VIDEO FLASHBACK: "She's Always Dancing" - Neil Young & Crazy Horse
Last year during the rush of excitement during "Rock-tober 2012" -- when we had Neil Young albums, books and concerts coming fast furious -- the official video dropped for song "She's Always Dancing" by Neil Young & Crazy Horse from their new album, "Psychedelic Pill".
There were a few scattered reactions here and there, but otherwise it made about as much of a splash as say -- Neil Young covering "Born In The USA".
So what do you think of this video?
We'll just say that given that the video in question uses stock footage from another time and place, we're not sure how much we can project into today's context.
Times change, things remain the same...
Labels: neil young, video
12 Comments:
PURE HORSE. and BERNARD SHAKEY
That, upon revisit, it exactly why we're here alone together with him.
wish we could see Neil dancin' like that! ..Oh, wait! he does!
Love it! I work with exotic dancers and I'm pretty sure Neil wrote this for me! Thanks, old friend ;)
Thrasher,
Thanks for revisiting the SAD video. I must have missed the 11/16 spat on this blog, and reading it now, I'm more than a little surprised, not that there is some criticism, but that the "reviews" of the song and video come off like something out of my local high school weekly newspaper.
Both I and my wife loved the video, and have watched it and discussed it many many times. By the way, we are both progressive activists, which matters not one bit except that politics seems to be a big issue with the bloggers on 11/16. Neil by using movie clips from a bygone era suggests that women - amd perhaps the women in his life, the most important people to him by far - love to dance. He suggests that this is timeless. Neil both admires this and is mystified by this in women:
She wants to live without ties to bind her down
She wants to dance with her body left at ground
She wants to spin, and she lives in her own world
She wants to dream like she was a little girl
Dancing for women is a pure expression of freedom, of living in a dream.
The men in the video, for the most part, come across as sleazy, pathetic, slightly stupid, and even cruel. Yet the women won't let that inhibit their love of dancing. Do they want to be watched? In many cases yes, but that's hardly their main impetus for loving to dance, for expressing themselves in a way that men, or at least Neil, can barely begin to grasp. The first man seen may love dancing, and dances beautifully, but he turns it into dehumanizing judgement, something that the women depicted would never consider. The next segment at the drive-in, the women in spite of the foul men in their cars and stiff suits, choose just to enjoy themselves and be happy and carefree, without a thought that the situation is beyond creepy.
When Neil almost cries "She loves to burn", he does so with a longing for the kind of passion that men can only consider a mystery, like that of the later dancers in the vid. Neil's most recent writing, from No Hidden Path to the final verse of Hitchhiker to Ramada Inn, is more and more about his respect and adoration for women, particularly the women in his life; wife, daughter, sister, perhaps - that he feels have saved him. Maybe he puts women up on too high a pedestal, maybe that can seem unhealthy to some. But who can argue that the peace in Neil's life that women have brought to him has produced a level of creativity that is extraordinary for a rocker in is late sixties.
"When you dance, I can really love"
My question concerns the first few seconds of the video. I live in Oshkosh, WI so you can imagine my shock when I saw this video for the first time. How did Neil/Shakey Pictures find this clip? Oshkosh is a small city of about 65,000 so to see it on the crate really puzzled me. Maybe it's an inside joke or something but I'd love to know more about it. It was 40 years ago last month that a friend and I left Oshkosh to attend Neil's show in Milwaukee on 1/5/73. It was my first Neil Young concert and it was amazing. Time Fades Away indeed!
Would anyone object if I go by the name of Ted Jones?
I have loved this song since the first time I heard it. Many of Crazy Horse's female fans (including me) say, "it was written for me"...that's because, as ahpost said, women often express their emotions through dancing. We want to feel that thrill, out on the edge, dancing and dreaming like we did when we were little girls...drifting in the smoke. Crazy Horse's music sets the tone for an emotional journey...and sometimes it makes us dance.... <3
SandCowgirl (Tami C.)
a.k.a. one of the Arkansas Girls...
No clue what the original footage is from. I'm curious... Why did they chose to use Italian women?
@dean - everyone thinks Neil wrote it for them! Italian women? Based on their names?
@ahpost - great comment! Thanks.
exactly. agree that Neil has lots of respect for women. Anyone who saw the stage play-musical-concert Greendale knows there was special chemistry with Neil & Sun Green. be the rain.
Definitely worthy of a comment of moment.
@01:46:00 PM - no idea on the Oshkosh thing? It would be nice if someone could figure out the source of some of the stock footage clips.
@SandCowgirl - definitely dedicated to Arkansas Girls everywhere. :)
A Christmas Story. "Fra-Gi-Le Must be Italian", lol
Compare and contrast:
"She's Always Dancing"
"We Never Danced"
Stupid and funny. Works with horse!
The opening sequence is from a 3 minute movie from the mid 1940s called "Male Order" Almost the entire short is in the N.Y. Video
See http://tesla.liketelevision.com/liketelevision/tuner.php?channel=1016&format=tv&theme=guide2 for the 'full' movie.
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