Music

Neil Young, Americana and me

/ jpbohannon / 4 Comments

On Friday, I received an e-mail from an old friend.  He had been listening to public radio and they had a program called “Old Music Tuesday.”  Here’s what the reporter, Robin Hilton said:

I haven’t kept an official ticker, but if government agents kicked in my door and forced me to pick the one album I’ve listened to more than any other, I’d have to say Neil Young‘s Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere. It came out 43 years ago this week.

The album was 43 years old that week (Yikes!). Though, I too can likely claim it as the album I played most. My friend linked me to the page–

http://www.npr.org/blogs/allsongs/2012/05/15/152748432/old-music-tuesday-neil-youngs-everybody-knows-this-is-nowhere?sc=nl&cc=sod-20120517

And then he said that he thought of me when he heard the show. He stated that it was I that had turned all our friends onto Neil Young.  I don’t know if that was true, but I do know I very much wanted to be him. I did a credible impersonation and knew all his songs on the guitar –although I never quite mastered  the lead jams. I had a female friend–Sue Shelley–who was a great seamstress and who patched my jeans just like Neil’s with upholstery and corduroy and quilting.  At a festival, a friend’s band invited me on stage and we did “Down By the River.” And I remember once going to a friend’s older brother’s party–whoo-hoo! we were hanging with the big boys–and I played the entire “Last Trip to Tulsa”–all 10 minutes of it–and felt that certain feeling you get as a teenager when the older guys validate you.

First solo album, with the 10 minute “Last Trip to Tulsa”

It was much later, after the Harvest album that another friend said that Neil Young was responsible for thousands of bad guitar players in America.  I’m not sure if he was alluding to me, but I got his point.  Every beginner seems to start with the basic E-minor, D sequence of “Heart of Gold.” But I argued that the simplicity does not take away from the beauty of the songs–it is part of the package, part of the appeal.

I went through them all. Followed the players in their own ventures: a young Nils Lofgren who played on the After the Gold Rush album, formed a exciting band named GRIN before moving on and becoming Springsteen’s guitarist;  the various incarnations of Crazy Horse, whose first album was the soundtrack to so many great moments; the irrepressible producer, Jack Nietzche who went on to win an Oscar for An Officer and a Gentleman and being nominated for his music for One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.

Anyway, I will confess, Neil was an obsession. I had every Buffalo Springfield album, and followed the many bands that broke off from there.  The same with CSN&Y.  But it was always Neil that was my focus. (Although a girl once dated me because she said I looked like Steven Stills. Probably, not the best foundation for a relationship, but I ran with it for as long as I could.)

And aside from his music, I admired his integrity. He made albums that pushed music every which way. (He was once sued for an album that the record company felt didn’t sound enough like Neil Young. This was the same year a record company sued John Fogerty for sounding too much like his old band. Ah, the suits, you gotta shake your head some time.)  He made rockabilly and electronica and country and good old rock-and-roll. He got involved in personal and political causes; founding Farm Aid in support of small farmers, as well as establishing the Bridge School for children with verbal and physical disabilities. He also leads the Bridge Festival each year which brings along some extraordinary performers and is a large source of fundraising and awareness for the project.

His performance of John Lennon’s “Imagine” shortly after 9/11 on a televised benefit was beautiful and perfect for the situation. Watch it here:

Under the pseudonym, Bernard Shakey, Neil as directed or co-directed a handful of films and produced even more. The recent film CSN&Y/Deja Vu–which centered on CSN&Y and their 2006 Freedom of Speech tour–was a reminder of Young’s commitment to the small man when set up against the larger, darker forces.

It is this film-making penchant which is front and center now. Having received that e-mail announcing the 43rd anniversary of Everyone Knows this is Nowhere, another friend, out of the blue, pointed me towards a new album that is coming in June, Americana. Neil is back with Crazy Horse and they have recorded an album of Americana songs: “Old Suzanna,” “Darling Clementine,” “She’ll be Coming Around the Mountain, ” etc. As of now, he has released three vide0s from the album–not footage of the band playing, but archival film of the rural poor, the ante-bellum rich, D.W. Griffith.  The films themselves are small jewels.  And the music is rocking.

Anyway, here’s the video from “Old Susanna.” Enjoy it:

Sunday Music: Leonard Cohen Old Ideas

/ jpbohannon / 5 Comments

His voice is unmistakeable, his lyrics are second to none. And I’m not talking Dylan here. For nearly as long as Dylan has, Leonard Cohen has been creating incomparable songs–songs that deal with pain, sexuality, religion, the miscarriages of history, the ravages of love, and finality. And now at 77 years old, Cohen seems even more focused on the finality.

For instance, “Going Home,” the first song on his new album Old Ideas, is a description of a  “lazy bastard living in a suit” named Leonard. In the realization that he is “going home,” the fictional Leonard is wishing he had had a user’s manual for living, for living in defeat.

(If you know little about Leonard Cohen, you might be unaware that his manager did a “Bernie Madoff” on him and left him completely broke which is why he is touring the world and putting out new stuff at this stage in his life.  Unfortunately, he has to. Fortunately, it is still very good stuff.)

The music, like so much of Cohen’s work, is often just an understated support to Cohen’s enigmatic lyrics. Simple piano or guitar set up against the words.  At other times, the production  has beautiful, choir-like  singers (the Webb Sisters), whose voices are often in bright opposition to the darkness of his ideas. His work has frequently had the tenor of southern spirituals (cf. “Hallelujah”) and on this record, “Amen,”  “Show Me the Place” and “Come Healing” follow suit, while “Crazy to Love You” recalls the acoustic guitar work of Cohen’s early days.

But the music is ALWAYS secondary to the words.  How heartbreaking is a love song that begs “I know you have to hate me/But could you hate me less?” It is this heart-wrenching sadness, the jaded philosophy that makes Cohen so beguiling. And I find that in his old age, this jaded attitude is even more compelling–for underneath it all, there is something hopeful, poetically hopeful in the continuance of things. In a odd way, Cohen’s complaining about the world and its injustice implies that he wants to see it better, that it can be better, that it will be better.

Having Leonard Cohen’s voice in the world, having his striking words propped up by the most simple instrumentation, makes my world better. Hallelujah!

Sunday Music–Black 47

/ jpbohannon / Leave a comment

For the next two weeks, Philadelphia is awash with “Irish” bands.  Most of them are home-grown and are playing at bars that are on the maps of organized pub crawls for the next two weekends. (Why do so many “Irish” pubs have initials. P.J. O’Toole’s, J.D. McGullicuddy’s, J.P. Monaghan’s?  Wasn’t any Irish kid called by his full name? Or was calling him by his initials a way to ensure that  he becomes a bar-owner?)  Anyway, there is a lot of live Irish music around right now–some of it great, some of it less so.  It is also the time when a slew of national/international Irish-music acts come through the area.  The Chieftains played here Friday night; the SawDoctors are in town Tuesday night; and Lunasa is here on Wednesday night.

Black 47 was at the World Cafe on Friday night, the 9th.  They were brilliant. It had been 10 years since I saw them last, and they are still musically tight, politically raucous, and extraordinary fun. The front man, Larry Kirwan is a dynamo of energy, the brass section is still stellar, and the newer additions (for me, that is) have added to the fun and musicianship. Black 47’s music is raucous and tender,  a mix of Springsteen and the Clash, heavily infused with Celtic melodies and themes.  The songs are filled with stories about life in NYC,  paeans to Irish heroes, recollected broken hearts and broken bones, and clarions for political action.

Larry Kirwan, as I said, is prolific. I once saw a play of his on Governor’s Island at the Guinness Fleadh in 1997–now collected in his book of plays, Mad Angels: The Plays of Larry Kirwan.  At the moment he is doing publicity for his latest novel, Rocking the Bronx; he has his own radio-show Celtic Crush on Sirrus/XM radio, has put together a Celtic Kid’s album and book, and is working on a musical with Thomas Kenneally (author of Schindler’s List).

But put that aside for the time.  Two nights ago I saw Larry Kirwan and Black 47 do what they do so well–deliver a raucous, fun rock show.  Below is an old video from perhaps their most famous song–anyone who was in NYC during the 90s heard in every joint that had a jukebox.  So here it is: Black 47’s “Funky Ceili” (The video ends abruptly before the classic line, “Does he have red hair and glasses” and showing an infant with Larry’s horn-rims, hah!):

Sunday Music–“Immigraniada”

/ jpbohannon / Leave a comment

Sunday is a chance to listen to–and to think about– music. I don’t get to listen much during the week. So on Sundays, when the afternoons are slow, I listen.

I found GOGOL BORDELLO by accident in the fall of 2011 in, of all places, a special fashion/style supplement of the New York Times. There was a pictorial of various “edgy” bands and only Florence and the Machine was familiar to me.  So I YouTubed the first one–and it was forgettable. Can’t even remember the band’s name. The next one was Gogol Bordello and a performance on the Letterman show.  I was hooked.  Theater, music, message, and what looked like frenetic fun.  (I apparently was late to the game since the Letterman clip was from 2007, but they are still playing and touring and creating great music.)

Anyway, I moved from song to song, downloading from iTunes and checking out videos.  I was floored by songs with allusions to Foucault, to Kafka, to Diogenes–these are not the usual touchstones for modern music.  The band has a Russian fiddler, an Israeli accordionist, a Ukranian guitarist/vocalist, a Chinese vocalist, an Ecuadorian, an Italian, an Ethiopian, a Trinidadian and many more that seem to float in and out of the lineup. And the music is infectious. (They were in NYC on New Year’s Eve this year, but my hopeful plans never amounted to anything.)

This particular song–and the accompanying video– “Immigraniada” is powerful. At first, I watched it over and over;  I gave it to a friend who teaches a course in social justice, hoping his students might understand; I wanted everyone to see it.  So now here it is.  If you like it, share it with someone.  If you really like it, if it somehow connects with you, go to aclu.org/immigrants-rights.