Neil Young: "A Letter Home" The Diner Review...Review

Soooo…. Neil Young.  The man, the myth the… aging, deteriorating and recently annoying icon.  It is well documented.  I love this guy.  I think his body of work stands up favorably as the best ever in rock.  That having been said there is a time to stop and he has not put out anything interesting (to me) in years but… body of work speaking wise…

1963	The Squires	"The Sultan" b/w "Aurora"
1966	Buffalo Springfield	Buffalo Springfield
1967	Buffalo Springfield	Buffalo Springfield Again
1968	Buffalo Springfield	Last Time Around
	Neil Young	Neil Young
1969	Buffalo Springfield	Retrospective
	Neil Young & Crazy Horse	Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere
1970	Crosby Stills Nash & Young	Déjà vu
	Neil Young	After the Goldrush
1971	Crosby Stills Nash & Young	4 Way Street
1972	Neil Young	Harvest
	Neil Young & Graham Nash	"War Song" b/w "Needle and the Damage Done"
	Neil Young	Journey Through the Past
1973	Neil Young	Time Fades Away
1974	Neil Young	On the Beach
1975	Neil Young	Tonight's the Night
	Neil Young	Zuma
1976	The Stills-Young Band	Long May You Run
1977	Neil Young	American Stars & Bars
	Neil Young	Decade
1978	Neil Young	Comes a Time
1979	Neil Young & Crazy Horse	Rust Never Sleeps
	Neil Young & Crazy Horse	Live Rust
1980	Neil Young	Hawks & Doves
1981	Neil Young & Crazy Horse	Re-ac-tor
1982	Neil Young	Trans
1983	Neil Young & the Shocking Pinks	Everybody's Rockin'
1985	Neil Young	Old Ways
1986	Neil Young	Landing On Water
1987	Neil Young & Crazy Horse	Life
1988	Neil Young & the Bluenotes	This Note's For You
	Crosby Stills Nash & Young	American Dream
1989	Neil Young & The Restless	Eldorado
	Neil Young	Freedom
1990	Neil Young & Crazy Horse	Ragged Glory
1991	Neil Young & Crazy Horse	Arc Weld
1992	Neil Young	Harvest Moon
1993	Neil Young	Lucky 13
	Neil Young	Unplugged
1994	Neil Young & Crazy Horse	Sleeps With Angels
1995	Neil Young	Mirror Ball
1996	Neil Young	Dead Man
	Neil Young & Crazy Horse	Broken Arrow
1997	Neil Young & Crazy Horse	Year of the Horse
1999	Crosby Stills Nash & Young	Looking Forward
2000	Neil Young	Silver & Gold
	Neil Young	Road Rock v1
2001	Buffalo Springfield	Box Set
2002	Neil Young	Are You Passionate?
2003	Neil Young & Crazy Horse	Greendale
	Neil Young	Greatest Hits
2005	Neil Young	Prairie Wind
2006	Neil Young	Living With War
	Neil Young & Crazy Horse	Live At The Fillmore East 1970
	Neil Young	Living With War: In The Beginning
2007	Neil Young	Live At Massey Hall 1971
	Neil Young	Chrome Dreams 2
2008	Crosby Stills Nash & Young	CSNY/Déjà Vu Live
	Neil Young	Sugar Mountain - Live at Canterbury House 1968
2009	Neil Young	Fork In The Road
	Neil Young Archives Volume 1	Box Set
	Neil Young	Dreamin' Man Live '92
2010	Neil Young	Le Noise
2011	Neil Young International Harvesters	A Treasure
2012	Neil Young & Crazy Horse	Americana
	Neil Young & Crazy Horse	Psychedelic Pill
2013	Neil Young	Live at The Cellar Door
2014	Neil Young	A Letter Home

I have the ability to cull the list, and there is a LOT of shit here, to get to some essentials which I believe are as follows:

1. Everybody Knows this Is Nowhere

2. After the Goldrush

3. Harvest

4. Tonights The Night

5. Zuma

6. American Stars And Bars

7. Rust Never Sleeps

8. Hawks And Doves

9. Freedom

10. Ragged Glory

11. Unplugged

This of course does not include his Buffalo Springfield work and any of his work with CSN.  That is great work too and this list also does not include his compilations and live stuff other than “UnPlugged” which just cannot be ignored as a unique CD even though all the songs had been previously released.  The live and archived stuff he has been issuing is awesome but it shows the brilliance and strength around his earlier work.  I could make a reasonably cogent argument that he has not been relevant to me since 1990 and Ragged Glory.  I mean there have been good songs on most every album (with some notable exceptions) but overall, very solid.

Neil has always been disappointed by digital sound, at first decrying the CD and then really going ape shit about digitally compressed music and MP3’s and what not.  If you read his autobiography (and I will pause and say a brief prayer that you did not), there is a lot of discussion about the sound obsession and about him retooling one of his classic cars with this exquisite digital sound system and now he has gotten investors and friends and fans to invest in something called PONO.  I have zero (0) appreciation for high end sound.  My ears are shot and the idea that you ever get really good sound in a moving vehicle has always seemed ludicrous to me but to Niel… it is a big deal.  If you ever get bored…

http://www.ponomusic.com/#home

Soooo…. against the backdrop of this digital obsession for ultra high end music, where would you suppose Neil would go this time?  EDM?  Reinventing country.  Revisiting Grunge?  Taking us back to the garage with Crazy Horse?  All of these would make sense with the new obsession.  Instead he hooked up with the guy Rolling Stone just called “The Willy Wonka” of rock, Jack White.  White has moved to Nashville and has the hippest little record store in the country (Third Man records) and is also operating a studio called (Cleverly enough) Third Man Studios.  Anyway, white has a little recording booth where people can make their own records.  Evidently it was a “thing” at some point in the past and you can come in and go into the booth and cut your own album.  It has a scratchy home made sound and is the opposite of everything Neil has been working on but it is really “authentic” if by authentic you mean almost homemade.

To his credit, he has made a really personal CD/Album/Digital Download.  “A Letter Home” is basically his effort at a message in sound and dialogue to his mother.  Telling her stories and singing her songs and dialoguing with her like a prayer and talking to her about his brother and encouraging her to make up with dad… I guess it is sweet.  It is interesting that there are no Neil Young songs on the CD and perhaps the brilliance in this format is in doing all covers.

To be a fan of Neil is to be in love with the vagaries of his voice.  The atonal, tunefulness that he is able to crank out and the acoustic format has always been the best for showcasing that particularly beautiful train wreck.  The Willie Nelson classic “On The Road Again” with Jack White singing and playing, the haunting “If You Could read My Mind Love” so much more nuanced than Gordon Lightfoot’s reading but the best of show is “Girl From The North Country”.  It has been covered a million times but for whatever reason this one… resonates.  Second best cover is his take on Springsteen’s mournful “My Home Town” which no matter which economic crisis that you're living through seems like it could have been written a week ago.

So, I am pretty happy with this CD.  It is not a desert island disc but it is another part of that body of work I keep talking about and I really think, when Neil passes, his body of work will be regarded by many as the greatest of the rock era.  I am just saying...

Binge Watching II: HBO "True Detective"

Sooooo….one of the things is… with this new generation of screen entertainment….is beginning to manifest itself as a problem for me.  Binge Watching.  I expounded on this once briefly when I had the pleasure over about a month of watching “The Wire” from start to finish. % seasons worth.  Fortunately my wife was in her busy season and I really was looking for ways to kill time at night that did not involve drinking and this seemed like a healthy way to go but now I am not so sure… or indeed, not sure at.  In short, there is no sureness.

Since that time I have avoided diving into new series.  My somewhat addictive personality does not do well with temptations like this.  As a youngster and up through the first 6 months or so of having my first child I had a problem with video games.  Even in high school when I was in the thralls of romance with my eventual wife, I would sneak off to the arcade (yes, we had to go places to play video games) and pump quarters into Space Invaders.  I was unstoppable and by the end could play for 20 minutes to an ½ hour on one quarter.  This continued into college and thereafter, through Atari and into the first Nintendo System and finally ended when my wife was in the midst of some trauma with our new son and I said, “HOLD IT! I AM ABOUT TO SAVE THE PRINCESS!”  The Nintendo game was retired to my parents house and other than brief flirtations with Madden Football and Tony Hawk Pro Skater (which I justified as something I could do with my children) I really, rarely lost hours (or days) of time but that is because, like an alcoholic, I knew I had a problem.

The same thing occurred to me when watching The Wire, so being prudent (52 year old) person who has some minor level of self knowledge I decided not to go down the road with another series unless I could watch with my wife, which would severely limit my intake and ti9me consumption.  But…as I type this I am flying home from a delightful trip to Europe with my entire family and I discovered that the tricky people at American Airlines and their nefarious allies British Airways (The creepily named “ONE WORLD ALLIANCE” has endeavored to put TV reruns on these overseas flights and they got some HBO content, in the form of the “True Detective” series which just started this year (or at the end of last year).

My TV watching friends with HBO (fortunately we have Show Time which although they have some great series occasionally generally tends toward seedier stuff I am embarrassed to watch like “Shameless and “Californication”) told me “you have got to watch “True Detectives” and these are people who “know” me.  They have also been encouraging me towards “Game of Thrones” but it seems too trendy for me.  Anyway… I have fallen back into the abyss.

When flying to Europe it is of paramount importance to sleep on the way over.  This softens the jet lag and leaves you in a slightly better condition for arrival and the endless walking that every trip to Europe seems to make mandatory.  Instead I watched the end of a movie I walked out (Wolf Of Wall Street) and then a horrible, stupid movie called “Ride Along” with the dreaded “Ice Cube” and then discovered the HBO feed and “True Detective.

I have always like Woody Harrelson, even in “Cheers” but his list of films which amuse and entertain for include “White Men Can’t Jump” and of course “Zombieland”.  Matthew Mcconaughey is a little more problematic (he has always been too pretty) but recently has been wowing me in his last few films (even before “Dallas Buyers Club” and allows me to say the words that my friends say, that I never say… “I was wrong”.

These two guys are detectives in Louisiana.  Mcconnaughy has a dark past and Woody appears to be a good cop trying to make a go with a nice family and a sweet wife but as they work on a troubling case involving the ritualistic murder of a young lady… their lives and psyches start to deteriorate.  Whomever wrote it (and I don’t know because I am still on the plane and have no internet access, really built some characters and as the saga moves on through the seven episodes it becomes hypnotizing.  I was able to watch 3 on the way over and the last 4 on the way home and each episode totally failed to disappoint in any way as we dug more into the guys histories and back stories as they recount the investigation to two other detectives who are talking to them for reasons that remain unclear till we move towards the end.

Riveting.

Well scripted.

Well acted.

The season ended somewhat ambiguously and although i cannot understand how they might continue it, I hope they do.  This is worth your time and although I worry for my continued mental health… the Binge Watching continues.

Binge Watching! Beware, It Could Happen To You!

Soooooo…. I know this is yet another trend I am woefully behind on but recently I have become a partaker (victim) of….”Binge Watching”.  I had never really heard the term until fairly recently.  Certainly 2013 at the earliest, not before that though.  I am certain some trend setting Millennials with their oodles of free time and total lack of Protestant Work Ethic (no offense intended to my Catholic and Jewish friends and sadly, to the best of my knowledge I have no Muslim friends or even acquaintances although FOX News assures me that “America” is being inundated by them AND THEY MEAN ME HARM!).  But I digress… Binge Watching.

Wikipedia, the preeminent source for all information on the planet traces the term back to the 90’s but it’s entry also credits the internet and of course NetFlix for making this…. a thing.  They also cite “Breaking Bad” as a frequently binge watched show.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binge-watching

Anyway, for an old man but a veteran TV watcher it is kind of an odd experience.  You get to see the story arc unfold so quickly and there is no waiting till next week or forgetting what characters were doing what to whom.  I have experimented a little with this bingwatching thing when my wife insisted (and I turned in the shredded piece of cardboard that was once my man card and acquiesced) and we caught up on two previous seasons of “Downton Abbey”.  Go ahead, make fun of me.  I can live with it.  I also had ignored “Breaking Bad” and then spent several days tuning in and out of the AMC Marathon leading up to the series finale. We had also had minor experiences with DVR and having three shows stacked up all at once to watch of “Modern Family” but nothing like this particularly addictive adventure.

For the past Month and a half, I been watching “The Wire”.  Everyone raved about it when it was on HBO but there really is not time to set aside to watch and keep track of these great dramas on Cable.  HBO really started this whole genre of quality programming with “The Sopranos” but “The Wire” started shortly thereafter and ran for five seasons.  My evil friend Mogerman told me I needed to watch them after he had consumed them all over some period on the treadmill.  This was St. Louis columnist Bill Mcclellan's favorite show because they “got it right” whether it was city police or city government or the newspapers.  The show is set in Baltimore and season one focuses on a special unit of cops set up to investigate and prosecute a string of murders by one particularly successful and vicious gang.  They develop 8-9 characters on the police side and do the same on the gang side throughout the season until they wrap up season one putting the bad guys in jail… but not all the bad guys...and for not all that long… and at a pretty great personal price to a lot of the cops.

It was just fascinating because it was so well done.  Well paced, well written and well filmed and in season one the great alt country rocker Steve Earle makes an appearance as an AA mentor and recovering junkie (which arguably was easier for him to play, since he is). Then he comes back in the later seasons and that is one of the brilliant things about the series.  Everyone comes back and they keep building season on season until you have a whole city.  A whole well constructed world.  A well written world.  A brilliantly written world.  

They do kill off the characters though and it get’s heartbreaking as the series progresses.  In Season 4 they knock of my favorite character Proposition Joe.  Joe was “The Good Drug Dealer” with good connections, the good dope and a good head on his shoulders.  He was always around to ask for a deal or to suggest a compromise or just to make a head smart play.  He was the classic…”It is nothing personal, it is just business” type character.  He takes the young evil drug dealer under his wing and teaches him all about the business and ultimately… it ends poorly for Prop Joe… and it broke my heart! Seriously…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vW5K8E1Wkew

The character development was flawless and the characters were compelling.  Michael was street kid who had a drug addict mom and was raising his half brother and became a contract killer working with the creepily perfect female killer, Snoop.  Until they decided they needed to kill him...buuuuut…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sHT-VOLVFzQ

But it was not all cold blooded murders.  There was the politician Clay Davis….Sheeeeeeeit!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LU5IoHf3xdg

But the series had a 100 classic moments like Snoop, at the Hardware Barn… buying a nail gun in order to… well you would need to watch the series.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gE-uY7P3pe4

And there was Omar Little.  He robbed the drug dealers.  A tragic/comic figure without equal.  Shakespearian…. and he loved Honey Nut Cheerios.  Who doesnt?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5YcsXd1ZQHA

There were white people too.  A lot of them.  There characters were also richly drawn.  The homicide unit.  The Port Authority Teamsters. The Politicians.  The Schools and finally the Newsroom.

I just finished the whole five seasons and I was pretty much spellbound by the entire thing.  It was unbelievably enveloping and it was hard to get done work or communicate with people or read any books or eat, or sleep or blink or… anything.  And tonight it ended… and I feel very empty.  Kind of like what I imagine the ending of a serious drug addiction probably feels like.

Binge Watching.

This series was so good that I fear I may fall prey to more.  Perhaps really immerse myself in “Breaking Bad”.  Even worse I might have to watch Kevin Spacey and “House of Cards”.  The good news there is that there are only two seasons to catch up on.  Maybe this “Game of Thrones” show that everyone is talking about.  I don’t know.  Bing Watching… it could be the death of me.  But it might be a very intriguing ride.  But for God’s sake don't let it happen to you!