Artist: Neil Young
Album: Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere
Year: 1969
A new year! 1969, here I am. Soon enough the Sixties will be over. Well, actually, there are a whopping 39 albums included from 1969 in this book, so this is going to be a pretty long ride.
We start with the first Neil Young album included in this book, Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere. I have not exactly had a great opinion of Neil Young, one of Canada's national treasures. His voice has a whiny, nails-on-chalkboard kind of quality for me. His songs, on the other hand, are usually quite good. Take these songs and let someone else sing them and now we're talking.
But I'm going to have to get used to the man if I'm going to get through this. I think there are more Neil Young albums included here than there are Beatles albums, Rolling Stones albums, and maybe even Bob Dylan albums. So clearly someone thinks Mr. Young's music is of major import.
This album is not half bad. I like the upbeat rocker "Cinnamon Girl," the sprawling epic "Down by the River" has a great guitar riff even if the tune gets a bit tedious five minutes in. I did not care for the monotonous and boring "Round & Round." I think in general what I'm going to find about Neil Young is that I can stomach the upbeat songs that have good instrumentals, but will have a hard time getting through the slower ballads.
For the time, I can see this being an interesting, somewhat primal fusion of country and rock, certainly less polished than something like The Band's Music from Big Pink which I felt was a little overproduced. Not bad, Neil. Not bad at all.
Rating: Worth a listen
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