Neil Young's "Living with War": a minstrel's voice for a silent majority

[DeepModem Mom]

NYT: Critic's Notebook
Neil Young's 'Living With War' Shows He Doesn't Like It
By JON PARELES
Published: April 28, 2006


(neilyoung.com)
The home page of neilyoung.com, where his new album, "Living With War," can be heard free.

Neil Young unleashes a digital broadside today. His new album, "Living With War" (Reprise), was recorded and mostly written three to four weeks ago and as of Friday can be heard in its entirety free on his Web site, www.neilyoung.com, and on satellite radio networks.

Mr. Young half-jokingly describes "Living With War" as his "metal folk protest" album. It's his blunt statement about the Iraq war; "History was a cruel judge of overconfidence/back in the days of shock and awe," he sings, strumming an electric guitar and leading a power trio with a sound that harks back to Young albums like "Rust Never Sleeps" and "Ragged Glory."

Some songs add a trumpet or a 100-voice choir, hastily convened in Los Angeles for one 12-hour session. During the nine new songs he sympathizes with soldiers and war victims, insists "Don't need no more lies," longs for a leader to reunite America and prays for peace.

In a song whose title alone has already brought him the fury of right-wing blogs, he urges, "Let's Impeach the President."...The album's release is a high-tech, globe-spanning update of a topical song tradition that's much older than recordings: the broadside, a songwriter's rapid response to events of the day. "They had these songs that everybody knew the melodies to," Mr. Young said. "They'd just write new words, and the minstrels would be traveling around spreading the word. Music spreads like wildfire when you do it that way."...

***

"We are the silent majority now, and we haven't done a damn thing," Mr. Young said. "We've stood by and watched this happen. But there's more of us than there is of them, and we have to do something. When people start talking and see they can get away with it, it's going to happen everywhere. It's going to be a landslide, it's going to be a tidal wave. This is just the tip of it."...

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/28/arts/music/28youn.html?ex=1146456000&en=15c0ee043be4bb53&ei=5087%0A

[ConsAreLiars]

1. "This is just the tip of it."

I've been listening http://www.neilyoung.com/ for a cycle and a half, and I think he has it right. Michael Moore's F9/11 had a major impact because it told the pure truth. But songs like these go straight to our souls. They form the tip of the change that must happen,

[Hekate]

2. kick -- can hardly wait to buy the cd

:kick:

Hekate

[DeepModem Mom]

3. Those lines from Young are thrilling. nt

[KittyWampus]

4. and that's why tyrannts and dictators have always persecuted poets most

harshly.