This is my niece Lauren Dempsey, singing 'Ruby' with the group 'Doubting Herons'. (Click on the photo to open a SoundCloud window.... hopefully .... ) It's folk music. You couldn't get much more folky unless you knit your own muesli. But it's modern folk - and isn't it nice to know that people are still writing songs in a great tradition? After the song, there are some jigs with accordion accompaniment. Feel free to jig around in your room - nobody is watching. Again, one of the reasons I like this is because of Lauren's wonderful accent. Listen out for the words 'front', 'phone' and so on. I am not being disrespectful, I genuinely like a broad Derby accent. I was born in Derby too, but my own accent is bland and boring; I probably watched and listened to too much BBC.
I can't resist posting up more stuff about Neil Young.
Good god, the man just doesn't stop creating. If I were a Neil Young completist, I could have spent my whole life tracking down vinyl, films, videos, cassettes, CDs, DVDs .....
Anyway, as I mentioned in my last post, Neil claims to be clean and sober, and has just released a double CD entitled 'Psychedelic Pill'. Well, that didn't give me much confidence (although his titles have never been less than obscure), but tonight I have just come across 'Ramada Inn'. It's a long track - is a 16 minute tune ever going to get play on Radio One or XFM? I think not - but it's fully justified. As is the video, below.
Try and watch some before you flit away. The found footage is wonderful, and appropriate. The song itself seems so simple, but if you are of a certain age and experience it is hard to listen to. Thankfully he spaces the verses with some classic guitar solos - toning down the aggression he obviously loves into something more expressive and elegaic. And how can his voice still sound as it did?
Neil Young and Crazy Horse. Yes, there are many musicians with more technical mastery, and more bands that are pushing at the envelope .... but few have made more people happier, for longer, than this little crew. [Later - 27/12/12:] The man is a 24 carat, first water, primo quality, appelation controlee genius. I have just come across his other recent album 'Americana', which contains the most unpromising list of traditional folk song and other well-known titles I have ever seen. He just waves his hand over them, and they become magic. You have never heard the phrase; "And I come from Alabama with my B-A-N-J-O on my knee!" in quite the same way as Neil phrases it ....
And this illustrates how he puts his music together. Basically, it is mostly recorded live, which is why his live shows are so wildly successful. If you stick with it to the end, you will hear the banter as Crazy Horse discuss the tune. [Later and even later - 27/12/12:] No, I can't let it go at that. The video to 'Oh Susannah' is a rare find. Look at the careworn faces of the parents - and I bet they are not even into their late forties. Look at the pudding bowl haircut of the tap dancing boy. Look at the smudges on the little girl's face. Look at the older child slumped against the timber wall. These are real people - I would love to know where and how it was made, and what the father is playing on his banjo. We don't know we're born. [More later - 30/12/12:]
I have been trying to research the video that goes with 'Oh Susannah', without much success. But on the way I did find this - someone posted it up as a song that sounds similar, and the video is equally of its time (1970s). I can remember this tune; isn't that frightening? OK, they're miming, and I think a session musician was brought in to do the guitar break .... but why in god's name are they doing this in front of an animal cage in some kind of menagerie?! It took me a couple of views to confirm this .... that's a chimpanzee hanging on the wire, isn't it?
Not even – and let me stress this – not even when they are doing the writing themselves.Perhaps especially not then.
I can’t remember the last time I stopped reading a book (at least, a book I thought I’d care about) halfway through.It might have been one of the strange sequels to ‘Rendezvous with Rama’ that Arthur C. Clarke wrote with a collaborator.Yes, I’m pretty sure it was.Should have left it alone, Artie, it was perfect as a trilogy of one.
But I did it with Neil Young’s autobiography.I went away to read Danny Baker’s “Going to Sea in a Sieve” instead, a jolly romp through his early years, where I learned that he had lived much the same life as me, if you subtract from mine everything about his except his taste in music and the records he collected.
But, as when I stopped reading “Snuff” by Terry Pratchett, for reasons I won’t go into here (Pratchett, again, is living my life, but in his case with the added bonus of actually having written thirty or more books), I didn’t abandon it, but later went back to finish Neil’s book as well, out of some kind of horrible fascination.
“Waging Heavy Peace” (lol!) is subtitled; “A Hippie Dream”, god save us, which if I’d spotted it first time might have been some kind of warning.Neil Young is many things, but a hippie he never was.Maybe it IS a warning, direct from Neil;“Hey, I’ve re-read this thing, and it’s a bit of a nightmare.But I’m an artist, and I do what I feel, man.”
Where to start, where to start ….
OK, there are five main themes in the book.No, make that six.He confronts you with the first in Chapter One, Page One.Model trains.That’s right, boys and girls, you heard me right – model trains.Neil Young has been a model train fanatic from his youth, and when he had big money to play around with bought his way into one of the major model trains companies of the USA which, sadly, has now been forced to manufacture in China.We hear a lot about control systems and sound effects and track layout design.More than we want to know, in fact.
The other five (in no particular order) are his PureTone recording/broadcasting system, his LincVolt electric car scheme, his relationships and family, a theme you could call ‘all my friends are dead’, and music.
The problem is that, although he tells us (several times) that he has stopped drinking and no longer uses ‘weed’ in haybale quantities, the book reads as if it was written by somebody who has fried his brains.It hops backwards and forwards in time, for no good reason.He says things that just occur to him.He goes off on one occasionally.Anecdotes start in one chapter, and maybe crop up and end two hundred pages later.Sometimes they are repeated, subtly altered.Only somebody who already has an encyclopaedic knowledge of the history of Buffalo Springfield, CSNY, Crazy Horse, The Squires and so on would stand a chance of keeping up.I haven’t.I just bought a few records, and read some magazines occasionally.And love Neil Young.
Maybe if an editor was asked to look at this 500-page book and see if, by judicious cutting and pasting of sections, he could re-arrange it into some kind of narrative, readability could be restored.But Neil proudly states (several times) that he doesn’t hold with that kind of shit.Bully, Neil ….. bully!
Oh, there are six themes, not five!How could I forget about the cars?He talks endlessly about the cars he has owned when, as all of us know, the only one we are really interested in, is the one that ‘Long may you run’ was written about.You thought that that was a love song?You were wrong.It was about a big shiny car that burnt out in BlindRiver in ought six, or something.Very romantic.
LincVolt, his electric hybrid car scheme for powering lunkers from big batteries, forms part of this car obsession.He has spent fortunes on trying to make the car work.It doesn’t.Once it tried to commit suicide by self-immolation, but he persists in trying to make it live.Look, Neil once invested in ‘power your car on water’ schemes.He sounds genuinely hurt and surprised that the guys turned out to be frauds.
I should cut him some slack.Neil is 65, he (and also his last and long-term wife Pegi, also now a musician) has had major brain surgery, fears what his recent brain scans have shown and still ploughs on actually doing things.Although he admits he hasn’t written a thing since on medical advice he stopped quaffing and toking, some twelve months before the book was written;he gives hints that maybe the odd tincture might be needed soon.
And I would actually have liked to hear more about PureTone.He rails against MP3 and Spotify and iTunes, claiming that since they are digital they may only give you fifteen percent of the original analogue sound, and that he has a miracle solution.It’s the argument of CDs against vinyl.A topic close to my heart.I only hope that, in this one instance, it isn’t another of Neil’s wild and unwise enthusiasms.
You may ask me, why am I not talking more about music?Go on, you may.
Well, part of the reason is that Neil doesn’t talk too much about it.Sure, there’s a great deal about the bands and the tours and his guitars and amps and gizmos, but we rarely get to hear things like, oh, I don’t know ….. what was ‘Mansion on the hill’ written about? [Time for a video to break this up:]
He only really comes alive and gets enthusiastic when he describes how other people play with him – and sadly like Danny Whitten of the original Crazy Horse and Ben Keith his long-time sidekick slide guitar player, they’re dead.He is generous in praise of them, and of nearly all the other musicians he mentions;Pearl Jam, Sonic Youth …. some other names you might find surprising.He was trying to get in touch with Kurt Cobain shortly before Kurt’s demise, and was brought up short by the fact that Kurt’s last letter quotes something similar to lyrics from ‘Rust Never Sleeps’.(Unkind words, as you might expect, are usually directed at record companies and managers.)
But there are passages in this that I wish I’d never read.
I’m well aware that musicians and others sometimes use substances to lubricate the creative process.But I didn’t really want to hear that that the process of recording one of my favourite NY albums (I won’t name it, because I’m trying to forget the fact) consisted of sitting around drinking Jose Cuervo with the band until well after midnight, stumbling out to the barn and thrashing away until they seemed to be going in the same and right direction, then adding some lyrics that mostly didn’t have any meaning.Learned academic theses have probably been written about some of those songs.
I got to the stage where I was trying to scan the lines ahead without actually taking them in, just in case he was about to reveal that, say, ‘Cinnamon girl’ was about a waitress in Starbucks who always used to give him extra sprinkles.
Oh hell.I will forgive him anything.Just for the intro to ‘Ohio’, and the fact of having written the song;written overnight, recorded next day, no messing.Raw and direct.And as for his guitarwork ….. there are many fancier guitarists but no others who understand (in the phrase coined by Robert Fripp) ‘guitar mechanics’ better.Not even Jamie of The Kills.There are some harmonics he gets in some of his solos that just transfix you.Many is the night I’ve spent in headphones, wanting the workouts at the end of ‘Cowgirl in the sand’ or other tunes just to go until dawn.
Whatever else this book is, it is honest. And if you struggle all the way through it, taking in with difficulty all the things that are important to him, the last chapter will break your heart.I thought only love was supposed to do that.
I'm OK, but this has not been a good few days, technology-wise. And now I am having issues with both Facebook and YouTube, just when I want to talk about Terry Kath. Figures.
Terry was the guitarist with the blues/jazz/rock fusion band Chicago. He was incredible. Don't take my word for it - listen to someone who might know. Sorry, I am having trouble constructing this, please bear with me.
Jimi Hendrix was so self-effacing and modest, for someone who could play a guitar "just like a'ringing a bell." Watch him in this clip, while I try and find the ONE I ACTUALLY NEED, GODDAMMIT!
OK, I give up, this computer is driving me mental, and my usual search procedures are producing gibberish. I'll have to come back and fix this up, but I want to publish it now. Look, take my word for it, Jimi said that 'that guy from 'Chicago' is a better player', and many people agree. There was just too much hype about at the time, who was or wasn't 'the world's greatest guitar player'.
I am STILL trying to find the video I know exists, as above. But I have got sidetracked, and today I had some information that means that I have lost focus. But you don't need to know that. Look, watch Jimi Hendrix in this interview with Dick Cavett.
OK, let me try and find a video of Kath at his height.
No, it's no good, my technology has let me down. I will have to come back and find the exact ones I want. But this one isn't bad:
OK, fellow bloggers, you must have been here before ... I was going to go on and insert videos from the later career of Terry Kath, to build up to the climax of his sad early death. He drank, he got fat, he lost his finger speed and ability, some of the last videos of this song are painful to watch ...... yes, yes, yet another sacrifice on the altar of rock and roll. But it's all going wrong. Even the font is wrong, just let me go and fix that ....
I am so frustrated right now. Cat, come here, I want to kick you.
[Later: OK, I have found one of the videos I wanted. I'll leave the earlier one up - but this one is so much of its era, and you'll see why. Sadly, it also foreshadows Terry's fatal accident. You'll see that, too.]
No, I'm being disrepectful. Honest, I will come back and fix this up. The music is worth it. The story is that Terry, who collected handguns, was tired and emotional for various reasons (well, Jack Daniels will do that to you), was happily cleaning one at the kitchen table and, when warned of the danger said the immortal words 'Don't worry, it ain't loaded!" or similar. Versions vary. But then there was a gunshot, and no more Terry.
Drat. He sure could play. Clapton, you're a journeyman. Go look at some of the other Chicago videos, while I try and fix this up.
Jesus, just listen to the solos in these videos. You won't find anything better.
Right, should I do this? In the mood I am today, yes. You have to know that, as I've said elsewhere, any story taken to its end, ends in tragedy.
I apologise, this blog entry is a mess. I have tried to do too many things at once. And I am just not in the mood. I am going to leave it here.
OK, let's check me out, so you can see where this is coming from.
I love female vocal. I like folk music. I come from Derbyshire, and a broad Derby accent gives me warm feelings of home. (It's 'grass', not 'grarss', fer crissake.) I do what I can to support my family. So here is my neice Lauren Dempsey, singing with other musicians. The song is called 'The Grappler'.
Right, this is my music blog, I can put anything up here that just seems like a good idea to to me. This is 'Jimmy Tait', an Australian band, performing 'The Pond'. I find something to appeal to me in its sparseness and build. The lead singer is Sara Retallick, to whom I am distantly related, I declare an interest. The Pond
