Neil Young & Crazy Horse just do not take the easy road, do they?
Watch their new 17 minute video below(!) taken from Neil Young & Crazy Horse’s second album of 2012, Psychedelic Pill, out October 30.
Neil Young & Crazy Horse share a clip of archival footage and psychedelic imagery. (Via Pitchfork)
I’ve listened to Jackson Browne for about 30 years, I have a friend who has a couple of older siblings who introduced him to this incredible songwriter/singer, I got it from my friend. I am eternally grateful.
allmusic says:
In many ways, Jackson Browne was the quintessential sensitive Californian singer/songwriter of the early ’70s. Only Joni Mitchell and James Taylor ranked alongside him in terms of influence, but neither artist tapped into the post-’60s Zeitgeist like Browne.
He is a true music enthusist and he has produced albums by The Eagles, J.D. Souther and Warren Zevon and more. When he was inducted into The Rock’n Roll Hall of Fame, Bruce Springsteen said that even if The Eagles was allready in the hall of fame: “You wrote the songs they wished they had written”. Bruce says all the good things that I would like to say about Jackson Browne, take ten minutes and listen to this very fine speech:
Here are my ten favourite Jackson Browne songs.
1. Sleeps dark and silent gate, one of the most beautiful songs ever written:
“Don’t know where I’m going Wishing I could hide Oh God this is some shape I’m in When the only thing that makes me cry Is the kindness in my baby’s eye”
2. Tender is the night, official video:
“You’re gonna want me tonight When you’re ready to surrender Forget about who’s right When you’re ready to remember It’s another world at night When you’re ready to be tender”
…and a live version from Rockpalast in 1986:
3. The Pretender (with Crosby, Stills and Nash):
“I’m gonna find myself a girl Who can show me what laughter means And we’ll fill in the missing colors In each other’s paint-by-number dreams And then we’ll put our dark glasses on And we’ll make love until our strength is gone And when the morning light comes streaming in We’ll get up and do it again Get it up again”
4. For a dancer:
“I don’t know what happens when people die Can’t seem to grasp it as hard as I try It’s like a song playing right in my ear That I can’t sing I can’t help listening”
5. Before the Deluge:
“For the resignation that living brings And exchanged love’s bright and fragile glow For the glitter and the rouge And in a moment they were swept before the deluge”
“On his right hand Billy tattooed the word love and on his left hand was the word fear. And in which hand he held his fate was never clear”
I think Darkness on the edge of town is Springsteen’s best album, but I think Tunnel of Love is his most overlooked record. This is a quiet, often acoustic country-tinged album that has become more important to me the older I get.
It might sound less than Springsteen than his earlier albums, and he really goes a long way towards country music, but that’s ok, I really like it. He released it while still touring with the E Street Band, but its sound signified a marked departure from the driving rock of his earlier albums.
“God have mercy on the man who doubts what he’s sure of.”
It’s a mix of Nebraska and Darkness with strong melodies and more melancholy. The Songs are about lost opportunities, misplaced love and regrets. It is a very sad album, maybe that is why Springsteen rarely play these songs in concert. He should play them, they are among his best.
The sleeve notes to the record Springsteen writes “Thanks Julie”.
Bruce Springsteen comes off as a tired man, is it his break-up record, his divorce album? It certainly sound like it. Great art sometimes comes from pain, and this album contains great art.
Brilliant Disguise:
His marriages are falling to pieces, both to his wife and to his band. He records this album at home, it is a true solo effort even if some E-Streeters dropped by to lend backing vocals or keyboard parts to certain tracks.
It is also a “what’s the meaning of love?” record.
Lyrically, Tunnel of Love showed us some of Springsteen’s sharpest writing to date.The songs have been covered a lot and these tunes prove especially attractive to musicians in the folk, country and singer-songwriter genre. You’ll be baffeled by the number of country artists who took a crack at “Tougher than the Rest.” As I said it has songs about lost love and regrets and what’s more country than that?
“Would they ever look so happy again the handsome groom and his bride?” Springsteen sings in Walk like a man.
Bruce and Julie filed for divorce less than a year after the release of the album.
As a teenager thirsting to escape your hometown and fantasising about meeting the girl of your dreams, the urgency and optimism of Born to Run, the murky realism of Darkness on the Edge of Town, heartland rock of The River and Born in The USA will probably appeal more to you than Tunnel of Love. I know they did to me.
What a difference growing up make: today Tunnel of Love rings just as true to me as the albums mentioned above does.
My Favourite song on the album is Tougher than the rest.
Rolling Stone magazine said it best:
Initially, in fact, Tunnel of Love sounds not only modest but also playful, giddy and lightweight. “Ain’t Got You” is a funny, partially a cappella Bo Diddley-style rocker that jokes about Springsteen’s wealth (“I got a pound of caviar sitting home on ice/I got a fancy foreign car that rides like paradise”) but expresses yearning for the one thing money can’t buy (i.e., “you”). In the next two songs, “Tougher Than the Rest” and “All That Heaven Will Allow,” Springsteen is head over heels in love, convinced that the sun will shine as long as he’s got the right woman by his side. Those three songs are a light, romantic, lovely beginning, and then it all comes crashing down.
Bobby said he’d pull out Bobby stayed in/Janey had a baby it wasn’t any sin/They were set to marry on a summer day/Bobby got scared and he ran away.
The song, “Spare Parts,” is a road-house rocker reminiscent of Dylan’s “Highway 61 Revisited”; the sound is abrasive and harsh; the story is bleak; and the moral is hard: “Spare parts/And broken hearts/Keep the world turnin’ around.”
From that point on, times are tough. In “Cautious Man,” the main character has love tattooed on one hand, fear on the other (Springsteen’s lift from the film The Night of the Hunter, in which Robert Mitchum played a preacher with love and hate tattooed on his knuckles). The relationships in “Two Faces,” “Brilliant Disguise” and “One Step Up” (“and two steps back”) are crumbling as trust gives way to betrayal and recrimination: “Another fight and I slam the door on/Another battle in our dirty little war.” In the title song, Springsteen voices a fear that underlies the entire album: “It’s easy for two people to lose each other in/This tunnel of love.”
As we know, Dylan debuted the Tempest track: Scarlet Town in Winnipeg 5 October, I love the track and what a great live version. Finally there has surfaced a very good audio recording of the happening.
The Winnipeg Sun wrote:
“Finally, nearly an hour into the show, Dylan pulled out the first Tempest cut: The slow-burner Scarlet Town… it was suitably haunting and pretty, with a strong solo from Bob. And I got to hear a Dylan tune performed live for the first time. So no complaints.”
I am a big fan of Sufjan’s Christmas songs and the proud owner of the first five EP’s collecting his festive output.
Songs For Christmas is a box set of five EPs released over six years between 2001-2006 (the missing year is 2004 when Stevens was busy making Illinois). These collections of stripped-down carols, covers and originals where originally recorded as gifts for family and friends.
Now he is releasing the follow up(s)!
Silver & Gold: Songs for Christmas, Vols. 6-10 compiles five EPs recorded between 2006 and 2010.
Christmas Unicorn from the new collection, a 12-minute song that includes snippets from the classic “Love will tear us appart”, really great stuff!:
Press release:
“Silver & Gold is more than just another Christmas album, but an ongoing exercise in theme and variation, an annual tradition that offers this songwriter a chance to experiment with fashion and technique without taking himself too seriously. Sufjan’s playful (yet purposeful) expedition through the superficial landscape of sugar plum fairies and marshmallow fluff has produced an exuberant musical account of “all things Christmas” in the pursuit of the sublime. What distinguishes this project from the glut of Christmas albums saturating the market today are Sufjan’s unguarded enthusiasm for the genre itself (the sense of freedom he shows in celebrating with reverence and rebellion) and the belief that Christmas music contains a multiplicity of sacred and secular significance (from Baby Jesus to Babes in Toyland) that is ultimately ours for the taking. It’s safe to say that no one has taken it further than Sufjan, for better and for worse.”