Neil Young Keeps Rockin' In the Free World

Neil Young

Over the past five decades, Neil Young has been in the spotlight one way or another, whether through his music or political activism.  Just last week, he was in the news for his protest of the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) in North Dakota, along with Willie Nelson.

Neil Young has been part of my life musically since the my teenage years in the late '80s.  He seemed to have a particular appeal to the kids of my generation, even though he was an icon from the '60s.  Over the years, I have owned recorded versions of his music in various forms whether it is his work with Crosby, Stills, Nash, & Young (CSNY) or with Crazy Horse.  I have owned copies of "After the Gold Rush", "Harvest", "Decade", "Freedom", and "Harvest Moon".  I also owned "The Bridge" - a tribute album released in 1989 with covers by Pixies, Dinosaur Jr., Sonic Youth, and Psychic TV.  So I think it is safe to say that I am a fan and have been for over thirty years. But I realized that, in the present, I have no music by Neil Young.  So, I downloaded a collection simply called "Greatest Hits" with selections spanning his solo career, his time with CSNY and Crazy Horse, missing only a sample from his days with Buffalo Springfield.

I have a chance to see Neil live back in 1997.  For my job, I had traveled down to Phoenix for training, and my wife was out of town visiting family.  So I bought tickets to that year's H.O.R.D.E. Festival, where Crazy Horse was headlining.  I opted for the Desert Sky Pavilion's general admission tickets, which were cheaper than reserved seating, which was a mistake.  Reserved seating was in the shade, and general admission was in the hot July sun.  Everyone was scantily clad in the heat, the girls all in bikini tops.  I was the only Mormon fundamentalist there, dressed in garments and long-sleeved shirt.  I only survived by downing glass after glass of expensive Coffee Plantation lemonade.  I spent the day on the grass watching Toad the Wet Sprocket. Sky Cries Mary, Leftover Salmon, Ben Fold Five, Big Head Todd & the Monsters, Morphine, Primus, and many others.

Neil Young in his younger years

At one point during the day, I wandered to one of the tents. and Neil Young happened to come in wearing shorts, a white tee and a baseball cap, carrying his acoustic guitar.  He put on a show for an intimate crowd, playing well-known songs like "Southern Man", "Heart of Gold", "Ohio", "Old Man", and "The Needle & the Damage Done".  It was still one of the best live musical experiences I have ever had.  There was even a moment where Neil looked right at me.  I was standing only about ten feet away from him.  He was probably wondering why in the hell I was wearing long sleeves in the middle of summer.

At night, Crazy Horse put on a crazy show, doing songs like "Cinnamon Girl", "Cowgirl in the Sand", and "Down By the River".  It was still 105 degrees when I left the venue after midnight.

All of those songs and more are found on this collection, which is really a walk down memory lane for me.

Willie Nelson and Neil Young at Standing Rock protests

Not only has Neil been a presence musically in recent years - jamming with the likes of Pearl Jam, R.E.M., and Red Hot Chili Peppers - but he has been a force for social change, which is something that I admire about him.  From his war protest songs in the '60s to speaking out against blatant materialism in the '80s ("This Note's For You").  When the Berlin Wall came down in 1989, "Rockin' In the Free World" was the unofficial anthem of that event.  And into our modern day, he has written songs in protest to our illegal wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.  He has used his warbling voice to speak out against injustice.

And in recent days, he met with tribal leaders at the protest site in Standing Rock to speak out against the corporate greed of DAPL with its government thugs backing them up, exploiting once again our native peoples and their land.  This is a cause I feel strongly about.  I encourage you to learn more about this and do something about it.  Take Neil's example.  Keep on rocking, Neil!

A Kingdom of Choice: The Paradoxical Music of alt-J

alt-J

"I basically went to art school to start a band," said Joe Newman, lead singer and guitarist of the British art rock band, alt-J, of the project he started with fellow bandmates at Leeds University,

For this review, I looked at "This Is All Yours", their sophomore effort.

alt-J is your quintessential millennial band, from a technological era where musicians no longer need to rely on music studios, producers, or even traditional musical instruments to make music.  Nowadays, you can do it right from your laptop, composing from your bedroom scores that rival anything that professional bands have accomplished in studios over the last several decades.  It has revolutionized music.  This describes alt-J and their sound.  Along with this creative, DIY ethic comes a liberation from form and restrictions.  alt-J's music does not follow any particular song format - verse-chorus-verse-chorus.  Their songs are stream-of -consciousness explorations of ADD-driven whimsy and intrinsically subjective fancy.  Not limited to one genre, their music is a melange of folk, trip hop, blues, classical, dubstep, and other forms of electronica.  Whatever suits their mood.  The result is a stunning mind-trip, a paradoxical trip to the dark side of the moon on a neon spaceship.

This Is All Yours

For instance, the song "Choice Kingdom" does not rely on traditional vocals.  The band favors a use of vocal loops, and in this song, the words are sung only one syllable at a time so that the message is diminished in favor of the voice as an instrument rather than the conveyance of a message.  But alt-J does put across a message, although couched in artsy obscurity, James Joyce style, like their lyric in the Nara Trilogy - "Arrival in Nara", "Nara", and "Leaving Nara".  These three songs talk of a gay love affair in Nara, Japan.  They feature the repetition of the words:  "Hallelujah, Bovay, Alabama".  Nonsensical at first appearance.  But this references one of the founders of the Republican Party and a region known to not be friendly towards the gay community.

Musically, they flaunt their free-spirit, their refusal to be classified - everything from the '60s blues rock of "Left Hand Free" to the Bright Eyes-like folk of "Warm Foothills" with its unknown female accompanist.  From one moment, they can go from chamber orchestra to synthpop to using medieval vocal arrangements.  Like "Pusher", with its remarkable Fleet Foxes vibe.  My favorite tracks are "Every Other Freckle", which runs the gamut, using a dubstep bass over tribal rhythms and layers of vocals, and there is "The Gospel of John Hurt", a mellow trip hop beat with robotic vocals singing about the alien bursting out of John Hurt's chest in the movie Alien.

This band has been amazingly humble and surprised at their contribution to the music world.  But what the world needed was artists to think outside of the proverbial box and redefine what music means to us in the digital age.  And this description fits the music of alt-J.  They break cliches and shatter norms.  They are iconoclasts, and you are going to have to go and do some thinking after listening to this one.

An Otherwise Disappointing Life: Frightened Rabbit's Haunting Fifth Album

Frightened Rabbit

They have been around for more than thirteen years.  They have released five albums.  But Scottish band, Frightened Rabbit, are fairly new to me.  Previous to downloading their fifth album, "Painting of a Panic Attack", I think I had maybe heard only one song by them before.  So their music is pretty new to me.

When I started researching this album, which was released earlier this year, I saw that it was produced by Aaron Dessner, who is the principal songwriter for The National.  Immediately, from the first listen, I could see similarities.  In content, both bands have dark, brooding lyrics, almost of a confessional nature.  Musically, both bands favor a mix of melodic compositions and layered atmospherics.

It took me several listens before this album did anything for me.  But once the album started to grow on me, I was reluctant to write a review.  I was falling in love with this record, and I wanted to linger on it for a while.

The music is rich and textured, although muted, like on the album opener, "Death Dream", which starts out with a piano and ambient noises and Scott Hutchison's subdued falsetto.  The song keeps building in crescendo - no percussion, but unfolding new instruments, including a horn section, but all blended indistinguishably together while Hutchison keens mysteriously, "You died in your sleep last night."

In "Get Out", the percussion appears, although coquettishly, over a song that lingers between Joy Division and Echo & the Bunnymen until the chorus launches and soars into a dream pop flourish that would make fellow Scotsmen, Cocteau Twins, proud.  "I Wish I Was Sober" pairs a piano with Hutchison's poignant lyrics, sung in his unmistakable lilting, Scottish burr.  They have a lot of pure pop moments on here like "Woke Up Hurting", the rousing "Break", and "Lump Street",  They also have plenty of sensitive displays like "Little Dream", "400 Bones", and "Die Like a Rich Boy".  Every time my wife hears "Still Wants To Be Here", she thinks it's Blue October.  My favorite song is definitely "An Otherwise Disappointing Life", which represents the best elements of this band - somber lyrics, dreamy textures, and blazing pop rock.  This song is haunting and will stay with me for a long time.

I'm glad to have found this band.  I have an entire catalog to look forward to, as well as future releases.  However, Hutchison has recently made some cryptic tweets that call the future of the band into question.  Given the tortured nature of the lyrics, it is not to see why.  One can hope, in spite of this, that Frightened Rabbit will not scare off easily.

Last Year's Man: RIP Leonard Cohen

Leonard Cohen

Just last week, the world lost renowned artist, Leonard Cohen, to cancer.  He was 82 years old.  Originally from Canada, he was a prolific literary writer, having published numerous volumes of poetry, as well as two novels, and an established singer-songwriter with 14 albums under his belt, including "You Want It Darker", released just days before his death.

There is no way to quantify the sense of lost I felt at the passing of Cohen.  His music meant so much to me as a young man.

In 2005, at the age of 35, I made my first trek to Manhattan - around the same age that Cohen moved to New York City to start his music career.  I went with my old friend and music guru, Matt.  We spent a long weekend walking up and down the island, checking out eateries in Mid-town, scouring vinyl shops in the East Village.  We took a detour through the trash-strewn 23rd Street until we came to the dilapidated, red-brick building that is Chelsea Hotel.

"Do you know what's gone on in there?"  Matt inquired knowingly.

"Other than Leonard Cohen getting head on an unmade bed?" I said.

"This is where rock stars come to die," Matt grinned.

Me and Matt, Chelsea Hotel, 2005

The Chelsea has been the hangout spot for artists for over a century.  Dylan Thomas died of pneumonia there.  Arthur C. Clarke wrote "2001: A Space Odyssey" there.  Jack Kerouac wrote "On the Road" there.  Sid Vicious fatally stabbed Nancy Spungen there.

And for a time, in 1968, Leonard Cohen lived there, writing about the sexual encounter I referred to in the 1974 song, "Chelsea Hotel No. 2".  One particular night, after having limited success on his debut album, Cohen went for a walk to clear his head and met an up and coming Janis Joplin in the elevator.  After striking up a conversation with her, she revealed that she was looking for Kris Kristofferson, and Cohen lied and said that he was Kristofferson.  This lead to  one-night stand that Cohen immortalized in the song.  His talent was to take the perverse and mundane and turn it into something lyrical and beautiful.

"I remember you well in the Chelsea Hotel

You were famous, your heart was a legend

You told me again you preferred handsome men

But for me you would make an exception.

And clenching your fist for the ones like us

Who are the figures of beauty

You fixed yourself, you said, "Well, never mind

We are ugly but we have the music."

It was Matt who introduced me to the music of Leonard Cohen back in 1990.  He put a few songs on a mix tape, along with songs by Dinosaur Jr., Prong, and Led Zepplin.  I fell in love with the songs and soon bought the 1975 collection, "The Best of Leonard Cohen", which has selections from his first four albums.  I still have it, still listen to it.  When I think of Leonard Cohen, I think of these songs.  To me, he represented the artistic and unconventional side of the '60s - willing to make art on his own merit rather than giving in to anything mainstream.

In 1994, my brother sent me a copy of "Grace" by Jeff Buckley, which, to me, was an instant classic.  Right away, I noticed an angelic cover of Cohen's "Hallelujah", which is perhaps one of the most beautiful songs ever recorded.  The first time I listened to it, I had chills go up and down my spine.  Not just at the exquisiteness of the music, but the fact that Buckley - someone around my age - was covering a Cohen song.  I remember gushing about it to my brother, and I remember my brother not really caring.  But to me, it was a vindication of all of the underground music that I held dear.

Cohen in the '60s

I noticed right away that the Cohen original and the Buckley version have different verses.  I always wondered about that.  So I did a bit of research on that.  John Cale did the first cover, and he noticed that the song was different every time Cohen performed the song live.  So he wrote to Cohen and asked for the lyrics.  Cohen sent him fifteen pages of lyrics.  Over the years, artists have been known to mix and match verses, depending on how they want to make the song.

In recent years, I have an even larger collection of Cohen's music -a sprawling double CD set called "The Essential Leonard Cohen" that is a more comprehensive collection of Cohen's music.  It has all of my favorites like "Suzanne", "So Long, Marianne", "Bird On a Wire", "Who By Fire?", and, my absolute favorite, "Famous Blue Raincoat".  But it also has many of his songs from the '80s that I was not familiar with - like "Ain't No Cure For Love", "Take This Waltz", and "Dance Me To the End of Love".  In many of these songs, he eschewed the minimalist, folk instrumentation I was used to in favor of glitzy, cheesy, '80s synthesizers.  Nevertheless, the songs are still good.  They still have Cohen's deep, silky voice, and his penchant for penning haunting melodies, as well as his profound, poetic words.

After learning of his death, that night, my wife and I sat down and listened to his music.  I asked her if he reminded her of other New York folk artists like Simon & Garfunkel or Bob Dylan.  A little, she said, but she saw more of an influence on Neil Diamond's music.

"He kind of reminds me of those French singers you like," she said, referring to Serge Gainsbourg and Jacques Brel.  She is not wrong.  They come from the same era.  As I listened to him, I was surprised to see his influence on Nick Cave, something I didn't expect.

His death came as such a shock and at such a tumultuous time, the news being released after Election Day, when this nation was in the grips of the worst election in history.  It almost seemed as if God was punishing us by taking one of our brightest stars.  That was another thing I liked about Cohen was his devotion to God.  His songs are full of sexual innuendos, and some of them quite dirty.  Yet he never allowed this to alter his faith.  All of these things are part of the human experience.  He was part saint, part whore.  Kind of like me.