My Day of the Horse (Month of the Horse done gone)

[ed_rex]

This was supposed to have been my personal Month of the Horse, when I leveraged my attendance tonight at my first arena concert since I walked out on the Rolling Stones back in the 80s to (re?) establish my presence as an awesome, and awesomely consistent, blogger.

Tonight I will be off to Ottawa's big arena to see Neil Young and Crazy Horse (and also Patty Smith, who at one time I would have been more excited about, but who has not, to my mind, made a truly important record since the 1970s, merely good ones).

I was going to start off by offering the ultimate version of the time I walked out on the film, Rust Never Sleeps when the electric music started and demanded my money back because, well, What the fuck happened to the hippy with the acoustic guitar?

I was going to segue into my brief career as a street musician (busker to you hipsters), when I played lots of Neil's stuff, even though I thought the lyrics often inane, but because the chord progressions were easy (and also, somehow, the songs were good and because the songs were popular.

I was going to review Neil's recent memoir, Waging Heavy Peace, which is without a doubt the worst book I will ever recommend to any and everyone. Indisputably written without the help of a ghost-writer, Waging Heavy Peace is a spiralling self-portrait by an "old hippy" who just babbles away about the people he loves and the things that interest him — music, Nature, model trains, old cars, high fidelity digital audio and alternative energy systems. No intellectual, he is an artist of the classically intuitive kind, answering only to his muse.

I was going to review his two new records, Americana and the double-CD Psychedelic Pill. On first listen, Americana, which is Young and Crazy Horse reinterpreting old standards like "Clementine" and "Oh Susannah" (and also not-so-standards, like "God Save the Queen" and "Get a Job") is one of those things better in theory than in practice; truth is, most of those old folk songs aren't all that good and grunging them up doesn't make them so. Also on first listen, however, Psychedelic Pill is awesome if you want to hear a load of veteran musicians really get into their groove. But if songs that go as long as 27 minutes of guitar riffs being traded back and forth aren't your cup of tea, you might want to give it a miss.

I was even going to re-visit the scene of my introduction to my personal Rock and Roll Hall of Shame, Rust Never Sleeps and who knows what else.

But life and procrastination all conspired to get in the way, and now I have hours only before I venture out into the cold.

I leave this entry more for myself than for any of you. A reminder of what was meant to be, and possibly, a rack upon which I will remake the past through the future. Links may appear above where now there are none.

For now, I leave you with a taste of what I anticipate tonight.

 

Comments

[evilawyer]

Hope it was a good concert. I myself have always flip-flopped back and forth between loving his songs and hating his singing. Perhaps it was ill-advised of me to listen to "Sugar Mountain" before any other song of his.

Far better than good

[ed_rex]

The show was like nothing I've ever seen, a multi-sensory experience, a theatrical performance that used not just sound and light, but but wind and air pressure and temperature for a fully-immersive effect.

And the music was superb, harsh and violent at times but always in service to story-telling.

It was so much more, so much better, than I ever imagined it could be.