Tag Archives: Neil Young

The One About Doug Sahm and the Jukebox

That photo is a beauty, isn’t it? Wish that old jukebox was mine, but it’s just a stock photo I found somewhere in space and snatched for this week’s column. The plan was to write an update on the Doug Sahm documentary that debuted in 2015 at SXSW, but I got sidetracked when I found this 1959 single he recorded of “Why, Why, Why” and it reminded me of Gilbert’s El Indio on Pico Boulevard in Santa Monica.

It’s been over 25 years since I’ve been there, and it was a Friday night destination for years. In addition to serving up the finest margaritas and Mexican food west of Boyle Heights, they had an old school “three for a quarter” jukebox, loaded with mostly 45s from the ’50s and ’60s. My go-to song back in the day was Patsy Cline’s “Crazy,” and usually by the time we were on our second pitcher of adult beverage I’d stack it up to play a dozen times in a row. But had this one been on there, it might have been a contender.

 

That’s not Doug’s first record, and I don’t really have too much to tell you about the film other than the title: Sir Doug and The Genuine Texas Cosmic Groove. I did find a pretty good article about it published at Texas Monthly and a review here on No Depression, which has several video clips including the trailer. It’s been showing at film festivals for the past year or so, and despite exceeding a Kickstarter campaign goal to get it into distribution, seems like it’s not quite a done deal yet. I can’t wait to see it because I’ve been a fan since I was a kid, and his story spans several decades, genres, and memories.

Back to the jukebox … I miss it. When I was a kid my family would often have Sunday night dinners at a place in Philly called the Italian Riviera, and their box was filled with songs from Mario Lanza, Rocco Granata, Caterina Valente, Dean Martin, and Connie Francis – our favorite because cousin Arnold was her producer. But this was probably the most played song of that era: Domenico Modungo’s version of “Volare.”

 

While you can still find them at some bars, there are only two companies left that currently manufacture the coin-operated devices. There’s a bunch of touch screen, digital models being sold, but they just don’t connect with my teenage memories of sitting in a diner and dropping quarters into the slot.

These days I prefer the one that fits in my pocket, can hold 20,000 songs, lets me pay the bills, read the news, get a car, play games, rant on social media, take pictures, and occasionally make a call. I’ll close it out with sharing five songs currently on my “new music” playlist. Three are new or recently found versions of old songs, and two are new songs that just sound old, which sums up how I’m feeling right now.

Chris Hillman
The album Bidin’ My Time was produced by Tom Petty and executive produced by Herb Pedersen and features David Crosby, Roger McGuinn, Mike Campbell, Mark Fain, Steve Ferrone, John Jorgenson, Josh Jové, Jay Dee Maness, Benmont Tench, and Gabe Witcher. The album kicks off with a new recording of Pete Seeger’s and Welsh poet Idris Davies’ “The Bells of Rhymney,” which the Byrds recorded for their debut. I believe that’s Crosby and Pedersen doing harmony with Hillman.

 

Joan Shelley
In December 2016, she and guitarist Nathan Salsburg joined Jeff Tweedy in Wilco’s Loft studio for five days. Spencer Tweedy joined on drums, while James Elkington shifted between piano and resonator guitar. Jeff added electric accents and some bass, but mostly he helped the band stay out of its own way.

 

Tom Brosseau
“Treasures Untold is a 10-song collection recorded live at an intimate event in Cologne, Germany. Across six adaptations from the Great American Folksong Book, and four of Brosseau’s own original tunes, he manages to build a dreamy, atmospheric mood with just his voice and an acoustic guitar” – Maeri Ferguson, Glide Magazine

 

Neil Young
A 41-year-old “lost and found” album sounds like it was recorded last week. He says he did it one night strung out on weed, cocaine, and booze, but on most tracks you can hardly tell. Love the animation on this video, which was created by Black Balloon.

 

Richard Thompson
Acoustic Rarities is the third album in a series that began in 2014. These tracks are some of his more obscure material along with some never before released and cover versions. “Sloth” first appeared on Fairport Convention’s 1970 Full House album, and Thompson left the band the following year.

 

This article was originally published as an Easy Ed’s Broadside column over at No Depression: The Journal of Roots Music.

Make Americana Great Again: Why We Cherish Those Amazing Polls

donald-trump-neil-young-rockin-free-worldThat is one helluva picture. You might recall that it surfaced this past June after Neil Young demanded that Donald Trump stop using “Rockin’ in the Free World” at his campaign events. Utilizing his standard and preferred method of statesmanship, Trump went on the morning news shows, called Young a bad name, and then tweeted this: “A few months ago Neil Young came to my office looking for $$$ on an audio deal and called me last week to go to his concert. Wow!”

Young, no slouch himself when it comes to using social media, seemed to confirm Trump’s assertion of capitalistic hypocrisy when he wrote on Facebook: “It was a photograph taken during a meeting when I was trying to raise funds for Pono, my online high resolution music service.”

That Neil Young would choose Trump to get cozy with as a potential partner is enough to cause the price of flannel futures to tumble. Besides, in the past several months, Young’s digital entree has entered and floundered into the ether of a disinterested marketplace.

Pushing that particular random thought-bubble aside, it’s time to talk about the annual readers and critics polls that focus on one type of music or another. These are soon to occupy much of our collective time and space via traditional and social media, using the skill sets and wisdom of random cubes tossed together in a Yahtzee cup and spilt onto the countertop. Can we all agree that this excercise produces an inaccurate and imperfect list of superlatives? At the very least, I hope it will open up new avenues of exploration for some folks, as well as simply serving to bolster our own opinions based on an album’s popularity.

It is the former that most excites me because, with well over 120,000 new albums being released each year, there is no possible way to see all, know all, or hear all. It’s the depth and diversity of new music that makes scanning these polls so much fun. Nothing beats discovering something that slipped through the cracks.

In late October, the editor of No Depression:The Roots Music Authority requested a list of my favorite titles (I think she used the word “best”), and this is the list I sent her:

Jason Isbell, Daniel Romano, John Moreland, Pharis and Jason Romero, Tom Brosseau, Noah Gundersen, Watkins Family Hour, Joan Shelley, Milk Carton Kids, and an exceptional concert compilation called Another Day, Another Time: Celebrating the Music of a Dreadful Film. (Note to self: Going forward, try to be nicer.)

I’m sure y’all can spot the problem. It was way too exclusive. Narrowing my favorite albums of the year down to ten is just plain silly.

I also would have loved to include releases from Calexico, Jessica Pratt, the Westies, Kristin Andreassen, Joe Pug, Shakey Graves, Sufjan Stevens, The Kennedys, Kepi Ghoulie, Leon Bridges, Meg Baird, the Lonesome Trio, the Deslondes, Frazey Ford, the Skylarks, Kacey Musgraves, Ana Egge, Darrell Scott, Nikki Talley, Lindi Ortega, Dave Rawlings Machine, Jill Andrews, Darlingside, Decemberists, Daniel Martin Moore, Susie Glaze and the Hilonesome Band, and my friends Spuyten Duyvil.

I really like the duos and duets too. Seth Avett and Jessica Lea Mayfield, Anna and Elizabeth, the Lowest Pair, Emmylou Harris and Rodney Crowell. Not to mention the Honey Dewdrops, Iron and Wine and Ben Bridwell, Dave and Phil Alvin, and both the Wainwright and Chapin Sisters.

Don’t forget compilations with really long names that may or may not have been released this year, that I’ve been enjoying regardless: Arkansas at 78 RPM: Corn Dodgers & Hoss Hair Pullers, The Brighter Side: A 25th Anniversary Tribute to Uncle Tupelo’s No Depression, Remembering Mountains: Unheard Songs By Karen Dalton, and Ola Belle Reed and Southern Mountain Music On the Mason-Dixon Line.

And then there are the names you already know: Iris Dement, Elvis Costello, Los Lobos, Leonard Cohen, Jesse Winchester, Dwight Yoakam, Mark Knopfler, Fairport Convention, and Bob Dylan (the old new stuff, not the new old stuff).

I haven’t counted them up, but this longer list of mine can’t be more than 50 or 60 albums — a pitiful, sickly and puny little list. Seriously, I’m ashamed. There are at least 119,940 or more to choose from and I know that you can do better than me. Whether you participate in the No Depression poll or any of the thousands of others that lurk out there, relax and enjoy. Have fun, don’t stress, don’t argue. It’s all about exploration.

Postscript: For the record, Americana is a radio format and an association, not a genre.

Neil Young and The Damage Done

NY Harvest

When I first heard that Neil Young posted a message on Facebook telling his fans and followers that he had made a decision to pull his music off of all music streaming sites, my first reaction was a non-reaction. In fact, given all the other news of the day, it barely raised a ripple of my interest. Without even delving beyond the headline, I just figured that whatever he wants to do with his music is his business.

I like a lot of Neil Young’s music, and over the years I’ve bought many of his albums – some tapes, compact discs, at least one DVD – and downloaded some stuff too.

Admittedly, at this point in my life, I don’t really check out any of his music very often anymore. Nowadays I tend to spend more time listening to new artists, when I’m not digging deeper into the past by wading through some of the great anthologies of early roots music that have been released over the past few years. Almost everything that I listen to is digitized and, unlike many who have complained about the quality and compression and all those things, I’ve got no problem with it. It’s easy and portable. Lots of people hate it. Lots more seem to embrace it. Whatever.

When it comes to people’s choices about music consumption, I guess I have an agnostic outlook. It’s all good, whatever way you choose it.

If you missed the words that Young first wrote on his Facebook page, here they are:
Streaming has ended for me. I hope this is ok for my fans. It’s not because of the money, although my share (like all the other artists) was dramatically reduced by bad deals made without my consent. It’s about sound quality. I don’t need my music to be devalued by the worst quality in the history of broadcasting or any other form of distribution. I don’t feel right allowing this to be sold to my fans. It’s bad for my music.

For me, It’s about making and distributing music people can really hear and feel. I stand for that. When the quality is back, I’ll give it another look. Never say never.

Neil Young has more than three million people who follow his page on Facebook. More than 11,000 people “liked” his post and it was shared more than 2,400 times. Less than two hours later, he returned to post again and that one was “liked” and shared by almost double the number of the first one.

Here’s what he wrote:

I was there. AM radio kicked streaming’s ass. Analog Cassettes and 8 tracks also kicked streaming’s ass, and absolutely rocked compared to streaming. Streaming sucks. Streaming is the worst audio in history. If you want it, you got it. It’s here to stay. Your choice. Copy my songs if you want to. That’s free. Your choice.

All my music, my life’s work, is what I am preserving the way I want it to be. It’s already started. My music is being removed from all streaming services. It’s not good enough to sell or rent. Make streaming sound good and I will be back.

A week later, as I’m sitting here writing this, Neil Young’s latest album The Monsanto Years is streaming through my system on Spotify. I just plugged his name into the You Tube search bar and it reads that there are “about 399,000 results.” As I think he’s probably already discovered, it’s unlikely that he’ll be able to back out of mass technological media distribution.

Meanwhile, I think there are a couple of stories behind the headline to this post that are of interest. Until I took the time to sift through and sample some of the thousands of comments, I would not have thought that he would get as much backlash as he did, for his words. His multi-generational fan base is rabid and ravenous, and usually when you read about him on Americana or roots music websites such as this one, he is spoken about reverentially.

Here are a few representative samples from his Facebook comments. I’ll try to sprinkle in both pro and con, although overwhelmingly – like maybe 50 to one – the comments were not from people who agree with his choice. The anger from his fans often took the tone of the first one below.

Doing an image search on Google for “Neil Young 8 track” shows exactly how willing you are to put music on garbage formats. Between this announcement, the ridiculously overpriced digital music player you supported and the anti-gmo fear mongering, I think I’m ok with never giving you another cent for music.

It’s artists like you that will help bring out the best in music! We’re suffering from serious lack of quality these days. Thank you Neil Young!

I’ll take your claim to be standing up for music sound quality seriously when you stop selling your catalog on iTunes, Google Music, Amazon, and other download services. Really, it’s about the money, isn’t it? I don’t blame you for that. It’s perfectly understandable from a business standpoint. But don’t disguise your motivation as being “for the fans” and “for the music.”

If I were so blessed to have my music recorded at all, I would want it to be recorded and available at the highest quality possible. I think Neil is as honest as can be. Speaks his mind. Why doubt him now?

I think it’s a terrible decision. I became a fan of yours primarily through the easy access of streaming it through Spotify, despite the “sound quality”. Without streaming, “Neil Young” would pretty much just be character in a Lynyrd Skynyrd song, to me. You’re a singer/songwriter, anyway. Your songs are much more about the words than subtleties in the music that the average listener can’t even detect.

So you get the idea. The yin and yang of public opinion and fandom.

I don’t think I’d be sitting here writing about this if it wasn’t for his comment about AM radio, cassettes and 8-tracks. Because I was there too, and at times I was probably in the same altered states that he was in, but sound quality and the delivery systems today are simply better than those formats ever were. Period.

By the way, if you want to talk about vinyl – I understand the reasons why many people hold it dear and close to their hearts – last February, as he promoted his Pono player, Neil said in an interview with The Guardian that vinyl reissues were just a “fashion statement.” The funny little device he was trying to promote was reviewed by Ars Technica, whose assessment provided possibly my favorite and fitting headline of the year: “A tall, refreshing drink of snake oil.”

Since it’s impossible to put the genie back into the bottle, Neil Young’s music will stay with us forever. And if the stream goes dry, there will be other ways to fish for it. But, should it become too hard to find, future generations might not bother to take the time to go find it. Which would be both sad and tragic. And that would be the damage done.

This was originally published by No Depression, as an Easy Ed’s Broadside column.