Neil Young Living with War

[judih]

I'm now listening to the album, as it plays for free on Neil's site: http://www.neilyoung.com/. With many thanks to whimsicaldeb for this. Check it out, people.

Living with War, Neil Young


http://www.hyfntrak.com/neilyoung2/AFF23082/

April 28th, 2006 12:00 am
Neil Young's 'Living With War' Shows He Doesn't Like It

By Jon Pareles / New York Times

Neil Young unleashes a digital broadside today. His new album, "Living With War" (Reprise), was recorded and mostly written three to four weeks ago and as of Friday can be heard in its entirety free on his Web site, http://www.neilyoung.com, and on satellite radio networks.

Mr. Young half-jokingly describes "Living With War" as his "metal folk protest" album. It's his blunt statement about the Iraq war; "History was a cruel judge of overconfidence/back in the days of shock and awe," he sings, strumming an electric guitar and leading a power trio with a sound that harks back to Young albums like "Rust Never Sleeps" and "Ragged Glory."

Some songs add a trumpet or a 100-voice choir, hastily convened in Los Angeles for one 12-hour session.
During the nine new songs he sympathizes with soldiers and war victims, insists "Don't need no more lies,"
longs for a leader to reunite America and prays for peace.

In a song whose title alone has already brought him the fury of right-wing blogs, he urges, "Let's Impeach the President." It ends with Mr. Young shouting, "Flip, flop," amid contradictory sound bites of President Bush. But Mr. Young insists the album is nonpartisan.

"If you impeach Bush, you're doing a huge favor for the Republicans," he argued, speaking by telephone from California. "They can run again with some pride."

Mr. Young is a Canadian citizen. But having lived in the United States since the 1960's, he sings as if he were an American. The title song of "Living With War"
quotes "The Star-Spangled Banner," and the album ends with the choir singing "America the Beautiful."

The album's release is a high-tech, globe-spanning update of a topical song tradition that's much older than recordings: the broadside, a songwriter's rapid response to events of the day. "They had these songs that everybody knew the melodies to," Mr. Young said.
"They'd just write new words, and the minstrels would be traveling around spreading the word. Music spreads like wildfire when you do it that way."

On Tuesday a higher-quality version will be for sale as a download from online music stores, and a CD will be in stores next week as soon as it can be manufactured and shipped. Eventually a DVD will be released with video of the recording sessions, which took place March 29 to April 6. Many of the songs on the album were first takes, recorded immediately after Mr. Young taught them to the band. On March 31 he wrote three songs: "Let's Impeach the President"
before breakfast, "Looking for a Leader" after he recorded "Let's Impeach the President" and "Roger and Out" the same evening.

Mr. Young's Web site will have a more elaborate presentation, available free. It will include a page designed like a cable-news broadcast, complete with visuals (including recording-session scenes), ticker and logo: LWW (for "Living With War") rather than CNN.
"Even if it turns out that we can't sell it with the news in it, we won't sell it, we'll just stream it,"
he said. "We don't have to sell it. We can still get it out there. This has nothing to do with money as far as I'm concerned."

Mr. Young wants the album heard as a whole. The online streams play through from beginning to end; until the CD is ready, the downloadable copies will be available only as a bundle of the full album. "That first impression is so important," he said. "Instead of just going to 'Let's Impeach the President,' people will have to absorb the whole thing. To understand the songs, you need to understand where the whole album's coming from. It protects my right as an artist to have the work presented the way I created it."

Mr. Young has always been impatient with the time lag between writing a song and getting it to the world.
When four student protesters were shot dead at Kent State University in 1970, he wrote "Ohio," recorded it with Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young and released it two and a half weeks later by sending acetates — preliminary pressings — to radio stations. (He will be on tour this summer as a member of Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young in what's billed as the Freedom of Speech Tour.)

After 9/11 Mr. Young wrote "Let's Roll," a song about the passengers who brought down a hijacked plane in Pennsylvania, and released it free online. "Now we have the Internet," he said. "It doesn't sound as good, but it's much faster, and it gets around the world. That's huge, that's as big as we get."

The songs on "Living With War" are straightforward and single-minded, setting aside the allusive, enigmatic quality of Mr. Young's rock classics. "These are all ideas we've heard before," he said. "There's nothing new in there. I just connected the dots."

The protest song, rocked-up slightly from its folky 1960's form, has been making a comeback during the Iraq war, from arena bands like Pearl Jam, the Rolling Stones and Green Day to indie-rockers like Bright Eyes and blues-rockers like Keb' Mo' and Robert Cray. Bruce Springsteen's latest album is a tribute to the protest-song mentor Pete Seeger, although it features old folk songs rather than Mr. Seeger's topical material.

"We are the silent majority now, and we haven't done a damn thing," Mr. Young said. "We've stood by and watched this happen. But there's more of us than there is of them, and we have to do something. When people start talking and see they can get away with it, it's going to happen everywhere. It's going to be a landslide, it's going to be a tidal wave. This is just the tip of it."

Mr. Young said that he made "Living With War" not with a plan, but on an impulse. "I don't know what actually did it," he said. "It happened really fast, faster than I think I've ever experienced. There was just a kind of a wave."

As in the 60's, protest songs risk self-righteousness and preaching only to the converted. Only the most generalized ones outlast the interest in whatever headlines inspired them. There's not a lot of mystery to the songs on "Living With War"; they make their points as forthrightly as possible. Yet in the Internet era information — not just songs but blogs, videos, photos, drawings, e-mail jottings — is in the paradoxical position of being published worldwide and perhaps archived forever, but also being impulsive and ephemeral. A song for the Internet doesn't have to be one for the ages. Like an old broadside, it just has to get around for its moment, for right now. "Living With War" — irate, passionate, tuneful, thoughtful and obstinate — is definitely worth a click.

[Lightning Rod]

judih,

I was about halfway through listening to the album when I saw your post.
Now I've listened to it all

I'm a huge Neil Young fan, so I'm a pushover as a critic of his music
certainly these are things that need to be said
but I wasn't terribly impressed by this work musically
I found it to be rather pedantic, almost tiresome

I'm sure glad that he is lending his voice to the cause, though

[judih]

yes, the music is banal, but he states that he meant it to be. News travelled fastest in the days of the minstrels when the people already knew the tunes. They only had to change the words. And this album certainly sounded familiar to me.

Fast messaging - that's the idea, according to Neil.

pass it on.

you were listening. on another message board, i posted this and an hour later on another segment of the board, someone else posted it...it's being passed around.

popular movements. Maybe this will go somewhere...?

[mtmynd]

Thx, Judih... I'm listening now and have already sent the lind out to others.

Spread it!

[Artguy]

Still rockin in the free world...............Neil does it for me every time....no matter how primitive...........I mean that's the point is'nt it???....the message is the message......

[Artguy]

Listened to the link....got my bongos out and played along................

[firsty]

neil young for president!!!

wait, he's a fecking canadian, right?

well, if we've already elected a douchebag, we should be able to elect a canadian!

this album is poetry.

[mnaz]

Badly needed....

In---- my---- humble---- opinion.

This is not your father's cold war, is it? We've filled in a bit since then. Numbers and variables multiply. Many, if not most, despite, or because of left or right-wing reports of widespread ignorance, seem poised to evolve, despite, or because of oceans of broadcast quarter-truths. And we have little use for transparent bullshit. Name one other generation which differed in that regard....

I used to argue against this fucking war on the blessed, fucking internet, up against a wall of resistance, and I was lonely. I'm less lonely now-- almost as less-lonely as those argued against the fucking Vietnam War in 1968, without the blessed, fucking internet. In time, others agreed-- five years and fifty-thousand corpses later. The official body counts are lower this time. Other than that, nothing much has changed.

[mnaz]

Then again, I suppose I should let it go....

The world's a mess. It's always been a mess. I've got to get on to my own work....

[Arcadia]

I listened to the album yesterday one time while doing school work.
I liked After the garden, Flags of freedom, Let's impeach the president and Roger and out. I also liked Shock an awe and Restless consumer.
One of the songs, I don't remember wich one, reminded me a church song and other Knocking on heaven's doors.
I don't like him singing alone, so I liked the choir.
And the trumpets are a rara thing doing what they did among those guitars and percussion.
Then, I had to look for the lyrics, I didn't understand him a word...!

[Scootertrash]

A lot of people don't know it, but Neil Young's dislike of George Bush goes all the way back to Thanksgiving 1976 when they met at.....

THE LAST WALTZ

the whole sordid story right here:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=17IDaiVFbKo& ... il%20young