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)))