Music Arcade

[matthew]

I tried variations on the water theme (to go with the "Isles" theme) like "Falcon Lake", "Sea of Madness" "Island In The Sun" ...but they all seemed too obscure...

"Day And Night We Walk These Aisles" was obscure and lame.

I doubt this thread will be used much anyway (just one more isle).

I just thought I would localize Neil-related posts from now on

<a href="http://www.dailymotion.com/swf/149672" target="_blank">http://www.dailymotion.com/swf/149672</a>

(end is kinda cut short there)

[matthew]

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/yYZ50PjDTi8" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/v/yYZ50PjDTi8</a>

[matthew]

re: Danger Bird on the other thread

"Danger Bird" is could be my very favourite 'epic' Crazy Horse tune. I have never understood why "Cortez", "Like A Hurricane", "Down By The River", "Cowgirl In The Sand" all eclipse that song in popularity. It is as if that song does not exist. So excited was I when he returned to it on "Year of the Horse".

I also never understood how "Hey Hey, My My" eclipsed "Sedan Delivery" on "Rust Never Sleeps" ...far superior song in my opinion. Anoher favourite.

[matthew]

Sugar Mountain: Neil Set Lists

First time I saw him I got the exact encore I wanted:

11-07-1996, Molson Centre, Montreal, Quebec, Canada
w/ Crazy Horse

   1. Hey Hey, My My
   2. Powderfinger
   3. Slip Away
   4. Don't Cry No Tears
   5. Big Time
   6. The Needle And The Damage Done
   7. Heart Of Gold
   8. Helpless
   9. Scattered
  10. Cinnamon Girl
  11. When You Dance, I Can Really Love
  12. Cortez The Killer
  13. Fuckin' Up
  14. Music Arcade
  15. Rockin' In The Free World
  16. Welfare Mothers
  17. Like A Hurricane
      ---
  18. This Town
  19. Sedan Delivery

[matthew]

Second Time:

(I would add listening to his soundcheck of "Sedan Delivery")

09-04-2003, Air Canada Centre, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
w/ Crazy Horse

   1. Falling From Above
   2. Double E
   3. Devil's Sidewalk
   4. Leave The Driving
   5. Carmichael
   6. Bandit
   7. Grandpa's Interview
   8. Bringin' Down Dinner
   9. Sun Green
  10. Be The Rain
      ---
  11. Hey Hey, My My
  12. Sedan Delivery
  13. Down By The River
  14. Powderfinger
  15. Prisoners Of Rock 'n' Roll
      ---
  16. Cinnamon Girl
  17. Fuckin' Up

(that's not really two 'encores')

[matthew]

Tape 'reveals order' to shoot Vietnam protesters
* 37-year-old recording of Kent State killings found
* National Guard always denied order to fire:

Listen to 'the order to shoot' given by the Ohio National Guard

Suzanne Goldenberg in Washington
Wednesday May 2, 2007
The Guardian

Four students were killed and nine injured at Kent State University on May 4 1970. Photograph: John Filo/AP/Valley Daily News
 
The command, as Alan Canfora heard it on a 37-year-old audio recording recently discovered in a government archive, appeared to leave no room for doubt. "Right here. Get set. Point. Fire." Then came 13 seconds of gunfire. When it ended, four students were dead and nine injured, and the shootings at Kent State University became engraved in America's collective memory as one of the most painful days of the Vietnam era.

Yesterday, Mr Canfora, who was among the nine students wounded on that day, demanded a new investigation into the shootings at Kent State in Ohio, saying it was time to settle conclusively what led the contingent of National Guard troops to open fire on unarmed student protesters.

"There has been a 37-year cover-up at Kent State. The commanding officers have long denied there was a verbal command to fire. They put the blame on the triggermen," Mr Canfora told the Guardian.

He said he wants the FBI to use new technology to analyse the recording. He also said he planned to post an audio clip of the recording on two websites.

Mr Canfora, who was 21 years old at the time of the shootings, was barely 60 metres away from the Guards when they opened fire. He was shot in the wrist.

"They stopped, turned, raised the weapons, began to shoot and continued to shoot for 13 seconds," he said. "It was like a firing squad."

His life was transformed by the events that day. One of his friends was among the dead, and he has devoted much of his time over the last 37 years trying to bring the Ohio National Guard and the federal authorities to account for the killings.

The Guard has always claimed that no order was given to open fire, and there is speculation that the students were cut down after one of the troops panicked, triggering a volley of gunfire.

Although eight guardsmen were indicted, no one was ever prosecuted, and the episode exposed the deep disdain of the Nixon administration for dissenters. The families of the 13 killed and wounded pursued a civil suit against the state governor and the National Guard, which was eventually settled out of court.

The materials from that civil suit were eventually stored in the archives at Yale University, where Mr Canfora recently rediscovered a 30-minute recording of the protest.

The recording was made by a fellow student, Terry Strubbe, who placed an old-fashioned reel-to-reel tape recorder on the window sill of his dorm room, which overlooked the protests. Mr Strubbe, who has declined to speak to reporters, still has the original recording in a bank safety deposit box.

However, a spokesman for Mr Strubbe, Joseph Bendo, told the Guardian yesterday he was unsure whether there were sounds of an order to open fire on the original recording.

"It was never heard on our version of the tape, but maybe nobody ever listened. It's unusual that nobody has heard it before in 37 years. Other people have heard this tape in the past, and maybe they weren't listening for it," he said.

But the power of America's memories of that day are undeniable. Nearly two generations after the shootings at Kent State, it now seems unthinkable that the National Guard could ever use live ammunition against students.

The events of that day were relived endlessly in shocking images of teenagers crouching over the corpses of their fellow students in the US heartland. They also led to protests which radiated across the country, shutting down hundreds of college campuses, and forcing Richard Nixon to decamp Washington for Camp David.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,,2070139,00.html

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/X6Vy4Tq-5a8" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/v/X6Vy4Tq-5a8</a>

[matthew]

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/OV0rAwk4lFE" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/v/OV0rAwk4lFE</a>

(still have yet to hear the full album)

[matthew]

I am addicted to this song.

That is Neil Young's 18 minute studio version of "Ordinary People" from Chrome Dreams II.


edit: Streamed on RS.

[matthew]

Tanya Donnelly never did much for me.

[matthew]

CSNY Speak Out and Listen In “Deja Vu”]http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/01/28/6675/]CSNY Speak Out and Listen In “Deja Vu”

Not a CSN&Y fan...so I am not even going to bother copying and pasting that...

[Poop Fresh-Herbed Pickles]

Morphing Neil Young for the Stage and Page

By TOM SELLAR
Published: July 20, 2008

MY, my, hey, hey, Neil Young’s “Greendale” is here to stay.

When Mr. Young recorded that 10-track concept album in 2003 with the band Crazy Horse, fans and critics were divided. Some found the song cycle overreaching. Others embraced the imaginative lyrics, which describe three generations of the Green family and a mythic small town reeling from a police shooting and environmental catastrophe. Rolling Stone magazine admired the “paranoia on Main Street” and ranked the album one of the year’s best.

That was just the beginning: Mr. Young went on to make “Greendale” into a concert tour, live recordings and an original film inspired by his post-9/11, save-the-Earth epic.

By now Mr. Young has moved on to new tours and releases and to activism against the war in Iraq. But “Greendale” continues to inspire spinoffs outside the music world, including a graphic novel and a multi-performer theater piece, which opens in New York on Wednesday.

The Ice Factory Festival will present this work, called “Neil Young’s Greendale,” at the Ohio Theater in SoHo for four performances. The production was created by Undermain Theater in Dallas, where it ran for five weeks in spring.

Bruce DuBose, who adapted the show for the stage and plays a role in the production, got hooked on the album when he first heard it. “It seemed obvious that Neil had some theatrical possibilities in mind when he wrote it with this third-person narrative,” he said. And he was taken with the rough-hewn 2003 film, featuring actors lip-syncing to Mr. Young’s vocals. “I kept thinking it would be very interesting to see it broken down into characters,” Mr. DuBose said, “and having the characters actually sing.”

For a few years Mr. DuBose didn’t pursue the stage rights, assuming someone else had secured them. But when he eventually applied, Mr. Young granted permission. “I gather that it interested him that we are a fairly small, experimental theater,” said Mr. DuBose, Undermain’s executive producer. “He has really been generous and pretty much hands off.” (Mr. Young has been touring and could not be reached for comment.)

An ensemble cast performs the tale, backed by a live band. The director, Katherine Owens, struggled in rehearsals first to identify the elusive narrative and then to turn it into dramatic action. For supplementary character information Undermain’s artists relied in part on stories Mr. Young told between the “Greendale” songs at a solo acoustic concert that was released on DVD.

Distributing the singing among multiple “Greendale” characters turned out to be a huge task, given the sprawling, novelistic material.

The breakthrough came when Ms. Owens realized she could build on another genre. “When I started thinking of it as opera, everything changed,” she said. “All of a sudden there was a lot more freedom in it.” Opera, she said, provided just the right form for a story that moves from domestic scenes to murder and then planetary cataclysm — with the Devil periodically offering commentary.

“It gets supernatural,” Mr. DuBose said. “By the end you’re looking at the universe and the planet, a lot of symbolic elements, alchemical symbols and things, a young girl and a bronze eagle. A lot of these themes have appeared in Neil’s songs over the years: the image of gold, for instance.”

To score the piece Undermain assembled a group of musicians who play in the theater’s Deep Ellum neighborhood of Dallas, including the guitarist Kenny Withrow from New Bohemians and the Grammy-winning drummer Alan Emert from Brave Combo. Playing within a theater production did not faze them, they said. “We try to keep it spontaneous and emotional,” Mr. Withrow said. “It’s deceptively simple music, just a few chord changes, but you have to really be dynamic.”

The collaborators say the results show that rock opera is still a form up for grabs. “It’s nothing like ‘Tommy’ or ‘Quadrophenia,’ ” Mr. Emert said, speaking of the Who projects. “It’s kind of like a play and an opera and a live concert all rolled into one.”

Theirs isn’t the only retelling of “Greendale.” Vertigo, the art-house arm of DC Comics, is turning Mr. Young’s material into a graphic novel. Karen Berger, the imprint’s executive editor, said the idea came from Mr. Young.

In its 15-year history, Vertigo’s titles for adults have included Swamp Thing, The Last Man and DMZ. Many have dealt with apocalyptic or somber social themes, like plague, gendercide and Earth’s destruction. With its magical elements and family sagas, “Greendale” fit.

Ms. Berger assigned the project to the artist Cliff Chiang, and the writer Joshua Dysart. “Josh established this wonderful, modern Southern Gothic approach to the tone of his writing,” Ms. Berger said. “He looked at a lot of Neil’s lyrics and tried to find ways to utilize them where it worked.” And, she added, Mr. Dysart was sympathetic to the work’s underlying vision of social redemption.

Like the Undermain stage collaborators, Vertigo’s team is digging deep into mythologies that Mr. Young has created about the fictitious town. So “Greendale” the graphic novel will feature concepts and characters beyond those introduced in the original recording. The 160-page volume will likely be released in fall 2009.

After that no one knows what new versions the songs may inspire — or whether the proliferation will reach a limit. But as Mr. Young once noted, it may be better to burn out than to fade away.

[Poop Fresh-Herbed Pickles]

Neil Young, Where Politics and Technology Meet

By BEN SISARIO
Published: July 19, 2008

When Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young booked a concert tour for the summer of 2006, it was supposed to be an easygoing, no-surprises reunion ticket for the Chardonnay set.

But Neil Young being Neil Young, it ended up a much more confrontational affair. Prodded by Mr. Young, the band reshaped the program around his album “Living With War,” a grungy jeremiad written, recorded and released in a few weeks that spring.

“I played them the record and said, ‘This is all I want to do,’ ” he recalled in an interview this week.

As recorded in Mr. Young’s new documentary of the tour, “CSNY: Déjà Vu,” which opens July 25 in New York, Los Angeles and 17 other cities, his band mates took to the antiwar theme eagerly. (In one scene, David Crosby calls the band “a benevolent dictatorship” and adds, “Neil is in charge.”) But the audiences were not exactly unanimous in agreement. In Atlanta, the first verse of Mr. Young’s “Let’s Impeach the President” brought boos, middle fingers and worse.

“The ‘Living With War’ album got such a varied reaction,” Mr. Young said. “Extreme negative and personal attacks, all kinds of things I had never had before from any kind of record. But that’s what made it so interesting, and such a great subject for a film. We didn’t know what was going happen, but we knew something was going to happen.”

To establish a journalistic tone for the film, Mr. Young hired Mike Cerre, a former ABC war correspondent in Iraq and Afghanistan, to be “embedded” on the tour, interviewing fans and capturing the mood of the shows.

“I called my wife and cameraman and told them I was going to be embedded in a rock tour,” Mr. Cerre said in a telephone interview. “They thought I said Iraq. There was a long silence at the other end of the phone.”

Mr. Cerre said he was given complete freedom to produce 12 newsy segments. Larry Johnson, the film’s producer, said most of them were used, and with only minor editing for length. Mr. Cerre found some support among concertgoers for the band’s politics, but what stands out are unflattering shots of the aging group onstage — like Stephen Stills, then 61, struggling to get up after a fall during “Rockin’ in the Free World” — and complaints from fans, not always civil, who disapproved of the political message.

When asked why he included such harsh reactions and images, Mr. Young said simply: “Because it was harsh. It’s content. This is a documentary.”

Mr. Young’s career as a musical provocateur is well known, but his interests as a multimedia mogul aren’t. “CSNY: Déjà Vu,” made under his pseudonym, Bernard Shakey, is the fifth release in his sporadic career as a director, following the surrealistic comedy “Human Highway” (1982) and “Greendale,” based on his concept album of the same title from 2003.

He also has a company developing high-quality audio downloads and a project to convert a 1959 Lincoln Continental Mark IV — all 2 1/2 tons and 19 1/2 feet of it — to ultra-efficient electric power, with the help of an international network of scientists and businessmen. Even more ambitious is his archives project, using technology for Blu-ray discs (the prevailing high-definition format of DVD) that he developed with Sun Microsystems. The first of five volumes, a 10-disc package covering 1963 to 1972, is scheduled for release in October.

At 62, Mr. Young still wants to change the world, and he seems to embrace the contradictions of his persona. Staying at the swank Carlyle Hotel on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, he was interviewed with two signed Picasso prints over his shoulder, but his plain shirt and rumpled khaki pants were spattered with paint. Giving a photographer less than 60 seconds to shoot his portrait, he seemed very much the impatient superstar, but in an hourlong interview he was casual and energetically talkative.

He said he has no great box office expectations for “CSNY: Déjà Vu,” which might be wise, given the poor ticket sales of recent war documentaries. This year’s Oscar winner, “Taxi to the Dark Side,” from Alex Gibney, has brought in about $275,000.

“My films are pretty wacky,” he said. “They definitely don’t have much of a commercial appeal. This is probably the most serious film I’ve ever made. It’s more like journalism.”

In conversation Mr. Young went back and forth between politics and technology, and in discussing his Lincoln Continental project — called “Linc-Volt” — he linked the two. Its goal, he said, is to eliminate the need for oil and therefore the cause for war. “Why are we having a war?” he said. “It’s all about energy. Trying to get rid of the reason for the war, that’s something that’s doable.”

His archive project is not political but is challenging nonetheless. Conceived more than a decade ago but stalled for technological reasons, it uses the high-quality multimedia capabilities of Blu-ray to display music, video and other digital documentation through a file-cabinet structure — pull out the cabinet with a click and choose the rarity. A demonstration revealed some astonishing footage, like two moments from the 1971 sessions for the album “Harvest” and a spontaneous performance at a Greenwich Village folk club in 1970.

Like the archives, “CSNY: Déjà Vu” involves no small amount of nostalgia. The first words in the film are, “In the 1960s the Vietnam War was raging,” and the antiwar activism of the Vietnam era is frequently invoked, both as bona fides for the band’s history of political protest and as a foil for the more conservative climate that the four men encounter nearly 40 years after their first performances together.

But Mr. Young rejected a suggestion that the film might be more about Vietnam than about Iraq.

“It’s about war; it’s not about either one of them,” he said. “In our sound-bite society, ‘Let’s Impeach the President’ and the political side of it seems to be the side that the press focused on the most. But that’s an offshoot of the real story, which is the tragedy of war, and the families, and how it affects people.”