Friday, 2 March 2012

Neil Young mostly ,,,,



To slightly adapt a well known saying, work is something that happens to you when you make plans to blog. A lot of tearing up and down the country, then recovering by flopping in a heap doesn't make for serious - or even sustained frivolous - writing. So some music is in order - mostly Neil Young today. Starting with our man at the top of his game with My My Hey Hey from the Farm Aid thing. 'It's better to burn out than to fade away'. Hmmm ... I'll get back to you on that.




Neil Young of course first came to note via Buffalo Springfield- as did Stephen Stills (random fact: Stephen Stills was considered as a possible Monkee but it was decided that his teeth didn't pass muster). They produced one wonderful album (For What It's Worth) and a sort of theme song for the Vietnam war - For What It's Worth, did a lot of drugs and kept having infinitely confusing line up changes.


Then there was Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, commonly known as CSNY, it must be said that a lot of their stuff was trite and sentimental as anyone who has cringed through Our House and/or Teach Your Children Well can confirm. But they also did all time rabbit favourite Helpless (written by Young). Annoyingly, the YouTube link to the Deja Vu studio version of Helpless has 'embedding disabled by request'. No problemo - just follow the link ..


Postscript: Or even better - and this shows the ridiculousness of the whole thing - same song, same album, different link - no embedding ..




All together now ...


There is a town in north Ontario
With dream  comfort memory to spare
In my mind I need a place to go
All my changes were there ...


Followed by one of the lines of all time ...


Blue, blue windows behind the stars


Then they also did Ohio ...






And finally as a very loud raspberry to a very rude woman who thinks the rabbit needs a haircut, here are Crosby, Stills and Nash from 2009 with Almost Cut My Hair Today. If you got it, flaunt it!





6 comments:

JoJo said...

Thank you for saying that about Our House and Teach Your Children. Lawdy but I do loathe those two songs. But I do like CSN with or w/o Y. I really loved the more recent (1989) popular song, "American Dream".

The ex went to one of the Bridge School benefit shows in the mid 90's.

sybil law said...

Sooo dead on about those nauseating songs! Big time Neil young fan here-I've seen him so many times it's crazy (also CSN)...
Everytime I hear that Buffalo Springfield song I think of The Muppets. I don't know if that was actually ON The Muppets or if my mind thinks it was, but I remember gophers or something popping their heads out...
I'm gonna google it.

tony said...

Helpless Is The Perfect Song.

tony said...

PS For What It's Worth always reminds me Of St Paul's (when I Worked in the Youth Hostel in Carter Lane.)Happy Daze!

white rabbit said...

JoJo/Sybil - I think the answer is that the two awful songs were written by Graham Nash. There was a very sniffy reaction over here when he became the N bit of CSNY - as in 'What? That bloke from The Hollies?'

He also wrote 'Marrakesh Express'[ - which I could get by without too.

By all accounts a very decent man but as a songwriter?

Ermmm ...

And Sybil thanks for the Muppet link on facebook; it made me laugh!

Tony - Perfect. Yup. That's the word. It always does it for me no matter how many times I hear it.

Daisy Deadhead said...

I quote "almost cut my hair" all the time, even though no, I didn't... not even almost! (its still down to my butt)

But I do appreciate the sentiment: I feel like I owe it to someone.

Oh, hell yes. :)