neil young

also my housemates.

(to play the same dozen or so songs over and over on tipsy saturday evenings. no beef, just kind of lol c'mon guys, "land of confusion" again??)

gotta be honest here— i piggyback off of a friend's premium account (they offered). i thought it would be a wonderful way to check out a lot of new (to me) things and it has been. also i mean, idk how the streams/artist revenue get counted for premium users, but at this point i'm using it a lot so i'm kind of mad at myself for starting to rely on it more often. if it goes away, oh well. i'll adapt and make do like i did before this current arrangement.

funny (to me) sidebar: when spotify first started to gain recognition about a decade ago i used to joke that real fans bought the records, but listened on spotify to make sure that the bands saw as much money as possible. how mad the "low paying" aspect of it made me back then seems quaint now.

final thought—

unsurprisingly, i'm with neil across the board on this one. spotify sucks for a myriad of reasons and this joe shitforbrains situation is the breaking point. if me losing the ability to shuffle twelve hour lover's rock playlists means dickheads like this get muted, i'm all for it.

also it would be really funny if some memey type person pulled their stuff. like i wanna see rick astley take a fucking stand and title his open letter to spotify: "rick roll, part two. i'm rolling tf off this platform lol."

popcorn at the ready.

twelve hour lover, eh? your poor partner.

I vaguely remember Neil Young talking about GMOs, vaccines and Autism. I'm curious what you guys think of this? https://www.thedailybeast.com/neil-youngs-long-record-of-spreading-scientific-misinformation

he's a crank on gmos but i don't remember him ever saying anything about vaccines & autism or any shit like that, and this article doesn't give any evidence of that either, only loosely tying anti-gmo crank beliefs to anti-vax crank beliefs.

& there are real issues with gmos but largely around intellectual property rights and corporate control, not young's crank safety concerns, which the article totally ignores

This is also the guy that responded to 9/11 with that "Let's Roll" song - I don't think of him as a particularly sophisticated or consistent political thinker, he shoots from the hip and sometimes (like now) he ends up on the right side of the issue, so why complain?

yeah i'm just glad he didn't turn into an antivaxxer, it wouldn't have been that weird (aging hippie with some existing crank beliefs)

the property rights and corporate control of GMO's seems like the really dire issues to me

Yeah Daniel_Rf otm. Neil has obviously embraced conservatism and anti-science beliefs on other issues in the past. But for me, its the same thing as the issue of other platforms like Youtube etc also promoting misinformation & reprehensible content. Like, thats all fair criticism, but if this specific situation results in one platform being less shitty, or at least being punished for being shitty bc people start to realize that they can make conscious choices about who gets their streaming dollar, thats a net win imho.

Neil Young’s Long Record of Spreading Scientific Misinformation

"long record" lol the article is literally about one thing that he did, once.

curious choice to include numerous links in that piece that refute its premise

eye otm. totally agreed.

and neil has had "old man yells at cloud" energy for going on at least two decades now. kind of one of the reasons i can still tolerate him, tbh.

wow that Neil is anti-science article is in bad faith

!

it's misinformation itself really

Sounds like Foo Fighters are pulling their music from Spotify

Joni too: https://jonimitchell.com/news/newsitem.cfm?id=1592

That Daily Beast article is pure trash. Even for them.

A reach linking his misguided GMO views to suggesting they created anti-vaxxers.

The two aren't neatly linked either. I have a ton of friends who are anti-GMO and pro-vaccine. There is the potential for overlap, sure, but they're different issues

Most anti-Big Pharma folk I know aren't anti-COVID vax either

Sounds like Foo Fighters are pulling their music from Spotify

― Blues Guitar Solo Heatmap (Free Download) (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Saturday, January 29, 2022 11:37 AM (thirty-four minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Where are you seeing this? There are some tweets suggesting as much, but I can't find anything official.

Yeah, I saw some tweets last night congratulating Grohl for doing it, but didn't see one single thing about him actually doing it.

ah okay that's just what i saw

That's actually a good idea, if you hear praise on musicians for doing something they haven't actually done, they have no choice but to do it!

*heap

you know i was pondering this on my walk yesterday and it occurred to me that dave grohl (much as i don't care for him) is one of the last of the big "legacy" artists that could really start to turn the tide. i should think his audience has a lot more overlap with rogan's than neil or joni ever would. just imagine if he really got a stick up his butt and attempted to pull the nirvana catalogue. it would never happen, of course. but that's the kind of thing that would really resonate.

I mean, he may get out in front of this and actually do it soon, considering the Foos weren't afraid to play vax-only shows last year, but he hasn't made a peep yet afaik. xps

I realize shameless grifters like Rogan don’t give a shit about anything beyond the money, but I gotta say that I would feel like an absolute shitheel if people like Neil Young and Joni Mitchell were specifically targeting me, like in a, “holy hell, where did I go wrong with my life” kind of way.

As in, holy hell where did I go wrong after signing that 100 million dollars deal ?

am i crazy to think it's cooler to decline 100million than to take it?

i mean, i don't want that much money. ever.

this drawing of Neil by Joni Mitchell is great

https://www.instagram.com/p/CZUR6nYlgCF/?utm_medium=copy_link

Already seeing the censorship whines. Lol fucker kept his podcast, who TF was censored.

Same people who are silent on book bannings and CRT bannings

xp i've always wondered if joni knew about joan around then
both having been on fire for years

Christgau has a big Neil thing today you can access for free:

https://robertchristgau.substack.com/p/the-big-lookback-neil-young?s=r&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email

Didn't realize--written in 1997! (With some update, it looks like.)

his analysis of hawks & doves is pretty off because he doesn't know that the acoustic side stuff dates back to as early as 74, so it's not a reaction to anything going on in 1980

Also, considering that he has dismissed every album of new original music released in this century---before Barn, his album of the year---for apparently extra-musical, anti-Rogin etc. reasons, since he didn't say much about the music, typically enough in latter-day grading sessions---think I'll take my time about reading that.

And I'm pretty familiar with his takes on 20th Century Neil, from the Consumer Guide books.

yeah i'll have to go back i can't digest xgau in my minutes of fucking off at work

Christgau is interviewed in a two-part Neil-Young-in-review DVD my brother and I watched a little while ago. He says there that seeing CSNY live in 1970 was what made him a Neil fan, and his comments are germane (though he seems to think "Will to Love" is on On the Beach).

It's a good read so far, but not sure I follow his "12-year songwriting drought" ended by Barn. Obviously there are thoughts about the relative quality of the Promise of the Real stuff, but he certainly has been writing new songs since 2009. Or was that just more of a Christgau dig at what he thought of the material since?

Even that part where he goes further on the "drought" completely fails to mention the POTR era. I don't know, I'm probably overthinking it.

No, he's underhearing it. He's really less reliable than ever, overall.

It's like he gets distracted from listening by thinking about what he's going to say: I've done that too, recognize the symptoms.

It can also come with ageing, getting more eager to put yourself out there, while you still can, pot to kettle as well---come to think of it, also something to do with Neil's release of new stuff, not always the most self-scrutinizing, as we've noted.

The 1997 article persuaded me to give Young another go after recoiling from ATGR -- one of his best period essays.

Yeah, he was more reliable then, still has his moments.

Back then I admired the self-knowledge of two lines: “Though my problems are meaningless that don’t make them go away” (from the whiny “On the Beach”) and “It’s hard to say the meaning of this song” (from the wacked-out “Ambulance Blues”). Now I’m impressed that even in his despondency Young never lost his grip, because On the Beach lets us empathize with the depths he’d sunk to, with clear and specific attention to his fame.

boooooooooo to that first sentence, just completely wrong

on the beach is one of his finest songs, period. whiny? imagine writing and recording that song and someone calling it whiny. you can see why in that same album, same songs (ambulance blues) young was lashing out at critics like christgau who were just not getting it at all

someone needs to protect neil, he doesn't have enough defenders

Haven't read the piece yet--just posted it because I thought it would be of interest.

Two things I've said many times: 1) "Ambulance Blues" is right at the top of the heap--my favourite Neil song back in high school, still one of my ten favourite; 2) I think--as with Vertigo--there's a tendency to overrate On the Beach because of it's long-time unavailability on CD. I don't direct that at anyone in particular, but in the aggregate, I think it developed a mystique disproportionate to how good it is. It's good. Side two is near-great. Side one has "Walk On" and "See the Sky About to Rain," and if those songs lead and close a side, that's not good.

I don't have a problem with calling the album whiny. Whininess was endemic to the '70s. There's a lot of good '70s music that's whiny.

clem, am I reading you correctly? "Walk On" and "See the Sky About to Rain" are inferior to Side Two offerings?