Fun Stuff > BAND
Where to start?
Ptommydski:
--- Quote from: Cernunnos on 09 Aug 2010, 14:39 ---Everybody Knows this is Nowhere was my starting point. It's a good one, too.
--- End quote ---
That's a good one to start with. Harvest is an unfocused, borderline uncharacteristic record but if you liked at least some of it, then you're probably going to enjoy his better records a lot more. Skip the self-titled debut, you can come back to that later. If you preferred the rockers - his first record with Crazy Horse is Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere, essentially a two guitar blow out. If you preferred the folk/country songs, there's another weird mess of a record called After The Goldrush which is actually really great. I think you really have to hear these three records before you embark on The Ditch Trilogy, which is indisputably his best material.
The Ditch Trilogy refers to Neil's wilderness years after the accidental success of Harvest. He was booked to play a worldwide stadium/arena tour and was basically expected to reprise the Harvest material. Instead, Neil being Neil, he more or less entirely played new material he had written after Nashville or indeed, was writing whilst on tour. The combination of his distaste for large arena style shows, constant financial and creative disputes with his own touring band, guilt from the death of Crazy Horse guitarist Danny Whitten and persistent alcoholism made the tour a living hell, captured aptly on the sadly deleted but widely-bootlegged live album Time Fades Away, which features no songs from his previous studio records. This one might take a while to click but it's worth hearing before moving on to Tonight's The Night, which is rightfully described as "a drunken Irish wake of a record". Dedicated to the memory of Whitten and former roadie Bruce Berry, both of whom had died of drug overdoses, Young lead his band through a series of dark, deeply personal songs. Essentially recorded live from the floor, Tonight's The Night is a unique record in the sense that it was more or less improvised on the spot and indeed, the performers were also rolling drunk throughout. Regardless, it's a dour masterpiece of raw, undiluted mourning.
Understandably wary of releasing the difficult, inebriated Tonight's The Night, Young's record company delayed the release until after the superb On The Beach, which is for me his career highlight. Alternately rocking and downbeat, it was the first time Young had found the perfect compromise between the two sides of his music. Side One is relatively upbeat (defiant but also scathing and sarcastic) but Side Two is an absolute bummer, featuring several folky ruminations on the trappings of fame, the demise of Young's second marriage to actress Carrie Snodgrass and the general disillusionment felt by the inhabitants of the West Coast in the wake of the demise of sixties idealism, replaced by a collective hangover of apathy, distrust and guilt. Clearly on a roll, Young reunited Crazy Horse and cut the equally brilliant Zuma, a guitar heavy cousin of Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere with the naked emotional exposure of the preceding Ditch Trilogy. The following records are decent but in truth, Young never really managed to scale the same peaks of creative brilliance ever again. American Stars N Bars, Comes A Time, Rust Never Sleeps and Hawks & Doves have their moments, some people make an impassioned defence of the bizarre Trans but overall, I don't ever listen to anything post eighties.
Incidentally, Neil was also the subject of one of the best books ever written about rock music - the biography Shakey. That's the best buy you could make if you're looking to get into Neil.
Scarychips:
Guys, guys.
Sonic Youth.
I only heard "Kool Thing" And "Teen Age Riot". I liked both.
StaedlerMars:
I really like their most recent album The Eternal. It's pretty poppy I guess, I thought it was really accessible and it has definitely gotten me attracted to their older stuff.
DarkAvenger:
I think generally EVOL and Sister are the ones agreed on to begin with as they are probably their best albums? Personally I've always been a big fan of Bad Moon Rising. Also Confusion is Sex/Kill Yr. Idols. But everything before their move to Geffen, and everything in recent years (since Murray Street) has been good.
So: Listen to Sister. If you like it, go backwards in their catalog, if you still prefer Daydream Nation (listen to it as well) then go forward.
Edited for unintended question mark
Scarychips:
So, listening to the albums after Daydream Nation and before Murray Street isn't mandatory to appreciate their body of work?
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