Thoughts on music: Neil Young

Showing posts with label Neil Young. Show all posts

Saturday, April 04, 2015

New Music 2015 - Part 26 - back across the ocean

I was always intending the theme of new, or new to me, music from North America to be the theme of a few upcoming posts. I have been listening to plenty of it, across various genres, recently.

It is with much happiness that I heard the condition of Joni Mitchell is improving. It is with sadness that I heard that, on Friday evening, Robert Lewis Jones Sr. and the original drummer with Southern Rock band Lynyrd Skynyrd,was killed in a car accident. He had already left the band before three of its then members were killed in a plane crash in 1977.

I have a 12" single of 'Freebird', it was on the band's 1973 début album, and I'm giving it a spin right now:

If I leave here tomorrow, would you still remember me?

For I must be travelin' on now, for there's too many places left to see.

Southern Rock hasn't been such a big deal, certainly viewed from a UK perspective, in recent times but maybe that isn't the way things will remain. This next band was going to figure here regardless of the foregoing. It is not the same, I don't suppose they ever intended that, but it is worthy of a listen I think.

I guess that, as regards to this band, I'm a bit slow to the nose-bag with this release.

Staying down South, but changing genre, this news is to me as good as it gets.

Amy LaVere and Will Sexton's 'Hallelujah I'm a Dreamer' is released today, 7 April, in the US as a download by Archer Records. It is said the CD follows on 19 May. As for UK/Europe release I just don't know - yet. I'm on the case not least because it is a live album by one of the artists that I would most like to see live but thus far never have.

This is the track-list:

Cricket (At Night I Can Fly)
Dreamer
Day Like Any
Cupid's Arrow
It's the Thing to Do
Last Rock 'n' Roll Boy to Dance
Overcome
Red Banks
Tonight Will Be Fine
Lesson
Tennessee Valentine

It would be remiss of me to leave music from Canada out of this post. This looks intriguing too and Annabelle Chovstek is coming to the UK soon and not least to Marnhull Acoustic Sessions on 10 May. She brings a new LP 'Be The Media' into the equation too.

I don't know a whole lot about it yet but it is said to see her largely play electric guitar (of 1957 vintage) and that it includes a cover of fellow Canadian Neil Young's 'Like A Hurricane'. It was notably covered by Jason Isbell and The 400 Unit on the 2013 live LP 'Live From Alabama'. On that subject Jason Isbell has just about finished work on his latest studio LP that is the follow-up to 'Southeastern'.

That said, this is the track-list I believe:

Be The Media
Jerusalem
Black Hole
This Night
Carnal Delights
You Can Come Now
Like A Hurricane
Inside The Scream/Screen

Here is the title track from it:

Sunday, December 09, 2012

The lure of the 'Live LP'. Again.

The third 'live LP', that I alluded to in my earlier post has finally arrived at the additional cost of £3.07 in VAT to George Osbourne (no relation of Ozzy, we are led to believe) and a further £8 that went to Royal Mail for conniving with the UK Border Agency. Enough of that, which I suspected might happen anyway, the question is was it all worth it?

Just to have it on US vinyl (complete with the dire piracy warnings) most certainly is!

That all actually matters less than I thought that it would and I couldn't care less about the customs charges now. This is very possibly the best live album (on vinyl or otherwise) since forever though you may suggest others; indeed I invite you to do so - PLEASE DO.
It contains songs from his time with the Drive-By Truckers, material from his 'solo' albums including the AMA-winning 'Alabama Pines', and finishes with (the vinyl that is - it comes with a free download code that contains some extra things!) a cover of Neil Young's 'Like A Hurricane'.
If people say there's nothing good today, and no point in revisiting old themes, just point them here. The album was recorded over two live performances in August 2012; at WorkPlay, Birmingham, AL and Crossroads, Huntsville, AL on 16 and 17 August 2012. I can only try and imagine what it must have been like to be there.

Wednesday, January 19, 2011

Cover versions 2010/2011 - old music revisited

I'm sorry if this post is a bit on-the-fly. I was just about to turn in for the night when I noticed that someone (and thank-you) had ended up here while searching a Famous Web Search Engine for 'recent cover versions'. I have mentioned a few recently - the latest only a couple of hours ago- so I decided to mention [in the side bar only], Smoke Fairies cover version of the Neil Young song 'Alabama' and it available to stream for free here. There is something doing - cover versions are all the rage - and I intend to come back to a selection of them soon. My ambition would be to collate a list of a few choice ones, some less likely than others, from the last few years. Be that as it may Neil Young has cropped up at least twice very recently: Laura Marling covered 'The Needle and The Damage Done', also from the 1972 album 'Harvest', as the b-side to 7" 'Blues Run The Game', which is also a cover but an older one.

On the other hand it is not as venerable as 'Ghost Woman Blues' that has been revived, and righteously so, by The Low Anthem.

Here, as I was curious as to whether I had heard them correctly, are what I think is the lyric to 'Alabama'.

Alabama

Oh, Alabama
The devil fools with the best laid plan
Swing low Alabama

You got the spare change
You got to feel strange
And now the moment is all that it meant

Alabama, you got the weight on your shoulders
That's breaking your back
Your Cadillac has got a wheel in the ditch
And a wheel on the track

Oh, Alabama
Banjos playing through the broken glass
Windows down in Alabama

See the old folks tied in white ropes
Hear the banjo
Don't it take you down home?

Alabama, you got the weight on your shoulders
That's breaking your back
Your Cadillac has got a wheel in the ditch
And a wheel on the track

Oh Alabama
Can I see you and shake your hand?
Make friends down in Alabama

I'm from a new land
I come to you and see all this ruin
What are you doing Alabama?
You got the rest of the union to help you along
What's going wrong?

Saturday, November 13, 2010

New Music 2011 - Part 3 - The Duke Spirit, Laura Marling, &c.

The Duke Spirit is one band my love of which pre-dates my days as a blogger. They are a five-piece and are well advanced in the recording of their third album. They are also awesome live and this is just how rock should be...

The Duke Spirit live in New York last weekend.

Too much reliance on the, albeit marvellous, digital age can have its downside! Still there is solace to be found in things thoroughly analogue... FM radio and a pile of vinyl recordings.

While what I am to mention next actually belongs in 2010 its inclusion in prospects for 2011 is also apposite. Since she appeared on the new folk scene in 2006, most notably then as part of Noah And The Whale, barely a few months have gone by without her releasing something to delight us.

She recently apologised for the delay in the release of her third studio album (now due "sooner rather than later" in 2011) but instead consider it in this light. In these days a gap of at least two years between studio albums is now quite normal due in large part to the more profitable touring commitments that might follow: her second album 'I Speak Because I Can' was however released on May 3, 2010. That is not to say that she has stinted on the latter front and for those lucky enough to be attending the Crunch Festival, Hay on Wye next weekend you are in for a treat not least because she is headlining the music aspect on Friday evening: There are still some tickets left if you have a gap in your diary.

I saw Laura Marling live at Latitude 2010 and the performance was flawless even in the rather wide expanse of the Obelisk stage. As well as the obvious highlights of her own song writing there is the ease with which she interprets and incorporates cover versions into the proceedings. If you can find a recording of her recent performance at Cecil Sharp House (for BBC Radio 1), with Mumford & Sons and covering Dolly Parton's 'Jolene', then I suggest you do so. Her latest release, vinyl 7" (TMR044) physically, but also available to stream from Spotify, is another pair of covered songs recorded at Third Man Records' studio in Nashville by, label founder and analogue addict, Jack White.

The a-side (it is so good to write that and really mean it) is 'Blues Run The Game', written and recorded by Jackson C. Frank (1965) and from the album of the same name, which was to be the only one from someone stalked by misfortune from a young age.

The b-side is more a reflection on the misfortunes of others by one whose career has lasted decades, is very much ongoing, and in the current musical climate increasingly influential. 'Needle and The Damage Done' saw Neil Young tackling such territory and it was originally released on the 1972 studio album 'Harvest' but it was performed live somewhat before that and I have an admission to make. 'Harvest' was something of a joke in the days when I first started to appreciate vinyl and it always seemed to be in the 'bargain bin' - "Any 3 for £1" - and guess what? I'm listening to 'Harvest', quarter of a century later and on original vinyl, while writing. I paid over the odds for it too - it cost me £0.50 in December 1986 - and I know that because I made a note of it inside the sleeve!