"Campaigner": Neil Young Archives Song of the Day
"Campaigner" is the Song of the Day on the Neil Young Archives today, September 7.
Hmmm. Why might "Campaigner" be the Song of the Day? Well your guess is as good as ours. Over the decades it has been a routine exercise for fans to replace "Richard Nixon" with whoever the current U.S. President might be at the time. And the song seems to work consistently from Administration to Administration.
So go ahead and play the "Campaigner" game with us.
I am a lonely visitor.
I came to late to cause a stir,
Though I campaigned all my life
towards that goal.
I hardly slept the night you wept
Our secret's safe and still well kept
Where even Richard Nixon has got soul.
Even Richard Nixon has got
Soul.
Traffic cops are all color blind.
People steal from their own kind.
Evening comes to early for a stroll.
Down neon streets the streaker streaks.
The speaker speaks,
but the truth still leaks,
Where even Richard Nixon has got soul.
Even Richard Nixon has got it,
Soul.
The podium rocks in the crowded waves.
The speaker talks of the beautiful saves
That went down long before
he played this role
For the hotel queens and the magazines,
Test tube genes and slot machines
Where even Richard Nixon got soul.
Even Richard Nixon has got it,
Soul.
Hospitals have made him cry,
But there's always a free way in his eye,
Though his beach just got
too crowded for his stroll.
Roads stretch out like healthy veins,
And wild gift horses strain the reins,
Where even Richard Nixon has got soul.
Even Richard Nixon has got
Soul.
I am a lonely visitor.
I came to late to cause a stir,
Though I campaigned all my life
towards that goal.
But what does Neil Young know about politicians anyways? Or, what do politicians know about Neil Young?
More on "Campaigner" and the album Hitchhiker.
Labels: neil young, song
13 Comments:
Wee missed noting this above above, but if you look at NYA Home page on the left, there's a link for "NEW SHOWS TBA".
Another hmmm. we're on standby. Maybe something coming after Farm Aid later in Sept in the N.E. area?
Thanks Darren for pointing out!
Neil usually does "warm-up" shows for Farm Aid so maybe something is up for that.
Really hope that the "archives" project that Neil Young is doing will start to include live shows like Bruce Springsteen is doing. Over this weekend Bruce announced a show from 1999 that got me to thinking wouldn't it be amazing to get some of the '99 solo shows that Neil did. Maybe he could do a matrix mix of the soundboards with some of those amazing Schoeps mic'd audience recordings that surfaced back in the Yahoo Rust era? Seems like the archives website is positioned perfectly to give us 16 to 24 bit live recordings from pretty much his entire career. Now, I think there is something fishy about no live Buffalo Springfield recordings given all the times they played for Bill Graham who was clearly a recording nut and he clearly liked the Springfield, too. That is plain weird but here is an example of what Neil could do based on what Bruce is doing...
http://live.brucespringsteen.net/
The show I want the most, however, is that three day stand at the Canterbury House in "A Squared" pretty much on/within the "very moment" that Neil Young became a star after the debut of CSNY live that included Woodstock, just a month before recording "Country Girl" for Deja Vu and the live debut of some of the "After The Goldrush" songs already penned or covered. Both of his bands, Crazy Horse and CSNY, were getting the recognition that the Springfield didn't get beyond the hit single on their debut tours just months before the Canterbury House recordings. A lot of the introductions to the songs from the 1969 Canterbury House are already up on the Archives under the "video" heading as I've stated before.
Those three days of Canterbury House recordings (please release all three!) I would like to request be followed by releasing complete shows that included Hargus "Pig" Robbins just before the very first Farm Aid. There is a little bit of Hargus on "The Treasure" but not enough since it didn't include the "Old Man" or the stunning "Down By The River" that band did. Now, as I've mentioned before that show at Meadowbrook Music Theater, that included Nicolette Larson opening and later joining the Harvesters/Grey Riders I might add, was the one that I got to talk for a good bit with Neil. We talked about "Neil & Me" and then the next day he arranged an interview with Willie Nelson for three hours the following week. That story with Willie about the first Farm Aid got my co-byline on a front page story in the Detroit Free Press. My parents got to see me go from a paperboy with 90 dailies and 130 Sunday papers to a writer published on the front page and I have Neil Young to thank for that.
From "Shakey" about this particular tour...
https://books.google.com/books?id=yrd20PZoLFYC&pg=PT846&lpg=PT846&dq=hargus+pig+robbins+down+by+the+river&source=bl&ots=dQYXCUEMV5&sig=9-cl2L1Y5MXkqspub51NuBhi4ug&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjR34OL36vdAhVqtlkKHUfhAnsQ6AEwDHoECAIQAQ#v=onepage&q=hargus%20pig%20robbins%20down%20by%20the%20river&f=false
The song "Campaigner" teken from shows from 1976 would be a nice thing to offer as a download on the Neilyoungarchives pages, too. 1976 was a very good year!
http://sugarmtn.org/song.php?song=84
Yeah, listen to what Neil Young says about playing in the Grey Riders band here and specifically at 8:51 on this video...
"I couldn't go anywhere where he couldn't go farther," Neil Young talking about Hargus.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qxEaQZUPSL4&t=585s
Hey Jim, thanks for the drop by.
Yeah, Bruce and Bob have done a lot on their concerts and rarities releases. And do agree that we should really start to see Neil flood NYA once the paywall setup is in place.
Could be part of the setup w/ some stealth gigs like back earlier this year w/ CH & POTR? Maybe announce subscription service, stream some live gigs, and then the HUGE track drop. MOAD (Mother of all DROPS)
great clip and reminder on Grey Riders Hargus "Pig" Robbins. need to re-post that to TW.
I figured the postings of "Campaigner" and "Hitchhiker" were mostly because the Hitchhiker album was released a year ago this week.
@wardo - fair point, makes sense.
If you're going to post lyrics, please try "to" use correct English.
It's..... too late , not "to late"
It's..... too early, not "to early"
@Mabel - good catch and thanks for the proof reading. You're never going to believe this , but we didn't actually transcribe these lyrics, not are they official.
If you follow the link to NY's official lyric transcripts, you'll see that Neil definitely knows proper grammar and spelling.
TW is a pretty low budget operation, as you can see. Maybe you would like to underwrite a paid internship for proofing dept.? And we do have several other unfunded positions as well.
Everyone here @ TW is a volunteer working on a labor of love... and we'd like to keep it that way, actually.
peace
Completely off topic here, but I was wondering if anyone here could provide information on something. My friend showed me a picture of Neil, Stills, Nash, and Jimmy Page(!) playing together on a stage somewhere.
He thinks it's possibly from a private performance involving Atlantic records (both CSNY and Zeppelin being on that label), but he wasn't completely sure. It definitely looks 1974ish, Neil is wearing those big sunglasses and huge mutton chops that he was sporting in '74. And it looks like Jimmy Page from that period.
Does anyone know where this was from? It's a very cool and intriguing picture.
@Richard - See SOLVED: Photo of the Moment - CSNY & Jimmy Page, 1974 http://neilyoungnews.thrasherswheat.org/2012/03/solved-photo-of-moment-csny-jimmy-page.html
We just re-read all of the comments. wow, quite a bit of history on the photo.
Thanks for the off topic detour!
Thanks Thrasher, very cool picture with an interesting storyline. Would have been nice to have been there, if only to watch a drunken Stills fall off the drumstool!
CHECK NYA Page NOW: 4 EAST COAST SHOWS
East Coast Australia lol one can only dream
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