half as an expensive gesture of commitment to creative freedom.
Anyway hear is one of the chosen favs.
See for the rest for yourself the the list of favorable 1980s tunes at:
The UK’s UNCUT has done it again in its ongoing love affair with Neil Young.
John Mulvey’s blog talks about the new release ‘Live at the Cellar Door” and its timing, just as the magazine was putting out its Uncut Ultimate Music guide dedicated to Young.
“Just as we thought we’d put together a comprehensive survey of all his recorded work, another Archives Performance Series release crept onto the schedules,” Mulvey writes.
Also:” One of the great pleasures of ‘Live At The Cellar Door’ is the way it illustrates how malleable Young’s songs can be. ‘Cinnamon Girl’, for instance, is hardly diminished by that lunging riff being replaced by a quasi-baroque flurry of notes. Listen out, especially, for a powerful moment when Young sings ‘Loves to dance/Loves to…’ and allows himself to be overwhelmed as his playing suddenly shifts from tenderness to a new bluesy intensity. ‘That’s the first time I ever did that one on the piano,’ he notes at the death, and I’m not sure he’s done it again many times since.”
The Neil Young Ultimate Music Guide goes on sale towards the end of this week. The 148-page guide, through interviews from the NME, Melody Maker and Uncut archives, reveals that, among many things, Young has been consistent in his contrary single-mindedness. The new reviews of every one of his albums provide a similarly weird and gripping narrative, finding significant echoes and hidden treasures on even his most misunderstood and neglected ‘80s records.
Pearl Jam does a killer version of “Keep on Rockin’ in the Free World” on Nov. 15 during an extensive fall tour at the American Airlines Center in Dallas, TX.
The marathon 33-song performance came to a close with a lengthy second encore that included a pair of guests on a Neil Young cover, according to Jam Base. Lots of high energy with musical guests guitarist Carrie Brownstein and on vocals Annie St. Vincent Clark.
“It confuses me to hear people shouting at us that musicians should just shu…t up and entertain. Where the hell did that lame-ass idea come from? Music was, is and always will be about social condition and cause and change. Music speaks for the oppressed and downtrodden. Music launches revolution. Woody Guthrie and Hank Williams and Bob Dylan and Joan Baez and Johnny Cash and Joni Mitchell and Willie Nelson and John Lennon and Eddie Vedder and Neil Young and all the giants of the art know this. What the fuck kind of music and musicians are these boneheads actually listening to?” by -- The Passenger
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 
