neil young

oh shit decade

and #s of boots. sorry gang. read my lips, vote dead man

After The Gold Rush.

but On The Beach too. the title song makes me cry.

I voted Time Fades Away

this was already done.
Best of Neil Young studio records

This one has live albums.

Some of them, anyway. (Unplugged, Year of the Horse, Road Rock vol. 1)

Oh. The studio albums poll had the live albums too. Nevermind then.

I voted Ragged Glory because it needs more love and less rockism. That's a srsly good record, yo.

First person to vote "Old Ways" gets a dollar from me.

I voted for "Old Ways" just for the cash. You want my paypal address?

After The Gold Rush = the good songs are so good they make you forget about the bad ones

On The Beach = pretty much all good

I mean "When You Dance" is kind of endearing as a cornily sincere, b-level hippie artifact, but Cripple Creek Ferry is a real turd of a song, and Birds isn't great either.

I got to get away from this day to day running around

TRANS FTW!

Arc/Weld. The worst/best live albums ever.

Dead Man is actually really really good.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Tonight's The Night

closely followed by Goldrush and On The Beach

TTN is definitely my favourite - it's so fucked, so moving. Tender, ragged and rocking in equal measure.

Baby Mellow My Mind aches so hard - the swell of pedal steel, touch of lonesome barroom piano, and Neil's voice actually breaking up.

Come On Baby Let's Go Downtown rocks. It sounds so triumphant in its hedonism yet the undercurrent is utterly bleak.

Other favourites - Everybody Knows, Rust, Zuma, Time Fades Away, Sleeps With Angels, Live Rust. Hell, there hardly any poor ones. I've not heard the infamous Landing On Water, but Are You Passionate was bloody awful. Trans is ace though.

Ragged Glory is great fun, one of his most satisfying rock records, but I wouldn't quite put it in the top rung of Neil albums.

Harvest - handful of great songs and some dreary stuff too. Overall, it's too slick, too polite. I like Neil a little scuffed around the edges.

Rust Never Sleeps has Powderfinger, for the win.

Anyone else notice how Apatow kept dropping the cover of Landing On Water all over Knocked Up. What's the deal with that? Consensus aropund these parts on that album?

Rust Never Sleeps for "Powderfinger", but also because of the individually peculiar time and place in which I first loved this record. Also, it's an incredibly balanced album in so many ways I can't be bothered to expand on here.

Consensus aropund these parts on that album?

I noticed the curious product placement too, Tal. There's an interesting thread here devoted to Landing on Water.

no "none of the above"????

just snuck in a vote for tonight's the night. right in the nick of time.

emotion of the less contained and calculated variety

me for tonights the night, too. its so close though - there are better songs on zuma and everybody knows, and almost enough to give the nod to one of them, but TTN takes it

Yeah, Tonight's The Night would be my second or third and very close.

Rust Never Sleeps by a hair, for side one and Powderfinger alone (though nearly sunk by Welfare Mothers).

Oh c'mon, Welfare Mothers is great! My favorite Neil Young throwaway.

DIVORCEE

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

a 3-way tie this time then.

Fair result.

Wait. Zuma should've been much higher, though.

c'est vrai

Someone voted for Everybody's Rockin' again.

One vote for "Zuma"! No way!! This poll is corrupt!!!

"On the Beach" - there's an ILM album if ever there was one

Sleeps With Angels is way too high. And Freedom is way too low.

The fact that Zuma ranked below Trans completely invalidates this poll.

So, basically, I'm the only person who voted for "Zuma"? Don't believe it.

I wasn't around when CSN(and sometimes Y) were at their peak, so apologies for the following somewhat naive question:

How much of Neil Young's popularity in the 70s can be attributed to his association with CSN? The thought never really occurred to me until I was checking out CSN(Y)'s Allmusic entry today, which says "it was the only American-based band to approach the overall societal impact of the Beatles".

Personally, I like Neil Young exponentially more than CSN(Y), so my gut feeling is that the majority of Neil Young's fans were there on account of his own talent. But was there a certain contingency of fans who cheered loudest for "Ohio" and "Helpless", contemplating to themselves at the Live Rust concerts that it would be better if CSN were up on stage too? Or was it more like "Why the hell does Neil Young ever play with them? They butchered 'Helpless'..."? Just wondering what the prevalent view was back in the day.

When CSN and sometimes Y reunited for a predictably horrible album in 1988, Neil begged off the obligatory tour, saying, "I dunno man, those guys need some serious practice."

And that Allmusic statement strikes me as comically absurd.

Yeah, I admit it raised my eyebrow as well, but then I go the ILM search function, and the second thing I read on the Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young C/D S/D thread is "i'm more interested in the fact that CSN(Y) (or whatever) were actually REALLY POPULAR and BIG -- as in springsteen in '85/outkast or britney spears BIG. that's such a radical sea-change in mass public musical taste that deserves some comment, no?"

On The Beach is very good, but would have voted Everybody Knows this is Nowhere, in fact i shall play it now

hi alex, how is the weather in denver? in frankfurt it has been raining most of the day. i would have voted <i>after the goldrush</i>, i think. but <i>on the beach</i> is a decent winner, too.

i will never learn the ilm html tags...

weird

it was the only American-based band to approach the overall societal impact of the Beatles

In their time their American album sales were HUGE. Their cultural cachet was such that their public greeted "Ohio" as a major statement. I'm wary of statements like AllMusic's, but the Shakey bio also makes the same suggestion.

CSNY were huge because the Byrds, the Hollies, and the Buffalo Springfield had all been huge before.

I was at the 1991 NJ show you posted today. Fuck, that was loud.

i saw the same bill a couple weeks earlier at madison sq garden. it was fuck loud indeed. arena was about 90 percent empty when sonic youth were onstage. and about 50 percent grumbling about the noise when neil and crazy horse were onstage. it was glorious.

Apologize in advance if I'm inviting bad mojo, but he's playing here tonight and I'm just not sure I can muster the energy (and/or cash). Sigh.

I should find a recording of the 1991 Philly show I went to, with Crazy Horse, SY and Social Distortion. I only remember bits and pieces of it.

Season two! Season two! Season two!

In all seriousness, incredible series and great conversations tyler, such a joy to hear folks enthuse about Neil all summer.

thx for listening jon! it was fun — not sure when exactly we'll get it rolling again, but it'll happen.

Good enough for me!

I wanted to see him a few days back but unfortunately had family commitments. I saw he’s played “I’m the Ocean” on this tour!

just the fact that he's been opening with "ambulance blues" makes this tour a must-see (though he'll probably open with "sugar mountain" or something when I see him next week haha)

45-minute "Sugar Mountain" and then encoring with Everybody's Rockin' from back-to-front.

well, that sounds pretty good

so ... this is a rockin' show? i saw him two years ago and while it was interesting to see him do the solo acoustic thing, i definitely would prefer to see a rockin' show this time. (current tour is headed my way)

yeah he's playing long electric jams — "cowgirl in the sand," "fuckin up", "like a hurricane" etc, along with some mellower stuff.

Looks like he debuted a new political song last night. Neil has a pretty erratic track record when it comes to those, from iconic to awkwardly on the nose.

you can hear a soundcheck version of the new song ("BIG CRIME") on the NYA. In the Living With War vein, zero subtlety, just a rant, but hey, maybe we need some rants.

tbh I get the impression his political songs became a lot more on-the-nose out of necessity - ambiguity, even to the smallest degree, made it easier and easier for people to ignore what he was saying or worse misinterpret it, especially at a time when the general populace has grown more willfully ignorant. So he makes these songs blunt and even if doesn't draw converts, it does force people to reveal their true nature when they start foaming at the mouth.

A short clip of the encore last night

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8B9ATiGpbl8

Glad Marcus tore apart that terrible Trump song in "Real Life" today.

yeah, there's no defending that track. it's parody lib toby keith material.

At least *someone* is keeping the concept of protest songs alive.

this stuff is killer — https://chrisforsyth1.bandcamp.com/album/all-one-song

https://i.postimg.cc/L5pcRz5m/neil.jpg

Holy CanCon Stringman!

that looks excruciatingly bad

the only good NY covers album is The Bridge

Big Crime isn't close to the worst Neil song this year tbh

this stuff is killer — https://chrisforsyth1.bandcamp.com/album/all-one-song

― tylerw, Saturday, September 6, 2025 10:22 AM (one week ago) bookmarkflaglink

yeah this is great

There are dozens and dozens of great Neil Young covers; I've collected in the neighborhood of four or five hundred, I bet (and Canadian artists especially tend to take care, so I bet that Massey Hall show is quite good).

in the neighborhood of four or five hundred

A little over 700, actually. I haven't been keeping up for the past four or five years, though--need to see what's been put out recently.

is Neil invited to come watch the tribute show?

I haven't seen or heard anything Joel Plaskett's done in almost 25 years but Clueless Wonder remains one of the greatest songs I've ever heard.

(xpost) I bet at least a few people in the building will be dreaming of an unannounced drop-in.

Lefsetz liked the Los Angeles show and said typical Lefsetz things about Neil and the gig on his website post

Lots of folks on cnn and Bluesky and YouTube as well just discovered Neil’s new Big Crime song as he opened his set at Farm aid with it

still not much of a song, but I'm happy to hear a hearty middle finger to trump played in a packed stadium.

neil and co. were impressively shambolic at farm aid for a band that's been on the road all summer haha.

Came across Farm Aid on CNN during Dylan's set and stayed with it. I always assumed--maybe wrongly--that farmers were largely conservative, so there felt like a bit of a disconnect between those on stage (who again, maybe wrongly, I assume were mostly fiercely anti-Trump) and those watching.

Neil obviously chose his songs for the occasion, and as a comment on present circumstances. The inclusion of "Old Man" was interesting. I think of that song as a blueprint of sorts for "Campaigner" a few years later. I know it was written for a ranch hand, and also, I'm sure (consciously or not) for his father. But thinking about what was explicit in "Campaigner," he may also have subconsciously written "Old Man" to LBJ, and even to Nixon--testing the limits of empathy, how much he was able find some commonality where there was none.

But you can't do that with Trump. You can't sing "I'm a lot like you" and have Trump as the unnamed "you" at the other end. Because no one is, thankfully.

I always assumed--maybe wrongly--that farmers were largely conservative, so there felt like a bit of a disconnect between those on stage (who again, maybe wrongly, I assume were mostly fiercely anti-Trump) and those watching.

It's a gray area at best. I imagine they'll accept help wherever it comes from. You have to remember too that Neil, Willie Nelson, and John Mellencamp (lefties all) started Farm Aid in response to Reagan's disastrous polices.

The official Farm Aid YouTube channel has uploaded clipped up versions of sets from prior events, with many of the earliest ones taken direct from the archived simulcasts by The Nashville Network. These include performances by the Blasters and X, neither of them shying away from protest material.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gSv5eCVAu6M

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D3Zm2z-tq90

Everyone I saw from Dylan on was definitely of the left; didn't know if there was a country artist or two earlier who might not have been. Nothing to do with Neil, but I thought Willie Nelson's "Everything Is Bullshit" was great; with a title like that I'd expect something really heavy-handed, but anything but.

Lots of folks on cnn and Bluesky and YouTube as well just discovered Neil’s new Big Crime song as he opened his set at Farm aid with it

― curmudgeon, Sunday, 21 September 2025 14:12 (two days ago)

My father texted me at 6 AM this morning about "Big Crime"

It’s nice to see the next set on Amazon — Harvest Moon, Unplugged, Sleeps With Angels, Mirror Ball. I’ve been holding off on trying to hunt down copies of those in anticipation of this one.

Late-era Neil's biggest fan returns to gush: World Record is so good! I'm listening to it again after a long spell away from Neil, preparing for a first listen to Talkin' to the Trees... I love his raw, chaotic, "WE GOTTA CAPTURE ALL THE MISTAKES" modern style. It's so... gung-ho!

xp oh shit!

https://consequence.net/2025/10/neil-young-pulling-music-amazon-calls-for-boycott/

The "Zoomer" (ugh) station here counts down a Top 10 from some week in the distant past every afternoon; they tend to come up short on the hour, so they'll fill the remaining time with (of course) some Cancon, usually completely unrelated. The other day they only had a couple of minutes left so they squeezed in Neil's "Wonderin'," the regular studio version from Everybody's Rockin'. Not sure if I've posted this before, but I can't think of a Neil Young song I love more from an album I loathe (don't remember how the earlier Archives version goes--could be better). Great video, too.

Just got an email link to "As Time Explodes"...I like it. Generic, I know--and, because I like it, too short--but for me, the absence of lyrics is a big plus. I've found Neil's political lyrics the last few years so clunky. This way, he can string news clips together for a video, make his point, but not ruin the song. The video's really generic, but if you're just listening, doesn't affect the song at all.

Just saw this brilliance posted elsewhere. They're having so much fun!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ovum-GjYWKQ

No one mentioning his 80th birthday here? My FB wall is filled with posts (mine included), and the CBC is doing three hours this afternoon.

neil > dylan

in terms of who conquered the 70s, sure

neil > dylan for all time for me

Happy to see both still active at this point

The recent Uncut cover mount CD of Neil covers is fantastic, well worth tracking down. J Mascis, Phosphorescent, MJ Lenderman, etc. the Sharon Van Etten and the Attachment Theory take on “Helpless” is my standout so far, beautiful.