Neil Young’s LIVING WITH WAR: ‘It may just be the Fahrenheit 9/11 of rock’
Saturday, April 22nd, 2006 by billFrom Brad Blog
BRAD BLOG Guest Blogger Jim Cirile Gets an Exclusive Pre-Release Listen to Neil Young’s Groundbreaking New Protest Album–
By Jim Cirile
Neil Young wants to keep on rockin’ the free world. His new record, Living With War , makes very clear that if the Bush regime is allowed to continue, there may not be a free world to rock for much longer.
At 7:30 PM on Friday, April 21, 2006, Reprise Records’ Dan Rose ushered a small cadre of us into a Reprise’s Burbank headquarters for an exclusive listen to Young’s new CD. For the next 50 minutes, listen we did.
Let’s get one thing out of the way right now: this album rocks. It’s post ’80s electric Neil Young at his grunge best, and of the 10 cuts on Living With War, the first eight are mostly uptempo rockers. In fact, this may be the 60-year-old Young’s most crossover-worthy album yet, since many of the songs should appeal to fans of bands as diverse as Green Day and Pearl Jam and will likely be embraced on campuses across America.
But there’s one other tiny thing that makes this record stand out: it is one mother%^&*#% of a protest album. In fact, Living With War may just be the Fahrenheit 9/11 of rock–
Read More Neil Young
Before we all get too excited, remember that Farenheit 9/11 didn’t stop his minders from boosting the imbecile Bush to victory in 2004, despite a record breaking box office. It was a wonderful movie/doco, but required considerable concentration to weave the threads together, even for a hard nosed political junky like me. It was over 2 hours and quite complex.
What’s practical about Neil Young’s album is that it is short and sweet. We can sing it while we’re takin’ it to the streets. We are not going to win this one sitting on our dates and cruising the political blogosphere. Joan Baez was right, Joe Hill never died, but if we don’t ORGANISE and ACT, we will be finessed as rubes, once again human confetti, shredded by the Bush machine, packaged by Halliburton, and cast aside like turds in the ocean of realpolitikal life.
Well said, FuzzFlash….Amen