Living With War
It was 1983. I was 14 years old and I begged to go see Neil Young at the Worcester Centrum. He was on tour for an album called “Trans.” An experimental electronic folky concept album that angered a lot of his fan base. I loved it. It was a crazy amazing show…but I remember walking out of the show and hearing half the crowd saying how awful the new Neil was. While like another 30 percent were stimulated and another 20 like me LOVED it. This was a trend that continued throughout all of Neil’s albums and it is this artistic bravey that has made him second only to Bob Dylan in my book. I have never heard anyone play a guitar like him. I have never heard such raw emotion from anyone but him. A few years ago I went to see him tour for an album called Greendale. A concept album with live actors acting out the songs with community theater style scenery on the stage while the band went nuts. It was powerful and so different than anything I ever saw. After the show 60 percent hated it, 30 percent indifferent, and 10 percent loved it. I was again in the minority. Neil wrote a song called “Bandit” for that album that really got to me emotionally. Anyway, the fact is Neil is again challenging us all by opening himself up to that mysterious thing called inspiration. His album “Prairie Wind” was just out a few months ago but in the meantime he was inspired and recorded an album in like 3 days called “Living With War”. I’m sure it will be controversial but you really should listen to it for yourself and go to his site to read the lyrics. Since Neil has helped me so much in life I would like to thank him by taking this space to advertise his new album. It will be downloadable from iTunes next Tuesday and in stores as an old fashioned CD in a couple weeks. But you can listen to the album in its entirety right now. Neil insists that people who are gonna listen to it streamed over the internet do so by listening to it in order and as a whole instead of judging it by one “controversial” song or lyric. So sit back and enjoy.
John Y. says:
thanks for puttin’ this up. had no clue it was gonna be available so soon. right on.
April 30th, 2006 at 1:18 pm