I‘ve heard it said that you should never to discuss politics or religion in public, but in my mind hearty debate is what makes life interesting. We may not respect each others’ views, but we absolutely must respect each others’ right to have them. The alternative is to resort to name-calling, or even worse, war, which is unfortunately where we find much of the world right now.
Imagine a world without sound and you imagine a world where we can’t share the music we love, we can’t discuss political and cultural issues, and we can’t express our opinions publicly. Fortunately we still have the freedom to shout from the rooftops, crank up our speakers, and share the music we love, so here’s a little liberty nugget I’d like to share with you.
Next Tuesday, May 2nd, sees the release of Neil Young’s incendiary protest album Living With War. A good amount has already been written on the album, better than I ever could (former Warner/Reprise head, Howie Klein, has a good write-up how the album came to be on his blog, Down With Tyranny), so I won’t go into detail except for this brief bit.
For some, Neil’s thin reedy voice has been enough to keep them away from his music for all these years, but in my opinion Young is in the ranks of Dylan and Springsteen as one of the greatest songwriters ever. So maybe you don’t like Neil Young… but if you don’t like where the country is headed then let’s split the difference.
Head on over to Neil’s Garage and you can stream the album in its entirety (starts automatically on the homepage). If you have some trouble getting through, give it a few minutes and refresh your browser, it’s well worth your trouble. (alternate stream at True Majority)
Oh, and here are a few tracks for the trouble of reading my brief diatribe.
- Listen to Sea of Madness (from A Perfect Echo, disc 1)
- Listen to Helpless (from A Perfect Echo, disc 1)
Buy Neil Young’s Prairie Wind from the Public Radio MusicSource.
Buy Neil Young’s Living With War from the Public Radio MusicSource.
(((via)))
The flowers are blooming, baby birdies are hatching, and the bees are buzzing. Is that love that I smell in the air? It just might be; it just might be. I definitely do smell spring in the air. It is that time again! You may not be able to depend on the weather quite yet, but the one thing you can depend on is that the whole Super Furry Animals catalog is back into rotation on my ipod. Welcome back old friends. This is my springtime ritual. They illustrate the pure essence of a new spring beginning perfectly with the lyric turned mantra You’ve got to tolerate/all the people that you hate/I’m not in love with you/but I won’t hold that against you. What better soundtrack for my goofy-ass spring-bloomed smile?
Some albums are so fucking awesome, they just don’t sound as good out of order. But I’d wager that most albums sound better on shuffle. This isn’t a slight on most bands, although maybe it is a slight on whoever organizes the tracks on an album (producer?). It’s really just the way it is, and I think most of us are used to it. The nice thing about daps is that you can load multiple albums onto them and listen to an album in whole or as part of a huge random mix.
Really this is just my hope that if you don’t like my next suggestion, you’ll try listening to it in a couple of different ways. Read More
Have you ever met someone who always has a smile on his face? Someone who you can’t quite figure out what the hell he has to be happy about? But that smile… that smile never disappears and in the end it somehow makes you happy, too.
Last night at the Southgate House in Newport, Kentucky, I met a man that fits that description. A man who, if you listen to what he has to say, sounds like he’s rather pissed. Yet there Josh Ritter stood, grinning ear to ear from the moment he bounded onto the stage to the moment he left. And the longer I watched him, the bigger my smile grew.
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While NME and the rest of the British press have been crowing about the second coming taking the form of the Arctic Monkeys, the Monkeys may in fact turn out to be the Anti-Christ (if it hasn’t already been revealed that Pete Doherty is). Don’t get me wrong, the Arctic Monkeys are fine (hell, I wish I could go from getting a guitar one Christmas to having the #1 record in the UK the next), it’s just that the British press can be a bit fickle and in my humble opinion the Guillemots may have the staying power.
A diverse group with considerable musical chops, this London-based quartet is led by British vocalist Fyfe Dangerfield (née Hutchins), and includes a Brazilian, MC Lord Magrão (guitar), a Canadian, Aristazabal Hawkes (double bass), and a Scotsman, Rican Caol (née Greig Stewart on drums). Last month’s mini-album From the Cliffs is essentially their I Saw Such Things in My Sleep EP plus four songs and, despite some minor disparities, it holds together so well that I can’t help but have great expectations for their debut full-length (no word on when that is). Chances are that if you like Franz Ferdinand, the Futureheads, or even the Arctic Monkeys, you’ll like the Guillemots.
They have quite a few tracks for download on their website, and more to listen to on their MySpace page, but the second track off of From the Cliffs, Trains to Brazil has me more than ready for the weekend, so here goes…
- Listen to Trains to Brazil.
- Listen to Who Left the Lights Off, Baby?
Buy From the Cliffs from Insound.