When he toured behind "Everybody's Rocking" he did that, and also "Cold Sweat" in vocoder mode. Then he got back to the band stuff. He was really pissing off the hippies that night.
A lovely rumination on Neil Young and his work, Roy.
Being anti-art and anti-science are really as old a tradition on the Right as being racist, sexist, and homophobic. But Neil Young and Joni Mitchell specifically chose not to share a platform with Rogan because he spreads the kind of disinformation that is killing people during a global pandemic, not because he’s a racist, sexist, homophobic troll.
However, you’d never know that from listening to the most prominent rightwing banshees: it’s all a big undifferentiated ball of Liberal Tyranny as far as they’re concerned. Of course, it’s important to remember all the loudest voices on the Right wailing about how Young did a cancel culture on Rogan -- just because Rogan gives people who eat horse paste a huge platform to spout their nonsense -- are undoubtedly vaccinated and boosted themselves.
Neil has been a part of my mental & emotional furniture so long it's hard to imagine my taste, attitudes, or world without him. I learned to sing high so I could hit the notes in "Cowgirl in the Sand," punk & alt came into my heart with pre-paid fare because of "Rust Never Sleeps." Even when he proved to be an asshole curmudgeon ("You don't want some f-slur touching your potatoes") or just kinda unlistenably earnest (that Monsanto album).
A couple of things to be perfectly clear (I know): There's a bunch of the conservative base pardon the expression not sufficiently sophisticated to have much of an awareness of culture outside that which promotes white cultural supremacy and the true heroes of the Civil War. But sure, it's a cliche yet not terribly incorrect that conservatives by definition cannot create.
And as the Maestro noted, the unhinged right's opposition to the free market working properly never fails to crack me up. One of Young's sins here that Roy doesn't mention is that he's exercising his own agency in regard to owning the music he created to tell Spotify to fuck off. Which, by the way and circling back to the free market thing, did not lose $2B. Its stock valuation dropped that much. Partially because its service isn't all that loved so ambivalent customers were triggered into dropping the service. I know; surely Spotify has some sort of right or entitlement where customers are never allowed to drop the service.
And for the record: Although he came around some years later, Young endorsed Reagan in 84, FWIW.
"not sufficiently sophisticated to have much of an awareness of culture outside that which promotes white cultural supremacy"
Oh gurl, I need to introduce you to a huge number of literature scholars & teachers, who despite claiming liberal or leftwing cred, & mouthing diversity as a value, will still say Shakespeare or Milton is just inherently better than James Baldwin or Maya Angelou...
“Gurl”?? And all the times you caught me with my schvance sticking out….
Anyway, I was referring to a single group or sub-group. No intention of being exclusive to any group of let’s say disgraceful people. It’s the 21st century; nearly every cohort has at least a share or more of their own scumbags. Including libs, a group with which I have my own issues, but that’s something for another time.
I figured -- I'm trying "yes, and" today for my commentary style. But I'm not talking about scumbags either -- that white culture is supreme is just a base foundation of literary study for most European languages... perfectly nice folks who teach hardly ever think about it.
"And as the Maestro noted, the unhinged right's opposition to the free market working properly never fails to crack me up."
Conservatives believe culture, like anything else, can be bought. If you throw enough money at something you own it. They jabber about "free markets" but want the exact opposite. Captive markets.
Spotify's decision to spend $100 million to get Joe Rogan looks to me like the perfect example of "Any attention is good attention" media business decision-making. All that matters is the clicks, doesn't matter how you get them.
And how is that looking as a business decision now? It would be a tremendously healthy thing if Spotify lost a ton of money on this, because it would send a signal to other media CEO's that they really might want to have a look at HOW a guy's getting his clicks before they throw money at him. And if it goes the other way, media CEO's will take note of that too.
Not all conservatives agree on this, and this at least used to be the difference between the conservatives calling themselves so and the conservatives calling themselves 'libertarians.'.
Also, the science they don’t like is fake. The thing is, science and history aren’t a matter of taste like music and painting. Basic category error. Even in matters of taste, you don’t have to be close-minded. Which “Wrecking Ball” is better, Neil’s or Miley’s? Why not both?
History & science are both dependent on narratives & paradigms which accord with needs, desires, & biases. So they are kind of a "matter of taste."
Take for instance the recent publicity surrounding the massive prevalence of same-sex behaviors in various animals. This is based in data & research accrued over the last century, if not longer — but researchers (& the academy) buried these results. Why? Because homosexuality is "unnatural." Says who? Christian theologians & Eurocentric politicians. Are they scientists? How is that not a "matter of taste"?
We could say that's "bad science" and have "faith" in structures of skepticism & empiricism that tend to correct scientific theories over time. And sometimes that's true, even if it takes a long time.
But that timeline might be faster if we all acknowledged that science is not absolutely pure, not inherently neutral, not definitionally objective, not free from human prejudice. We probably won't because that would shake the foundations of "modernity" as opposed to the "medieval."
[We don't even have to get into the illusion that science is free of ethical limitations & considerations... "Race science" anyone? Eugenics? Jurassic Park?]
Take your point. I have to say the POV is hard to maintain after we've seen millions of idiots prolong the pandemic based their own meathead version of it -- i.e., science can be politicized, so "public health" must be even worse because it's Big Gummint, so listen to Joe Rogan and scream at nurses instead. But one must be prepared to give explanations that will be shouted down after the first ten seconds.
Part of the willingness of folks to go anti-science is because science is slow to acknowledge its implicit biases & paradigm limitations when they prove harmful to some people. Science is political & ethical — there is no denying it. What to do about that so that it can be a force for humanity & sustainable life is up to mnay stakeholders.
RWers are great at levelling a distorted, malicious, & utterly incoherent attack on something which is sometimes drawn from an actual issue.
And I am also not saying Rogaine & the anti-vaxxers have any credibility whatsoever.
As you pointed out, the "taste" aspect of the science of sexuality is anchored in religion, not science. There's no question science and history can be corrupted by opinions and beliefs, has been and will be in future. Science is also subject to observation errors, poor experiment design, personal pride. Of course it's not absolutely pure. It's still not like music and painting, which doesn't make it better: the science of music, for example, is fascinating but lacks the emotional impact of the subject, at least those parts you like.
Modern science: deal with facts or sell an “expert” opinion for big bucks. A lot of time with differing scientific debates, once side deals with facts, the other not so much.
'Unnatural' is a term-of-art for religious Christians, meaning that something were not according to a being's original nature as the LORD intended it to be before the First Couple made of this a Fallen World, and at least some of their theologians believe that the Fall corrupted all beings and Nature itself—there were no cyclones within the gates of Eden.
Yes, Nature is now unnatural. (See also, paraphrasing some pillock: 'The majority of Americans are no longer American.', many 'Communists', and all Nazis: 'Many people arenʼt really part of The People .')
Seems to me conservatives have hated Neil Young since "Southern Man," "Alabama," and "Four Dead in Ohio." Spotify is just the latest thing to get their hate-on rigid again.
Having fun with the Roganites who think "So this guy is a bullshit artist" labels are unfair but also argue that he's an entertainer when confronted with bad acts by people he's influenced. They have no idea how much they sound like tobacco company execs.
I know next to nothing about Rogan, and have never listened to a word of his podcast, but the few quotes I've seen suggest his schtick is "Hey, I'm an idiot, don't take advice from me, I just do this for the lulz!" In other words, he's the perfect entertainer for today's right wing, where nihilism is the order of the day, and the game is to trigger the libs and then quickly run back and hide behind "LOL just joking!"
Guess I'm more interested in cars than music, but Neil's electric Lincoln Continental has an on-board generator that's a single-rotor Wankel engine powered by a mixture of gasoline and hydrogen, the hydrogen is generated by electrolysis, using power from the battery, which is charged by the generator. The whole rig, just slightly more complicated than the James Webb Space Telescope, cost $500,000 to build and gets a reported 65 mpg on the highway.
I can't decide if poor Neil is being ripped off by some automotive charlatan or if Neil Young's mechanic should be CEO of General Motors.
I've sometimes said that there's a lot to be gained by studying 'free energy' frauds, if only in the ways they boost efficiencies to try to minimise the amount of fraud necessary. This looks like a fraudulent 'water engine' that worked using a small reservoir of gasoline.
You have to hand it to RW provocateurs--when they say "horsepaste cures COVID" or "Kid Rock is better than Neil Young," they get a double bang for their buck. The tribal morons to the right believe it and praise them; the libs to the left are amazed and disgusted and owned. It would interesting to see what would happen if every reasonable liberal reacted to the Rogans, JD Vances, Marjorie Taylor Greenes, etc. of the world with a universal pat on the head that you'd give a child. "That is so cute. YES, good job!" As opposed to refuting arguing, pointing out x, y, and z, etc.
God, yes. I get the argument that "Ignoring fascism is not an option" but I think ignoring the individual statements of individual fascists definitely should be an option.
It would be easier to do that if the NYT and the WaPo and the Chuck Todds didn't go on Cletus safaris and give us both-sides explainers while constantly report on what those morons are doing and thinking, and what matters most to them. It's so fucking predictable: anti-vaxxer who needs a kidney transplant refuses to get vaxxed, so he's denied the transplant; let a thousand lifestyle pieces bloom to delve into why he would do something that fucking stupid. Fuck the death-wish people and stop reporting on their every goddamn complaint, is all I want.
It's true. These Cletus safari stories can only end with the viewer/reader thinking either, "You know, he's right!" or "No, that's literally insane." Since it's always the latter (because their reasons are insane), why not do repeated interviews with flat-earthers? The outcome would be the same. The utility would be the same, too.
If only we were a group of local parents able to coordinate on a strategy for handling the kids! Alas, we are left to our own devices, and I choose violence.
Nice commentary on what makes Neil tick. As a pretentious musician, it took me a long time to get what he was doing, though i believed at the time (and still do) that the Cinnamon Girl solo is one of the greats, though it was lazy of him to repeat the 2nd verse (even though it's one of his best).
I think you can't overestimate the importance of comfort to people, physical, emotional, spiritual, etc. What i get from conservative rants is how uncomfortable things make them, rather than whether it's good or bad. Like the problem with Critical Race Theory isn't that it's wrong, or simplistic, or misguided, or a dozen other critiques. No, it makes them Uncomfortable. That's just giving the game away right there.
I've been a big fan of Neil's since the Buffalo Springfield days, and I thought it was hilarious when Martin Mull did a promo for KSAN, at the time the free-form rock station in San Francisco back in the early to mid '70s, that went something like: "Welcome to KSAN and the next hour of no Neil Young music. Best of luck in the storm door business, Neil." See, I could find that funny and still enjoy the man's music, something that right-wingers don't ever get. But I digress...
Everything I've heard about Spotify leads me to believe they rip off their lesser-know artists, so it's great that Young gave them the Rogan-or-me ultimatum (because fuck Joe Rogan), but I wish he had used his platform to say something about the young up and comers who can't make any money doing their thing, given the fact that these behemoth companies can decide how much they want to pay and who it is they want to promote.
OK, but the guy did put out an album called Trans in 1982 — checkmate, Lib!
I saw him that tour. "Mr. Soul " through the vocoder is as Rockn'Roll as it gets.
When he toured behind "Everybody's Rocking" he did that, and also "Cold Sweat" in vocoder mode. Then he got back to the band stuff. He was really pissing off the hippies that night.
https://youtu.be/WPU9JK5AnEc
Holy shit, batman
That's beautiful.
Airplane schmairplane--THAT'S psychedelic.
https://youtu.be/mbmkek5j6Vs
Beautifully Shot. Directed by Daryl Hannah
Looks like fun! Will view at leisure, thanks.
A lovely rumination on Neil Young and his work, Roy.
Being anti-art and anti-science are really as old a tradition on the Right as being racist, sexist, and homophobic. But Neil Young and Joni Mitchell specifically chose not to share a platform with Rogan because he spreads the kind of disinformation that is killing people during a global pandemic, not because he’s a racist, sexist, homophobic troll.
However, you’d never know that from listening to the most prominent rightwing banshees: it’s all a big undifferentiated ball of Liberal Tyranny as far as they’re concerned. Of course, it’s important to remember all the loudest voices on the Right wailing about how Young did a cancel culture on Rogan -- just because Rogan gives people who eat horse paste a huge platform to spout their nonsense -- are undoubtedly vaccinated and boosted themselves.
I'll be honest - just once I'd like to be tyrannical. For a little while.
Do what most people do -- take it out on service workers!
Ouch. But what do I know, I haven't been serviced for, like, ages...
Neil has been a part of my mental & emotional furniture so long it's hard to imagine my taste, attitudes, or world without him. I learned to sing high so I could hit the notes in "Cowgirl in the Sand," punk & alt came into my heart with pre-paid fare because of "Rust Never Sleeps." Even when he proved to be an asshole curmudgeon ("You don't want some f-slur touching your potatoes") or just kinda unlistenably earnest (that Monsanto album).
Said the condor to the praying mantis...
A couple of things to be perfectly clear (I know): There's a bunch of the conservative base pardon the expression not sufficiently sophisticated to have much of an awareness of culture outside that which promotes white cultural supremacy and the true heroes of the Civil War. But sure, it's a cliche yet not terribly incorrect that conservatives by definition cannot create.
And as the Maestro noted, the unhinged right's opposition to the free market working properly never fails to crack me up. One of Young's sins here that Roy doesn't mention is that he's exercising his own agency in regard to owning the music he created to tell Spotify to fuck off. Which, by the way and circling back to the free market thing, did not lose $2B. Its stock valuation dropped that much. Partially because its service isn't all that loved so ambivalent customers were triggered into dropping the service. I know; surely Spotify has some sort of right or entitlement where customers are never allowed to drop the service.
And for the record: Although he came around some years later, Young endorsed Reagan in 84, FWIW.
"not sufficiently sophisticated to have much of an awareness of culture outside that which promotes white cultural supremacy"
Oh gurl, I need to introduce you to a huge number of literature scholars & teachers, who despite claiming liberal or leftwing cred, & mouthing diversity as a value, will still say Shakespeare or Milton is just inherently better than James Baldwin or Maya Angelou...
“Gurl”?? And all the times you caught me with my schvance sticking out….
Anyway, I was referring to a single group or sub-group. No intention of being exclusive to any group of let’s say disgraceful people. It’s the 21st century; nearly every cohort has at least a share or more of their own scumbags. Including libs, a group with which I have my own issues, but that’s something for another time.
I figured -- I'm trying "yes, and" today for my commentary style. But I'm not talking about scumbags either -- that white culture is supreme is just a base foundation of literary study for most European languages... perfectly nice folks who teach hardly ever think about it.
Still a little hung up on that the “gurl”. OTOH, Google, too, thought the same so, you know, odds are good Google knows better than I.
(signed) Terminally Confused
Why what or which? Or maybe we should let it ago.
Sorry -- there was an error on my page repeating this post.
All I said was "Why? I'm curious to know"
I was wondering what you’re curious about.
I remember that he endorsed Reagan. Like I said, he's a crazy motherfucker. That's always been cool with me.
Hats the only instance I know of that Young was on the wrong side of something and he did recant. Pretty damn good batting average there!
Wingnuts are pushing some homophobic thing he allegedly said years ago, as if artists were to be judged by the same standard as moralist politicians.
I missed that one and since he is he, I give him a pass on that one.
Got a short road trip lantern soundtrack’s going to be the new old live album.
"And as the Maestro noted, the unhinged right's opposition to the free market working properly never fails to crack me up."
Conservatives believe culture, like anything else, can be bought. If you throw enough money at something you own it. They jabber about "free markets" but want the exact opposite. Captive markets.
I was referring to the shall we say less prosperous conservatives.
Spotify's decision to spend $100 million to get Joe Rogan looks to me like the perfect example of "Any attention is good attention" media business decision-making. All that matters is the clicks, doesn't matter how you get them.
And how is that looking as a business decision now? It would be a tremendously healthy thing if Spotify lost a ton of money on this, because it would send a signal to other media CEO's that they really might want to have a look at HOW a guy's getting his clicks before they throw money at him. And if it goes the other way, media CEO's will take note of that too.
Just watched 'Network' last night for the first time in more than 40 years. Boy howdy did Chayefsky nail the future...
It's a look at the "Attention-based Economy" decades before we had that term.
Not all conservatives agree on this, and this at least used to be the difference between the conservatives calling themselves so and the conservatives calling themselves 'libertarians.'.
Also, the science they don’t like is fake. The thing is, science and history aren’t a matter of taste like music and painting. Basic category error. Even in matters of taste, you don’t have to be close-minded. Which “Wrecking Ball” is better, Neil’s or Miley’s? Why not both?
History & science are both dependent on narratives & paradigms which accord with needs, desires, & biases. So they are kind of a "matter of taste."
Take for instance the recent publicity surrounding the massive prevalence of same-sex behaviors in various animals. This is based in data & research accrued over the last century, if not longer — but researchers (& the academy) buried these results. Why? Because homosexuality is "unnatural." Says who? Christian theologians & Eurocentric politicians. Are they scientists? How is that not a "matter of taste"?
We could say that's "bad science" and have "faith" in structures of skepticism & empiricism that tend to correct scientific theories over time. And sometimes that's true, even if it takes a long time.
But that timeline might be faster if we all acknowledged that science is not absolutely pure, not inherently neutral, not definitionally objective, not free from human prejudice. We probably won't because that would shake the foundations of "modernity" as opposed to the "medieval."
[We don't even have to get into the illusion that science is free of ethical limitations & considerations... "Race science" anyone? Eugenics? Jurassic Park?]
Take your point. I have to say the POV is hard to maintain after we've seen millions of idiots prolong the pandemic based their own meathead version of it -- i.e., science can be politicized, so "public health" must be even worse because it's Big Gummint, so listen to Joe Rogan and scream at nurses instead. But one must be prepared to give explanations that will be shouted down after the first ten seconds.
Part of the willingness of folks to go anti-science is because science is slow to acknowledge its implicit biases & paradigm limitations when they prove harmful to some people. Science is political & ethical — there is no denying it. What to do about that so that it can be a force for humanity & sustainable life is up to mnay stakeholders.
RWers are great at levelling a distorted, malicious, & utterly incoherent attack on something which is sometimes drawn from an actual issue.
And I am also not saying Rogaine & the anti-vaxxers have any credibility whatsoever.
As you pointed out, the "taste" aspect of the science of sexuality is anchored in religion, not science. There's no question science and history can be corrupted by opinions and beliefs, has been and will be in future. Science is also subject to observation errors, poor experiment design, personal pride. Of course it's not absolutely pure. It's still not like music and painting, which doesn't make it better: the science of music, for example, is fascinating but lacks the emotional impact of the subject, at least those parts you like.
Modern science: deal with facts or sell an “expert” opinion for big bucks. A lot of time with differing scientific debates, once side deals with facts, the other not so much.
'Unnatural' is a term-of-art for religious Christians, meaning that something were not according to a being's original nature as the LORD intended it to be before the First Couple made of this a Fallen World, and at least some of their theologians believe that the Fall corrupted all beings and Nature itself—there were no cyclones within the gates of Eden.
Yes, Nature is now unnatural. (See also, paraphrasing some pillock: 'The majority of Americans are no longer American.', many 'Communists', and all Nazis: 'Many people arenʼt really part of The People .')
But did you really expect any better from Armond White?
Not since he went totally insane at NR, no.
Seems to me conservatives have hated Neil Young since "Southern Man," "Alabama," and "Four Dead in Ohio." Spotify is just the latest thing to get their hate-on rigid again.
I have a burning desire to redesign the Ohio license plate. (Full disclosure, I have wanted to do this since the early 1970s)
I can't quite remember what it was that I knew
Man, is that true.
Those three lines are pretty good on their own but in the context of the rest of the song they really bring the chill.
Having fun with the Roganites who think "So this guy is a bullshit artist" labels are unfair but also argue that he's an entertainer when confronted with bad acts by people he's influenced. They have no idea how much they sound like tobacco company execs.
Would they care?
I know next to nothing about Rogan, and have never listened to a word of his podcast, but the few quotes I've seen suggest his schtick is "Hey, I'm an idiot, don't take advice from me, I just do this for the lulz!" In other words, he's the perfect entertainer for today's right wing, where nihilism is the order of the day, and the game is to trigger the libs and then quickly run back and hide behind "LOL just joking!"
[ Snort ! ] ".........a Folkways Records project to preserve the demotic music of some isolated community (Laurel Canyon?)."
Guess I'm more interested in cars than music, but Neil's electric Lincoln Continental has an on-board generator that's a single-rotor Wankel engine powered by a mixture of gasoline and hydrogen, the hydrogen is generated by electrolysis, using power from the battery, which is charged by the generator. The whole rig, just slightly more complicated than the James Webb Space Telescope, cost $500,000 to build and gets a reported 65 mpg on the highway.
I can't decide if poor Neil is being ripped off by some automotive charlatan or if Neil Young's mechanic should be CEO of General Motors.
I've sometimes said that there's a lot to be gained by studying 'free energy' frauds, if only in the ways they boost efficiencies to try to minimise the amount of fraud necessary. This looks like a fraudulent 'water engine' that worked using a small reservoir of gasoline.
You have to hand it to RW provocateurs--when they say "horsepaste cures COVID" or "Kid Rock is better than Neil Young," they get a double bang for their buck. The tribal morons to the right believe it and praise them; the libs to the left are amazed and disgusted and owned. It would interesting to see what would happen if every reasonable liberal reacted to the Rogans, JD Vances, Marjorie Taylor Greenes, etc. of the world with a universal pat on the head that you'd give a child. "That is so cute. YES, good job!" As opposed to refuting arguing, pointing out x, y, and z, etc.
God, yes. I get the argument that "Ignoring fascism is not an option" but I think ignoring the individual statements of individual fascists definitely should be an option.
It would be easier to do that if the NYT and the WaPo and the Chuck Todds didn't go on Cletus safaris and give us both-sides explainers while constantly report on what those morons are doing and thinking, and what matters most to them. It's so fucking predictable: anti-vaxxer who needs a kidney transplant refuses to get vaxxed, so he's denied the transplant; let a thousand lifestyle pieces bloom to delve into why he would do something that fucking stupid. Fuck the death-wish people and stop reporting on their every goddamn complaint, is all I want.
It's true. These Cletus safari stories can only end with the viewer/reader thinking either, "You know, he's right!" or "No, that's literally insane." Since it's always the latter (because their reasons are insane), why not do repeated interviews with flat-earthers? The outcome would be the same. The utility would be the same, too.
If only we were a group of local parents able to coordinate on a strategy for handling the kids! Alas, we are left to our own devices, and I choose violence.
Nice commentary on what makes Neil tick. As a pretentious musician, it took me a long time to get what he was doing, though i believed at the time (and still do) that the Cinnamon Girl solo is one of the greats, though it was lazy of him to repeat the 2nd verse (even though it's one of his best).
I think you can't overestimate the importance of comfort to people, physical, emotional, spiritual, etc. What i get from conservative rants is how uncomfortable things make them, rather than whether it's good or bad. Like the problem with Critical Race Theory isn't that it's wrong, or simplistic, or misguided, or a dozen other critiques. No, it makes them Uncomfortable. That's just giving the game away right there.
Lays and Jellymen, Kid Rock at the Kennedy Center Honors for Led Zeppelin
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t4Y4vR-Ji7Q
Not gonna do it. Nope.
I've been a big fan of Neil's since the Buffalo Springfield days, and I thought it was hilarious when Martin Mull did a promo for KSAN, at the time the free-form rock station in San Francisco back in the early to mid '70s, that went something like: "Welcome to KSAN and the next hour of no Neil Young music. Best of luck in the storm door business, Neil." See, I could find that funny and still enjoy the man's music, something that right-wingers don't ever get. But I digress...
Everything I've heard about Spotify leads me to believe they rip off their lesser-know artists, so it's great that Young gave them the Rogan-or-me ultimatum (because fuck Joe Rogan), but I wish he had used his platform to say something about the young up and comers who can't make any money doing their thing, given the fact that these behemoth companies can decide how much they want to pay and who it is they want to promote.