music Archives - Page 255 of 261 - Ramblin' with Roger

Neil Percival Young is 65

Don’t Let It Bring You Down “guaranteed to bring you down…it starts off slowly, then fizzles out altogether.”

Before our work unit moved to Cubicleland, we used to have offices, with doors. And we used to play music – out loud, not using headsets – in said offices. For a time, I shared an office with my boss Mary, who had very catholic tastes. I played (and play) a very eclectic set of music. And there were only two musicians she ever objected to, both because she just couldn’t stand their voices: Willie Nelson and Neil Young. Neil, in particular, was a particular irritant because she’d hear his music more often on the radio. Moreover, she and Neil are both November Scorpios.

Suffice to say, I love Neil Young. Here’s a none-to-clear video about his love of trains and his son Ben who has cerebral palsy.

I decided to look at Neil’s discography. But if I commented on every record I owned, it’d take forever.

*I own

1963 The Squires “The Sultan” b/w “Aurora”
1966 Buffalo Springfield – Buffalo Springfield
1967 Buffalo Springfield – Buffalo Springfield Again
1968 Buffalo Springfield – Last Time Around
Neil Young – Neil Young. Not only do I have this album, I even reviewed it here.
1969 *Buffalo Springfield-Retrospective
Neil Young & Crazy Horse – Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere. This is the album with the wonderful handclap driven Cinnamon Girl, which undoubtedly is one of my 50 favorite uptempo songs, plus two classic, lengthy – around 10 minutes each – tunes, Down By The River and Cowgirl in the Sand.
1970 Crosby Stills Nash & Young – Déjà vu. Features Neil’s Helpless.
Neil Young – After the Goldrush. This was my Neil college album. Only Love Can Break Your Heart was a minor hit (#33), but probably my favorite song was When You Dance I Can Really Love, an even more minor hit (#93), but which I most associate with my college sweetheart; also, I love it starts off really slowly but picks up tempo – get to the end, then go back to the beginning.
1971 Crosby Stills Nash & Young – 4 Way Street. A live album with the first version of Neil’s “Ohio” (“tin soldiers dead and Nixon coming”) that I owned. Also contains a funny monologue intro about Don’t Let It Bring You Down “guaranteed to bring you down…it starts off slowly, then fizzles out altogether.”
1972 *Neil Young – Harvest. Contains his only top 30 single, the #1 Heart of Gold. From the liner notes of his Decade album, I got the sense that the commercial success made him uncomfortable.
Neil Young & Graham Nash – “War Song” b/w “Needle and the Damage Done” – have War Song on a Warner Brothers Loss Leader album. It eventually shows up in the 2009 box set.
Neil Young – Journey Through the Past
We now come to the me, poor college student section.
1973 Neil Young – Time Fades Away
1974 Neil Young – On the Beach
1975 Neil Young – Tonight’s the Night
Neil Young – Zuma
1976 The Stills-Young Band – Long May You Run. The title song, one of my favorites, appears on Decade.
1977 *Neil Young – American Stars & Bars. Featuring Like a Hurricane.
Neil Young Decade – a greatest hits (as it were) album. With “Sugar Mountain”, a B-side not previously on an album, though played often on my college radio station.
1978 Neil Young – Comes a Time
1979 Neil Young & Crazy Horse – Rust Never Sleeps. I prefer Hey Hey, My My (Into The Black) over My My, Hey Hey (Out Of The Blue), because it’s LOUDER.
Neil Young & Crazy Horse – Live Rust. The songs from Rust Never Sleeps ARE ALREADY live.
1980 *Neil Young – Hawks & Doves
1981 *Neil Young & Crazy Horse – Re-ac-tor
1982 *Neil Young – Trans. Lots of vocoder stuff including yet another version of Mr. Soul which I may prefer to the original.
1983 *Neil Young & the Shocking Pinks – Everybody’s Rockin’
1985 Neil Young – Old Ways
1986 Neil Young – Landing On Water
1987 Neil Young & Crazy Horse – Life
1988 *Neil Young & the Bluenotes – This Note’s For You – the title song’s about rockers selling out to commercial interests.
Crosby Stills Nash & Young – American Dream. Neil’s stuff was the best on the album.
1989 Neil Young & The Restless – Eldorado
Neil Young – Freedom. Features Rockin’ In The Free World, twice, plus his version of Wrecking Ball, which Emmylou Harris covered.
1990 Neil Young & Crazy Horse – Ragged Glory
1991 Neil Young & Crazy Horse – Arc Weld
1992 *Neil Young – Harvest Moon. Besides the title song, painfully tied to an old relationship, I especially like From Hank To Hendrix.
1993 Neil Young – Lucky 13
Neil Young – Unplugged. Quite fond.
1994 Neil Young & Crazy Horse – Sleeps With Angels. Favorite song: “Piece Of Crap”
1995 *Neil Young – Mirror Ball. Grungy album with members of Pearl Jam.
1996 Neil Young – Dead Man
Neil Young & Crazy Horse – Broken Arrow. Loud first side, more mellow second.
1997 Neil Young & Crazy Horse – Year of the Horse
1999 Crosby Stills Nash & Young – Looking Forward
2000 *Neil Young – Silver & Gold. Middle four songs feature vocals by Linda Ronstadt and Emmylou Harris.
Neil Young – Road Rock v1
2001 Buffalo Springfield – Box Set
2002 Neil Young Are You – Passionate?
2003 Neil Young & Crazy Horse – Greendale
Neil Young – Greatest Hits
2005 Neil Young – Prairie Wind. On my Amazon list.
2006 *Neil Young – Living With War. Perhaps too pedantic, but I liked it anyway.
Neil Young & Crazy Horse – Live At The Fillmore East 1970
Neil Young – Living With War: In The Beginning
2007 Neil Young – Live At Massey Hall 1971
*Neil Young – Chrome Dreams 2. Features the 18-minute Ordinary People, which, surprisingly, works for me.
2008 Crosby Stills Nash & Young – CSNY/Déjà Vu Live
Neil Young Sugar Mountain – Live at Canterbury House 1968
2009 Neil Young – Fork In The Road
Neil Young – Archives Volume 1 Box Set
Neil Young – Dreamin’ Man Live ’92
2010 Neil Young Le Noise

A great article about Neil I came across.

With God On Our Side

I’ve been watching God in America on PBS recently. I will grant that the criticism that it does not touch on non-Christian faiths as much as it ought is valid, but I still think the series has validity, and I’ve already recommended it to my church’s adult education coordinator. Maybe the series SHOULD be called “Christanity in America.”

That caveat aside, it is an interesting take on the conflicting views of faith in the country, never moreso than in the period right before and during the Civil War, when slavery was attacked and defended using the very same Bible. On the show, one abolitionist minister cites Exodus 21:16, “Anyone who kidnaps another and either sells him or still has him when he is caught must be put to death.” Meanwhile, a pro-slavery preacher quotes Leviticus 25:45, 46 – “You may also buy some of the temporary residents living among you and members of their clans born in your country, and they will become your property. You can will them to your children as inherited property and can make them slaves for life.” This fight split the Methodist, baptist and Presbyterian denominations for decades.

Meanwhile, the slaves themselves are attracted to the liberation theology of Moses leading his people to freedom, epitomized by Exodus 3: 7-8: “The LORD said, ‘I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt. I have heard them crying out because of their slave drivers, and I am concerned about their suffering. So I have come down to rescue them from the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land into a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey.”

Thing is that most of these people had a certainty that God supports their particular take on the word because they believe – at least the non-slaves – in the notion that the United States is uniquely blessed by God. Interesting, one person in this period was less certain about God’s will, and that was President Abraham Lincoln, a man with a good Old Testament name.

The parallels with modern-day America are clear. There are some who claim to have a direct line to the Almighty when it comes to what is required/desired/permitted/omitted. The rest of us, not so much, except that God couldn’t POSSIBLY have meant THAT, at least not any more.

Anyway, it reminded me of the Bob Dylan song With God On Our Side, performed here by Joan Baez.

Beatles island song list

The interesting thing about this exercise is that I became aware, sometimes for the first time, some biases.

Ever have what you think is a really good concept, then you start actually DOING it, and you decide, “Well, maybe it WASN’T such a hot idea, after all”? So it is with this blogging project about the Beatles, clearly my favorite group.

The idea was to create my Beatles island song list. If I only had 10 or 20 or 50 or 100 Beatles songs available, which ones would I choose? First off, I had to find a list of all the songs that the Beatles recorded that are in the canon: the singles, albums, and EPs released between 1963 and 1970. No Star Club in Hamburg, no Tony Sheridan, no BBC or Anthology recordings. This list shows 215 songs, but lists Love Me Do twice (but not the other possibilities?) and also has Real Love, but not Free As a Bird. So I’m assuming 213 individual songs. It would be easy to just pick four songs from Revolver, four from Rubber Soul, and a couple others for my Top 10, but I tried, when I could, to be more diversified.

And let’s face it: making a list like this always depends on the mood so that a song at 93 on this list might be 103 or 83 if I did it again. Which almost certainly WILL NOT HAPPEN. I started working on this before February. Of 2009, for the 45th anniversary of the Beatles on Ed Sullivan, which I am old enough to have watched in real time. Someone coming to the group after the fact would surely hear the songs differently.

Know also that these are not entirely or strictly by most to least favorite, but more about both the (artificial) scarcity AND the diversity. One Lennon cover version rocker might push another one back; likewise, a McCartney saloon song, a Harrison tune with sitar, or a Ringo record.

The interesting thing about this exercise is that I became aware, sometimes for the first time, of some biases. Surely, I knew about my affection for Beatles VI, my first album. But I wasn’t as aware of my general antipathy for Let It Be, an album that always felt like the group’s musical funeral. Still, all things being equal, I wouldn’t give up ANY of the songs!

I also had to find videos for all of these; if you find a broken link, PLEASE let me know, as they all worked when I started this thing. Some of the sources are HERE at Beatles Box Set 2009 and HERE at BeatlesTube.net, the purpose of the latter site being “to organize all videos about The Beatles that you can find on Youtube.” But I DID find items elsewhere and used Beatles videos from the movies, were readily available.

To give you an idea of how my thinking went. On the list:
217. Across the Universe, the Wildlife version.
216. Love Me Do, the LP version which included Andy White, NOT Ringo on drums.
215. Let It Be, the single version, solely because the album version is longer
214. Get Back, the Let It Be album version, because the single actually ends, rather than “I hope we pass the audition,”, which IS a great line on a Simpsons’ episode, to be sure.
Because other versions of these songs appear elsewhere on the list.

So I’ll be doing these 10 at a time, at no particular set schedule. It’ll be at least once a week, but it might be twice or thrice, depending on what else I have in mind for the blog, and, of course, time.

My designation of the source album requires an explanation, I reckon. For the British albums, I limited myself to the original albums that the Beatles intended. Several of the early singles, EPs and the song Bad Boy appeared on A Collection of Beatles Oldies but Goldies, but it was their intent to put those songs out AS singles or EPs, so I’ve ignored it; all of those songs now appear on the Past Master CDs. Whereas for the US albums, I picked the Capitol albums, plus the Vee-Jay Introducing the Beatles and the United Artists’ A Hard Day’s Night, which had some overlap, because those releases, especially prior to Sgt. Pepper, were so convoluted. In fact, Introducing the Beatles was released at least TWICE, with 10 common songs, plus two on each album that don’t overlap; I’m not making the distinction.

Since I’m starting this on the 5th of November, I suppose I ought to provide a link to REMEMBER by John Lennon.

Please Support Rebecca Jade’s Album

I must say, beyond the avuncular pride, that Rebecca’s a really talented young woman.

An e-mail from my eldest niece:

It’s been a long time coming, but it’s finally in the works! I’m working on an album with friends Anthony Molinaro and Alfred Howard and we’re getting very close to completing it… We’re planning its release for this coming February! Woo-hoo!! We just need a little assistance, and that’s where you come in… Please check out the link and if you feel led to help, it would be much, much appreciated!

If not, or if you just can’t right now, that’s ok, you can help by sending this link to others or maybe buying a CD when it gets completed! Every little bit helps! We hope you all enjoy the vibe of the music… And thanks for your time!!

I must say, beyond the avuncular pride, that Rebecca’s a really talented young woman. I made my pledge.