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An unofficial news blog for Neil Young fans from Thrasher's Wheat with concert and album updates, reviews, analysis, and other Rock & Roll ramblings. Separating the wheat from the chaff since 1996.
by thrasher@PermaLink: 7/07/2012 04:48:00 PM
10 comments
by thrasher@PermaLink: 7/07/2012 11:03:00 AM
10 comments
These songs were all released after his golden period of 1966-1978, and we also excluded material from his three late 1980s/early 1990s comeback albums (Freedom, Ragged Glory and Harvest Moon.)
by thrasher@PermaLink: 7/06/2012 06:31:00 PM
30 comments
Q: Jonathan, out of all the subjects and artists you could’ve focused on, why did you choose Neil’s music to explore in such depth?
Demme: Cinema.
Neil’s the most cinematic person that I can think of.
He writes cinematically, moves cinematically, walks cinematically, thinks and writes cinematically. I’m looking at him now and there is some cinema chip inside of him. (Young laughs). All these stories in these songs are different, and the characters he assumes are so different, he never repeats himself in the way he presents himself in the music. It’s this endless kind of thing. I have lots of ideas for movies. I would love to do a spoken word movie with Neil. He’s a human fountain of cinema.
I admire him so much — forget the music, he’s one of my all time life-enriching sources. I love his sensibilities as a filmmaker.
I know what he likes. We’re very free, open, when we work together.
Labels: jonathan demme, neil young
by thrasher@PermaLink: 7/05/2012 06:17:00 PM
7 comments
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."
"The very word "secrecy" is repugnant in a free and open society; and we are as a people inherently and historically opposed to secret societies, to secret oaths and to secret proceedings. We decided long ago that the dangers of excessive and unwarranted concealment of pertinent facts far outweighed the dangers which are cited to justify it."
"Even today, there is little value in opposing the threat of a closed society by imitating its arbitrary restrictions. Even today, there is little value in insuring the survival of our nation if our traditions do not survive with it. And there is very grave danger that an announced need for increased security will be seized upon by those anxious to expand its meaning to the very limits of official censorship and concealment. That I do not intend to permit to the extent that it is in my control. And no official of my Administration, whether his rank is high or low, civilian or military, should interpret my words here tonight as an excuse to censor the news, to stifle dissent, to cover up our mistakes or to withhold from the press and the public the facts they deserve to know."
"[We have an] obligation to inform and alert the American people -- to make certain that they possess all the facts that they need, and understand them as well -- the perils, the prospects, the purposes of our program and the choices that we face.
Without debate, without criticism, no Administration and no country can succeed -- and no republic can survive. That is why the Athenian lawmaker Solon decreed it a crime for any citizen to shrink from controversy. And that is why our press was protected by the First Amendment-- the only business in America specifically protected by the Constitution -- not primarily to amuse and entertain, not to emphasize the trivial and the sentimental, not to simply "give the public what it wants" -- but to inform, to arouse, to reflect, to state our dangers and our opportunities, to indicate our crises and our choices, to lead, mold, educate and sometimes even anger public opinion."
"And so it is to the printing press -- to the recorder of man's deeds, the keeper of his conscience, the courier of his news -- that we look for strength and assistance, confident that with your help man will be what he was born to be: free and independent."
JFK - 1961
You need only understand the true context of George Bush’s “thousand points of light” reference. It has nothing to do with a call to civic and charitable involvement. Rather, it is a reference to Illuminism, an encoded esoteric call to arms signaling to all the wreckers throughout the world that the time has come to declare out in the open (in George Bush’s own words), a “New World Order”.
In the United States more and more recognize the disconnect between government and the needs of most Americans. They see how crony capitalist policies lead to the largest wealth divide we have known with increasing poverty, joblessness, underemployment and insecurity. At the same time the Congress, Treasury and Federal Reserve funnel trillions of dollars to the big banks, but demand cuts for programs that would create jobs, fund state and local government, build the infrastructure, provide basic necessities and protect the environment. This is the first generation of Americans who see that their children are likely to be worse off than they are.
Reagan White House Staffer Fawn Hall - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Traitor and/or Patriot?
Traitor or Patriot?
"The year 1776, celebrated as the birth year of the nation and for the signing of the Declaration of Independence, was for those who carried the fight for independence forward a year of all-too-few victories, of sustained suffering, disease, hunger, desertion, cowardice, disillusionment, defeat, terrible discouragement, and fear, as they would never forget, but also of phenomenal courage and bedrock devotion to country, and that too, they would never forget."
--David McCullough from 1776
by thrasher@PermaLink: 7/04/2012 03:35:00 AM
41 comments
As luck and skill would have it, a medley of American and Canadian songsters by the name Profane Sass took it upon themselves to submit their gripping take on “Wayfaring Stranger” to the Invite, playing with such verve and spirit that Neil was moved to select that song as the bona fide Winner. We were fortunate to capture the band’s onscreen reaction upon being told that they’d gained Neil’s recognition in a big way. Having absorbed the good news, the members gathered themselves for a follow up interview. Read up on the story of each member finding their way into the band, how they keep their ecological footprint minimal, as well as the lengths they’re going to keep this association of musicians traveling strong.
Profane Sass: "Our advice to help all these struggling musicians out there would be to cut back on unnecessary expenses, dump any ego in the trash (and look for tasty food while you’re in there), don’t expect to get rich, love your art and play what you want and not what they want.
There is also a big difference between a hobby and a lifestyle, decide for yourself."
by thrasher@PermaLink: 7/03/2012 08:51:00 AM
9 comments
I know that when we talked last time that you don’t collect a lot of memorabilia, but what was that one Neil-related thing at your house that you showed me?
The picture on the wall? That’s not even memorabilia, that’s history! (laughs) That was me and the R.E.M. guys backing Neil on “Ambulance Blues” at the Bridge benefit concert. We’ve done it twice but that time we backed him on “Ambulance Blues.” That was Peter’s and my idea.
We submitted a list of songs we thought would be cool to do with him. We actually rehearsed “Ambulance Blues” and “On the Beach” but he liked “Ambulance Blues” better. He started playing it after that but he hadn’t really done it live since ’74, since it came out. I feel like we maybe got him back into the song a bit. I’ve seen him play it again since then. That was pretty amazing.
I’ve got some other weird Neil stuff lying around. I’ve got the matchbooks from the ’78 Boarding House shows that say, “Neil Young World Tour 1978” and it was five nights at the Boarding House, which I think were the only shows he did that year. This is when he debuted a lot of the Rust Never Sleeps stuff before it came out.
I’ve got a weird Re-ac-tor where it’s the vinyl with the labels on it but it never got pressed. So it’s like this big hockey puck of vinyl with the Re-ac-tor labels on it. It’s really cool. I’ve got tons of other stuff too.
Yeah, I’m pretty ridiculous when it comes to Neil.
Labels: neil young, scott mccaughey
by thrasher@PermaLink: 7/03/2012 08:20:00 AM
2 comments
Labels: Billy Corgan, neil young
by thrasher@PermaLink: 7/02/2012 10:48:00 PM
5 comments
Uncut is the best music magazine by far since it was born in the nineties.
This UK tomb has consistently reviewed Neil Young's output over the last fifteen years or so in a way/style that the other magazines ain,t come near.
Great ,good ,ok.poor or crap [not many of the last two]their consistency and continuity of recognizing Young's mercurial talents is unmatched in the rock /pop critic area. Allan Jones', the editor, opening page gets right to the heart of something.
Long may these guys run.
When Neil Young brings Crazy Horse to London in 1976, I'm four rows from the front of the stage at Hammersmith Odeon. It's late March, a Sunday night. I still have the tickets, somewhere, probably curled at the edges and yellow with age by now, a bit like most of us who were there at the time.
"It seems like I just got here from somewhere else," is the first thing Neil says, appearing unannounced on stage, standing in a spotlight blinking, shielding his eyes with a hand, like someone looking into the far distance, not sure what might be out there. He looks bedraggled, like he's spent the night in a ditch, dressed in a torn and clearly battered old suede jacket, a shirt he might have been wearing for a week and patched up jeans. Crows for all I know are nesting in his hair. He sits down behind a cluster of mics, as if he's giving evidence against the Mob at a congressional hearing, picks up a guitar and falteringly plays "Tell Me Why". This is followed by a monologue, during which he affects to believe he’s in Germany. It’s funny at first, then oddly disconcerting, although you're inclined to suspect his disorientation is a clever impersonation of someone too whacked out to know where they are. If he’s truly this barbecued, it's a wonder he's conscious.
Anyway, his aw-shucks haplessness continues as he grapples with a banjo and a harmonica rack into which he fits a harmonica. There’s a horrible noise when he blows into it. "Put it in upside down," he drawls somewhat distractedly. "Don't do that every night," he adds, although you suspect he probably does as part of a performance whose haphazardness is possibly a carefully crafted illusion. He then plays a version of "Mellow My Mind" from Tonight’s The Night whose rustic twang makes it sound more like "For The Turnstiles" from On The Beach. Three new songs quickly follow – "Too Far Gone", which we won’t hear again until he includes it on 1989's Freedom, and "Day And Night We Walk These Aisles" and "Don’t Say You Win, Don’t Say You Lose", which nearly 40 years on remain unreleased. He finishes this opening set with "Heart Of Gold" and promises to return after a short break with Crazy Horse, "to keep this story moving".
Then, here they are: Neil and Crazy Horse. It’s been seven years since Everybody Knows This is Nowhere introduced us to the raw elemental noise they make together, a long wait to see them live at last, during which time they've lost original guitarist Danny Whitten to drugs and replaced him with the intimidating Frank 'Poncho' Sampedro, who’s on stage now slugging it out with Neil on a malarial "Down By The River", which is full of swampy dread and festering malevolence. It sounds unbelievable. Elsewhere there are epic versions of "Southern Man" and "Cortez The Killer", the gloriously sloppy gospel hoe-down of "Let It Shine", from the Stills-Young album, Long May You Run, and ferociously dispatched takes on "Drive Back" and "Cinnamon Girl".
Best of all is something no-one’s heard before, which Neil, deadpan, introduces as "another laidback song" and turns out to be one of the first ever performances of "Like A Hurricane". All night, people around me have been wondering aloud about what a huge industrial fan is doing on stage. We find out now, when it whirs noisily to life and what feels like a gale-force wind nearly blows the band off their feet, Neil’s hair streaming behind him as he hunches into it, like someone walking home through a blizzard. The noise Crazy Horse are making behind him is the one, basically, they will go on making, on and off, for the next four decades, up to and including the new Americana, a great reunion they and Neil tell us all about in this month’s terrific cover story by Jaan Uhelszki.
As ever, enjoy the issue and if you want to get in touch you can email me at the usual address: allan_jones@ipcmedia.com
.Labels: allan jones, cover, neil young, uncut magazine
by thrasher@PermaLink: 7/02/2012 05:23:00 PM
2 comments
In an interview with CBS This Morning Crosby, Stills, and Nash discussed their current tour and how the dynamics of the group are better than ever before. "Were really good this year, people are responding well." Nash said.
The group also mentioned the release of their new concert DVD in July. But perhaps the biggest news of all was an announcement about the long-awaited 1974 reunion box set. "When Neil joins us, its different, its a darker edge, more mysterious, he brings a different kind of music to us." Nash said.
The box set is tentatively set to be released in the first quarter of 2013.
Graham Nash left fans will one final hopefully comment about the possible status of an incoming CSNY tour." If you have a new record, don't you have to go and perform it?
I saw them on their reunion tour at the Capital Center in DC and it was one of the best concerts I've been to.
The DC crowd was attentive and appreciated their wooden music as much as their electric. It was like attending several concerts in one as they played together, then split up to play individually or as a duo (Crosby & Nash) and then finished together. It was a long concert, but awesome. As stated by an earlier poster, Neil Young was clearly the star of that night, when he played a solo set near the show's end. I hope they include something from the DC show.
I am definitely looking forward to this release!
Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young attempted a studio reunion in the fall of '73, but the old bitterness reappeared and it failed. By the following spring, however, they were rehearsing at Young's ranch for what turned out to be the first all–stadium rock 'n' roll tour.
"We did this wonderful, monstrous tour, but no album came out of it," Stills said of the summer '74 jaunt, which had many fans bitching that the foursome been brought back together—remember that guy at Big Sur? — for the money.
Stills has an answer. "We grossed $11 million," he said. "But we were getting away with a profit margin of less than 20 percent. They were spending so much money on this grandiose shit, and the parties, and the backstage, and taking care of all of their friends.
"We didn't do enough press; we were not doing the right things because everybody was too hip for that or something. I found that a little disconcerting. There's such a thing as too cool."
He tried to get the band to rehearse a proper set. "The rehearsals were like jam sessions. I was the burr under the saddle, and the irritating force that kept telling them 'could we please get a cogent arrangement together here?'
"And the potheads were all about 'oh, just let it happen.' This is my perspective—please take it in context—we've got this enormous opportunity to get up there on the tall dogs' level. So I'm of a mind that there's a certain amount of discipline that should be exercised."
Today, the stadium tour is remembered for the unruly crowds, drowning out the acoustic sets; and for the more–fiery–than–ever electric guitar interchanges between Stills and Young.
"By this time, I'd played with Hendrix, I'd been playing lead guitar in my own band for a while, and I didn't suck," Stills said. "Like I did before.
"There was a lot of manic energy around. The same kind of stuff that used to have the Who beating the shit out of each other, the same kind of stuff that broke up a lot of other bands. We kind of steeled ourselves to it.
"But I was angry a lot. There was one time after a show where I thought I'd really played good, and we walk off the stage. On the stage I'd gotten a lot of stink–eye from David, and Neil said 'You played all over everything.'
"There was this 'CSNY' made in ice backstage. There's a picture somewhere, and I've got an expression on my face that says this guy is ready for a fight.
"They start giving me shit, and the show blew. We were playing too loud and the harmonies weren't together, we weren't using any methodology to get ourselves singing correctly. There was too much of everything around, including old girlfriends, every sycophant you could possibly imagine—each camp had its own set of sycophants. We were just buying into the whole act.
"I walked backstage and I was so frustrated, I took this thing apart with backfists and knuckle punches and karate. I took it apart right in front of them. This thing had to be 10 inches deep and four inches wide. I went through the 'N' with one punch, and it just shattered.
"Because I knew they were going to come after me about something that I'd done wrong on the stage, and I just put an end to it."
Labels: 1974, box set, concert, csny, david crosby, graham nash, neil young, stephen stills, tour
by thrasher@PermaLink: 7/01/2012 03:40:00 PM
20 comments
Our climate system is breaking records at an unnatural pace with over 15,000 Heat Records.
During the June 22-to-28 period, there were 2,132 warm temperature records set or tied in the U.S., compared to 486 cold temperature records. This includes 267 monthly warm temperature records, and 54 all-time warm temperature records.
For the year-to-date, warm temperature records have been outpacing cold temperature records by about 7-to-1.
The Greenland ice sheet is poised for another record melt this year, and is approaching a “tipping point” into a new and more dangerous melt regime in which the summer melt area covers the entire land mass, according to new findings from polar researchers.The ice sheet is the focus of scientific research because its fate has huge implications for global sea levels, which are already rising as ice sheets melt and the ocean warms, exposing coastal locations to greater damage from storm surge-related flooding.
Greenland’s ice has been melting faster than many scientists expected just a decade ago, spurred by warming sea and land temperatures, changing weather patterns, and other factors. Until now, though, most of the focus has been on ice sheet dynamics — how quickly Greenland’s glaciers are flowing into the sea. But the new research raises a different basis for concern.
Satellite observations show the extent of the floating ice that melts and refreezes every year was 318,000 square miles less last week than the same day period in 2007, the year of record low extent, and the lowest observed at this time of year since records began in 1979. Separate observations by University of Washington researchers suggest that the volume of Arctic sea ice is also the smallest ever calculated for this time of year.
Scientists cautioned that it is still early in the “melt season”, but said that the latest observations suggest that the Arctic sea ice cover is continuing to shrink and thin and the pattern of record annual melts seen since 2000 is now well established. Last year saw the second greatest sea ice melt on record, 36% below the average minimum from 1979-2000.
Fueled by a warming climate, Colorado is experiencing its worst fire season in its history.
It’s also worth nothing that by mid-century, wildfires in the West our projected to be far, far worse. Here’s the grim projection from a presentation made by the President’s science adviser Dr. John Holdren in Oslo in 2010: "We can barely manage the wildfires we have today. How exactly would much of the West “manage” a 4-fold to 6-fold increase in wildfires? And that’s just from a 1°C increase in temperatures. We could see 5 times that this century."
by thrasher@PermaLink: 7/01/2012 02:29:00 PM
15 comments
Labels: americana, laura marling, neil young
by thrasher@PermaLink: 7/01/2012 01:12:00 PM
12 comments
Hi there,
My name is Josh and I'm a 19 year old student and Neil Young and vinyl obsessive. Over the last couple of years I have been trying to build up a collection of all of Neil's work available on vinyl although I am still short of some of the more expensive items such as Dead Man, Greendale and of course a copy of The Squires' 7 inch which I feel will always be out of my reach!
Anyway, I recently found a copy of Dead Man on vinyl for a bargain price of £60, still a lot of money for a student like me though. I scraped up enough to buy it and it duly arrived a few days later via Amazon. I opened it up, only one insert, strange I thought, then I pulled out one of the LPs and my heart sank. No matrix number!! I felt physically sick once I realised what had happened.
I went online and found a thread dated a week previously on the Steve Hoffman forums which mentioned there are now bootleg vinyl pressings of Dead Man circulating. Sure enough I went on eBay and these things are going for as much as £150!!! A friend of mine, same age as me and also into vinyl (and Neil Young!) saw a copy on a market stall in his town for £15, needless to say he did not buy it. When I first opened my copy I was over the moon, once I found out about it it became a worthless piece of junk.
I have sent information about these pressings to Vapor Records but they have yet to reply, Amazon don't seem interested in the sale of illegal goods (hence why they themselves market the Live in Chicago and Live in San Francisco LPs) but a warning needs to be issued to other fans, I don't want other people getting tricked like me.
The giveaways are:
No matrix numbers on either of the vinyl discs
Only ONE insert, the picture of the boat, the picture of Johnny Depp is not present. I also believe the original LP had the picture inserts as inner sleeves, whereas this bootleg has plain white polylined inner sleeves and the picture is just an insert.
I have done some further research and it appears there are two original pressings. A US one which has a matte cover with 'aged' brown writing, and a German one with a gloss cover and white writing. The bootleg copies the German sleeve (glossy with white writing). It seems these bootlegs have spread west from Germany from what I have read on the Steve Hoffman forums, and it is where my copy came from.
So if anyone sees a Dead Man that's a 'bargain' then steer clear until matrix numbers are known (due to no contact from Vapor Records I do not know what is meant to be written in the dead wax), or the number of inserts.
Thankfully I was able to get my money back, although once more I have no copy of Dead Man on vinyl, and to be honest I am now so worried about buying a copy for fear of getting another bootleg. One UK based eBay seller has sold three copies recently, all for at least £140.
There are also bootlegs of On The Beach and the Eldorado EP circulating.
I sincerely hope Vapor Records can take legal action, that fans will know how to avoid these bootlegs and that maybe one day I can get a genuine copy.
Keep up the great work at Thrasher's Wheat, it's wonderful having daily updates of NY news sent straight to me!!
Many thanks for taking the time to read this.
Kind regards,
Josh
.Labels: bootlegegegl, dead man, film, jim jarmusch, neil young, soundtrack, vinyl
by thrasher@PermaLink: 7/01/2012 11:42:00 AM
19 comments
Rolling Stone: Are you a fan of Bernard Shakey's work as a filmmaker?
Jonathan Demme: I have a lot of respect for Bernard Shakey.
I love Greendale. It's a wonderful American independent movie. It's fantastic. When David Byrne and I were getting ready to do Stop Making Sense, we were looking at concert films and trying to figure out how we could do a film that was different from all the rest, and also would be really good.
For David, Rust Never Sleeps was the one he wanted to be as good as.
Labels: film, jonathan demme, journeys, neil young
by thrasher@PermaLink: 7/01/2012 08:34:00 AM
1 comments
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This Land is My Land
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*Thanks Neil!*
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