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Thursday, March 19, 2020

World Premiere: "Leave The Driving" - RETURN TO GREENDALE by Neil Young & Crazy Horse | NYA


"Are Protesters Terrorists?"
Grandpa (Larry Cragg) & Grandma (Twink Brewer)
Scene from RETURN TO GREENDALE by Neil Young & Crazy Horse

via "Return To Greendale" World Premiere | NYA

"Leave The Driving" (Chapter #4) from "Return To Greendale" will have its World Premiere in Hearse Theater | NYA today, Thursday, March 19.


"Leave The Driving"


RETURN TO GREENDALE @ Balboa Theater, San Francisco, CA - Jan 28, 2020

A premiere screening of the film RETURN TO GREENDALE by Neil Young & Crazy Horse was held at Balboa Theater in San Francisco, CA on Jan 28, 2020, where much of the cast and crew attended, as we reported.


In January, a preview of the upcoming concert film of the Greendale Tour by Neil Young & Crazy Horse was featured on Goin' To Greendale | BENTLEY’S BANDSTAND | NYA.


Music industry veteran Bill Bentley writes about his Greendale experience and seeing the film of the 2003 Toronto concert: ‘And that, dear listeners, is when the bells start ringing, the lights start flashing and the thrillometer heats up all the way to the top of the tube.'

Sun Green (Sara White) and Grandpa (Ben Keith)

Neil Young calls "Greendale" on Times-Contrarian | NYA "one of the biggest highlights of my filming life".

Making Greendale
Neil Young Filming Greendale Actors Grandpa & Jed

But back in 2003, "Greendale" was one of the most controversial and divisive albums and concert tours of Neil Young's career. The importance of "Greendale" can not be understated - either in terms of Neil Young's body of work, nor its impact on his fan base. This is how we memorialized "Greendale" on Thrasher's Wheat Home Page in June 2003:
With the arrival of Greendale in 2003 -- for us -- Greendale was like a sledgehammer to the anvil of truth and awakened this blog from it's post-9/11 dormancy. Because when Neil Young Sings Truth To Power, The World Listens.
So let that soak in for a moment.

This website was launched in 1996 -- about 24 years ago. It sort of languished with periodic updates until 2003. Then, with the theme of the "Greendale" songs coming into focus, we here were inspired to begin daily blog updates. At the time we said we would update the blog daily until the concert tours "Greendale" ended. But the tour kept going and going and going around the world, well into 2004, along with all the ancillary books, videos, films, etc.

So we can safely say that Thrasher's Wheat would not exist today if it had not been for "Greendale". Period. Full stop.



'She was welded to the eagle's beak
sun green leaned into that megaphone
and said, "truth is all i seek" '
"Sun Green"
by Neil Young

As many of our long time readers here at Thrasher's Wheat know, we have long since declared: "The Inconvenient Truth of Greendale".

Mainly this observation centered on the album's environmental call to action and it's plea to respect Mother Nature and all of her creations. But environmentalism is but just one of the many themes of Neil Young's 2003 album Greendale, which we once boldly declared "the most important album of 2003, the musical equivalent of Rachel Carson's Silent Spring".

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Greendale Graphic Novel
By Joshua Dysart/Cliff Chiang

The inconvenient truth of Neil Young's Greendale is that he was right -- and his message is even more relevant today than upon Greendale's original release.

greendale flag
Sun Green Was Right
The Greendale Prophecies


Sun Green (Sarah White, Greendale Film by Neil Young, 2003) + Greta Thunberg (Climate Activist, Born in 2003)
Greta Thunberg and Neil Young's Prophetic Greendale: Sun Green + Julia Butterfly

For some, 2003's Greendale was an incomprehensible disaster. From The Washington Post's critic David Segal on Year 2003 CDs, who labeled Greendale as the year's "most baffling critical swoon", Segal writes: "Neil Young's 'Greendale' is "a droning mess of a concept album inexplicably hailed as ingenious" and "a vanity project gone stupefyingly wrong".

For others though, Greendale was hailed as a groundbreaking concept album similar to The Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, The Who's Tommy or Pink Floyd's 'The Wall'.


Greendale Officer Carmichael in the "compelling", "controversial" and "audiences challenging" concert opera "Greendale".

Some critics went as far as saying that Young had broken new ground by creating an entirely unique art form -- the "audio novel". From New York Times article 'Have You Heard the New Neil Young Novel?' by Madison Smartt Bell:
"Mr. Young has always been remarkable for his creative resilience, and this time he really has done something new, rendering into this combination of print and audio a novel that is surprisingly sophisticated and satisfyingly complete."

rcmh2004_carmflag
Greendale @ Radio City Music Hall, New York City, March 18, 2004
Photo by thrashette

The inconvenient truth of Greendale is its uncomfortable confrontation with themes such as the power of mass media and global corporations, loss of personal freedoms and privacy, destruction of the environment, rampant fraud and corruption, an out of balance government and breakdown of the family. All of which we've detailed before here, here, and here.


"Everything You're Looking For" - Bandit


Greendale Sign

LEAVING GREENDALE
POP. 25,810





Labels: , , , , , , , , ,


3 Comments:

At 3/19/2020 03:47:00 PM, Blogger Dan Swan said...

A corner stone in the ark of Neil’s canon. Greendale has been one of Neil’s greatest achievements over his storied career and this sample from the complete film shows the fruition of his artistic vision. I was gifted with goosebumps on several occasions during this seven minutes and as you may know, you can’t fake goosebumps.

Every time I hear the opening chords to Ohio I get goosebumps, every time I hear the opening of Cortez I get them. Powderfinger, Down By The River, Like a Hurricane, the list goes on. With Greendale, I get them off and on during the entire album. I can’t imagine another album that has more focus and intention than Greendale. Throughout the history of popular music artists from different genres have achieved the remarkable task of creating a album that flows from beginning to end with a single vision, and Greendale is one of those rare treasures.

I wasn’t lucky enough to witness any of these shows first hand, but judging from what I just saw, it looks like Neil has remedied this with the creation of this film. The scope of this work reflects a unique take on the full spectrum of life. Public, personal, political and internal. This masterwork has taken its place within a small hand full of remarkable albums released in my lifetime and to have the opportunity to experience it in the visual realm will be a magnificent gift. Thanks Neil, you have done well my friend.

Peace.

 
At 3/19/2020 03:58:00 PM, Blogger thrasher said...

we hear you Dan. you definitely get it.

like we said on another thread, simply extraordinary. we repeat, simply extraordinary.

and we're so glad we made as many Gdale shows back in 2003 & 4 as we could.
and folks were laughing and walking out of those shows back then?!
gonna leave the fools behind ...

priceless memories of peak neil

just remember the moral of this story... Grandpa was right, also.

glad to have you here, as well, neighbor.

Greendale livin' goes a long, long way ...

peace

 
At 3/20/2020 08:45:00 AM, Blogger RedSun Dunn said...

Man. Hope they put this back up soon. I see fireside sessions are up, equally cool. Neils home looks exactly like you would expect it to.

 

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