Neil Young Was Always Old But He Wasn’t Always Boring
Whatever happened to Neil Young: the most boring bastard who ever wandered on stage at MSG around 10pm on a weeknight, plugged in his guitar, and jammed to songs nobody knew and if they do did know nobody liked for three hours to a rapidly twindling audience before throwing out a bone of an extended “Living In The Free World” and going home a coupla grand richer? Which, according to a friend of mine, is exactly what he did earlier this year.
I passed on the concert myself. I’ve been burnt so long and so hard by this guy I can’t waste any more money on him. I remember back in the 90s, thirty years into his career, the man was the patron saint of grunge and he was on fire, shit Cobain quoted him on his suicide note.
Even in 2000 with CSN he was pretty damn good. But with Are you Passionate? -his response to 9/11, he’s been releasing subpar material and with 2006’s Living With War -a rush released a half finished disaster of an album- he has become the Prince (as in Rogers Nelson) of rock. His archival releases were costing me a fortune till I woke up the fact that they were a complete waste of money.
This years Fork In The Road was a complete waste of time.
Now comes word he is re-releasing his first four solo albums, Neil Young, Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere, After the Gold Rush, and Harvest all masterpieces, all already owned, none worth buying again from original acetates, in virgin vinyl, etc, etc, etc.
And so our rusted heroes become infomercial salesmen… Young’s destroying his past, has no present, and sucks live. He should hang it up.
