June 12, 2005

• PEOPLE WHO KNOCK ME OUT
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  Neil Young 1945-

  If for no other reason than creating this song back in 1988 (which won the MTV Video Music Award for Best Video of the year in 1989 after MTV originally refused to run it because it mentioned products by name), you gotta love Neil Percival Kenneth Robert Ragland Young.

  This Note’s for You

  Don’t want no cash
  Don’t need no money
  Ain’t got no stash
  This note’s for you.
  Ain’t singin’ for Pepsi
  Ain’t singin’ for Coke
  I don’t sing for nobody
  Makes me look like a joke
  This note’s for you.
  Ain’t singin’ for Miller
  Don’t sing for Bud
  I won’t sing for politicians
  Ain’t singin’ for Spuds
  This note’s for you.
  Don’t need no cash
  Don’t want no money
  Ain’t got no stash
  This note’s for you.
  I’ve got the real thing
  I got the real thing, baby
  I got the real thing
  Yeah, alright.

  Out of Toronto, most of us who grew up in the ‘60’s and ‘70’s first knew him from Buffalo Springfield, the band he formed with Steve Stills, another Canadian from the Toronto folk clubs. They lasted 3 albums and Young was already moving from folk-rock to rock and roll by the time they split. He recorded a few solo albums next in 1969 (with Crazy Horse) that did reasonably well but then was recruited to CSNY, performing with them at Woodstock and releasing the great Deja Vu album. He also put out a single called “Ohio” after the Kent State University killings that he has continued to use for years to protest other incidents like the Tiananmen Square massacre. CSNY broke up too soon for those of us who loved their sound, but Neil Young moved on with the massive country rock album Harvest in 1972, after which he crossed the line into hard rock tinged with blues. In 1976, he joined the group who made the great rockumentary The Last Waltz and had to have a great wad of cocaine hanging from his nose edited out of the film afterwards. By the ‘80’s, he was experimenting with all sorts of odd formats, like the use of synthesizers but ended the year with that award-winning MTV video. By the early ‘90’s he began to settle back in to his country-rock roots but was still making political statements, like “Rockin’ in the Free World.” Emerging grunge bands like Nirvana labeled him The Godfather of Grunge. He toured a lot, including with bands like Pearl Jam and put out a dark album called Sleeps with Angels after Kurt Cobain’s death. Cobain’s suicide note had quoted a line from a song of Young’s that read, “It’s better to burn out than fade away.” At the end of the decade, he did a very successful reunion tour of CSNY. After 9/11 he became even more political, writing an anti-Bush rock opera called Greendale that chronicles the saga of a California family torn asunder by post-9/11 America. He toured extensively with the Greendale material in 2003 and 2004 along with intimate acoustic concerts with his wife Pegi. In early 2005, he booked time in a Northern California studio to work on material that is a closely guarded secret and in April suffered a brain aneurysm that was successfully treated. Like Dylan and Clapton and Springsteen, you just can’t put this guy in a musical box. They all reached down deep and pulled out raw, troubled, true spirit music to give us. Neil Young – long may you run.
  (Other Achievements: Canadian Music Hall of Fame in 1982. Rock and Roll Hall of Fame twice; first in 1995 for his solo work and again in 1997 as a member of the Buffalo Springfield. Directed three movies, under his pseudonym Bernard Shakey: Journey Through the Past (1979), Human Highway (1982) (starring new wave band Devo), and Greendale (2003). He is one of the founders of Farm Aid, and remains on their board of directors. Each year on a weekend in October in Mountain View, California, he and his wife host the Bridge School Concerts, which have been drawing international talent and sell-out crowds for nearly two decades. The concerts are a benefit for the Bridge School which develops and uses advanced technologies to aide in the instruction of handicapped children (he has a son with cerebral palsy).)
  

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  Deep Thought:”I didn’t want to cut down that tree. But I had no choice. It was growing right where I’m going to build my house, if I can ever get enough money together to build it and if I also have enough money to buy the land. That’s another thing: I need to find out who owns that land.”
  Today I am grateful for: The color red
  Guess the Movie: “All I know is that when I’m not with you I’m a total wreck.” “And when you are with me?” “I’m a different kind of total wreck.” Answer: White Palace, 1990. Winner: led0110.
  Feingold Rallies Democratic Convention to Stop CAFTA Now
  OSHKOSH, WI – June 10 – As the Democratic Party of Wisconsin opened its annual State convention in Oshkosh today, U.S. Senator Russ Feingold’s Progressive Patriots Fund launched a national effort on its new website, www.progressivepatriotsfund.com, to rally opposition to the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA).
  The Bush Administration and opponents of fair trade are pushing Congress for summer passage of CAFTA, patterned after the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which has contributed to U.S. job losses and record trade deficits. (Rest of article here.)

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