attention deficit

Did I read correctly that the new Neil Young and Crazy Horse album has 3 songs over 15 minutes? one of which is 37 minutes long? That cant be, can it? I mean, I like 8 minutes of Cortez The Killer as much as the next day, btu that sounds unlistenable! Is there anybody with a good attention span on this board, and with a good drug stash, willing to give this an end to end listen?

"Is there anybody with a good attention span on this board, and with a good drug stash, willing to give this an end to end listen?"

No. There is not.

I'm no fan of Neil Young, but the closest I've come to an ecstatic experience was in my early 30s, drug-free, alone in my bedroom, moving around- "dancing"- to "Cowgirl In The Sand."

Just a few moments carried on a stream of rejuvenating energy. When it was over I felt like I'd just had some kind of good fun, but wasn't sure that it had anything to do with "me" and knew no matter how much I loved that song, I'd never be able to replicate the experience.

Never would have guessed it would happen through Neil Young.

Many long hours of great music, combined with pounds of marijuana, have given me some magical listening listening since then, but no repeat of ecstasy. Neil Young is the last guy I'd turn to in hopes of a repeat.

30 minutes is too long but there are a bunch of 8-12 minute neil young songs which to me are very listenable cause of the intensity and the build up.
springsteen is an artist who his long songs are extremely listenable {if you are a fan}. the solos arent redundant and its a few different instruments, moods and also has a huge amount of lyrics.
dylans extremely long songs are like listening to a long story. which to me dosent lose its flavor.

i like the grateful dead but now when they jam out and do songs longer then 7 minutes which they do often they lose me.

what about artists in the t.p genre who do long songs?
first group that popped in my mind is television

Douglas Wolk has a piece on this very subject:

www.mtvhive.com/2012/10/24/these-are-the-songs-that-never-end/

Unless a listener is pressed for time, it really doesn't matter how long a song is. What matters is how long the song feels. Over the course of 11 minutes, "Marquee Moon" moves, builds to a towering height, falls down and starts over again; it feels like it's doing everything but plodding. Almost anything by the Grateful Dead, on the other hand, seems to drag on for hours.

Compared to Neil, I like the long Dead jams because of where they go (as opposed to the singing and verses where you're just waiting to go back to the experimentation, like when they did Dylan songs it was bathroom break time).

But having heard Psychedelic Pill (it's been streaming here), I can't say that Crazy Horse jams do the same for me. Live is a different story and I've not felt their jams were overly long in person (just that they didn't really go anywhere original after a few minutes) so this material will likely be stage-built*. But I haven't liked a Crazy Horse album since Trans - I think bigger fans than I might dig it.

fwiw, it's better than Greendale (I haven't heard Americana)

I've seen Neil 6 or 7 times but seeing him with Sonic Youth kind of ruined it for me. SY goes somewhere with their feedback whereas CH just slowly repeats common fretboard figures with all fuzz pedals on. The difference made me fidgety and I'd have left if I hadn't given a ride to some neil dirtbags. If I see him again it won't be with the Horse, as much as I like guitar noise.

I didn't like the Heart of Gold film the 1st time but having seen it 4 or 5 times it became a fave. I like Neil's vision, career arc, & individualism, just not most of the albums.

Like devlin said, length itself isn't an issue with me but I know what ADD people are like.

This new digital music format and device that Neil is investing in sounded interesting but after months of refusing a technical description (and false clams by Neil) it looks like a wash.

*afaik NY & Crazy Horse albums are usually tour-built but I recall seeing Neil tour a new album sans Hors and not play a single track.

"I am a Dead apologist"

Well. There'll need to be a whole lot more of you before I accept this apology.

I have no problem with long songs. Heck, I listened to 18+ minutes of The Flower Kings' "Big Puzzle" on my way into work this morning and loved every second of it.

Now, a 10-minute live version of a not very good 3-4 minute studio song is not my cup of tea (I'm talking about you, Phish; "Wolfman's Brother" is lame at either length).

I'd rather listen to a great 15-minute song (say, "Awaken" by Yes) than five mediocre 3-minute songs. Either way, its 15 minutes of music that you're either going to enjoy or not.

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I have no problem with long songs.

Cool.

Let's do Dreamweapon by Spacemen 3, and then - provided it's cogitable - - we'll segue into Paralyzed Mind of the Archangel Void by Harmony Rockets.

Can you dig it?

I love alot of Neil's music but he is too prolific, and too hit or miss to really spend alot of time on his stuff from the last 20 years.
I give most of it a listen but if it doesn't grab me, I rarely go back. I think Broken Arrow was the last true A+, 5 star album (but you won't find many who think that.)
As far as long music, I tend towards Miles Davis, Mingus or Coltrane (and just started listening to Coleman, trying to figure it out.)
Godspeed would be a current band making great long songs. Sunset Rubdown and Wolf Parade have made a weird blend of prog and indie with some very satifying long songs (nothing approaching over 12min though.) Spiritualized has some long stuff too. In my collection, there are a few odd ball tracks by various indie artists but not many.

I will give Psychedelic Pill a go but I am not expecting much.

He and the Horse played a good chunk of the new album live when I saw them at ACL Fest. The new stuff fits right in with the Crazy Horse classics. Take that as you will.

As for long songs...it seems to me there are two schools of thought for these. One is songs with multiple parts (not necessarily sections, if you follow me). The other is a song structured to allow a lot of improvisation. The latter works best for me if the musicians involved are more interested in building intensity than showing off their technique, which is why I'm more willing to put up with Neil and the Horse bearing down on three chords for 20 minutes than, say, the Dead, who may have had more instrumental facility (thought I'd argue they don't) but couldn't be intense to save their drugs, I mean, lives.

(OK, Dead lovers, forget I said that. I'm not gonna go into my "the Grateful Dead are the worst band of all time" rant here. I'll lose too many friends.)

In general, I think jazz musicians do long improv best. It's been my experience that even the best rock musician doesn't have the improv capabilities of the most mediocre jazzer. That has less to do, I think, with technique than it does with the two musics having two different philosophies.

As for the first, prog bands are most famous for doing this, and when they do it right, they do it well. Porcupine Tree is great at doing long songs that are more about structure than instrumental facility. Plus they're smart enough to do only one per record, usually. Spock's Beard (derivative as they are) was really good at this, too, when Neal Morse was still the main songwriter.

I'd listen, but I'm a big fan of Neil, esp w/Crazy Horse, so I'm predisposed. Just as I can happily listen to Hendrix shredding, Can or Kraftwerk motoriking, Pharoah Sanders blowing, Nusrat Fatah Ali Khan chanting or Fela grooving. They're good at it.

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(and just started listening to Coleman, trying to figure it out.)

totaji, check out "Song X" - highly energetic freakouts that any "Sister Ray" fan can dig.

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I'm not gonna go into my "the Grateful Dead are the worst band of all time" rant here. I'll lose too many friends.

Not on this board!



Post Edited (11-01-12 12:43)

Oh, I love Neil and the Horse's jams, don't get me wrong. But I can see how it could get old fast to someone not already predisposed to what they're doing.

African music is a different beast, I think than even jazz. What Fela did was as much about pure communication as entertainment or artistic statement. And you can't rush that. Especially when you're riding a killer groove.

Wonderful comments by Fab. Hendrix, Kraftwerk and Fela do take me all sorts of places in their longer pieces, and I'm always happy to go for the ride. Same goes for Coltrane, and for the Allman Brothers.

I saw Neil only once. It was the 1990 tour with Crazy Horse, with Social Distortion and Sonic Youth on the bill. Talk about a shred-fest. I didn't quite get into Neil's long guitar excursions, but for the sheer visceral impact, it was pretty frickin' unforgettable.

And much as I dislike the Grateful Dead, they're not the worst band of all time, IMO. Styx has held that title for 35 years and counting.

I guess Jerry Garcia is the elephant in the room when it comes to this subject. I am a Dead apologist and prefer them with more restraint but listen to boots...sober! Yes I said it. At the end of the day, I like studio music better than live recorded music. So when it comes to any live recording the less sloppy the better.

Wow, Song X is some advanced sh*t. The is college level stuff. I am in grade school right now with his early stuff. Which is closer, but still deviates from more main stream jazz of the time. The funny thing is, when I put "Song X" into Spotify it came up with the Neil Young song which got me confused for a moment...

Really it comes to this, long songs, jazz, prog, post-rock, jam bands, etc all "work" our brains in a different way. We get different emotional experiences.
The pop music format - beginning, verse, chorus, verse, chorus, solo, chorus, or some version of that gives a very specific experience. Whether it is Youth of Today, Lady Gaga, or REO Speedwagon. The music might take us high or low but it is consumed in a certain way. It is more of a heart based immediate delivery. Other styles of music don't do that.
Making your way through a Godspeed song is much more of a journey. Experiencing Shhh/Peaceful is much more of a journey.

"And much as I dislike the Grateful Dead, they're not the worst band of all time, IMO. Styx has held that title for 35 years and counting."

I simply can't agree - worse than REO Speedwagon? Worse than Foreigner? Worse that fucking Bachman-Turner Overdrive? Worse than the goddamn Doobie Brothers? Seriously? But I'm gonna find out for myself on Sunday night: I'm actually going to see Styx play.

Believe it or not, Styx meant a lot to me back when I was a kid with a small record collection and no exposure to anything that wasn't country, top 40 or classic rock. That's no longer the case (Rush and Yes are pretty much the only bands from my teenage years I still listen to, and once I heard Richard Thompson my entire concept of what great songwriting was realigned), and I may very well not last more than a couple of songs, depending on how many arena rock cliches I'm subjected to. But maybe I'll reconnect with my inner teenager who used to have every note and lyric memorized and it'll be fun. We shall see.

I stand by my Dead assessment. On this I will not be moved.

So long as Train exists, there cannot be any other Worst Band Ever.

I would certainly put "Hey Soul Sister" in the top 10 finalists of Worst Song Ever.

Train lands three songs on that list for me - "Hey Soul Sister," "Meet Virginia" and "Drops of Jupiter." Those are also the only songs by Train that I know, which speaks of unknowable horrors in the rest of their catalog.

Other Worst Band Ever band contenders I can at least find SOMETHING tolerable about, even if it's just the fact that hearing them now makes me nostalgic for high school (i.e. Styx, Journey or Kansas) or have at least one song that I don't mind all that much (I sort of enjoy "Goodbye Stranger" by Supertramp).

But in Train's decade plus existence, I've yet to hear a single second of anything by them that doesn't fill me with a berserker's desire to tear their spines from their bodies and beat them and any of their living relatives to mushy pulps, then feed their entrails to the ravens.

Hmmm. Sorry about that last paragraph - a friend of mine pointed out that a guy named Robert E. Howard was elected Tuesday to the county board in a county he works in, so I'm in a bit of a barbarian mood.

Nickelback is also far more despicable than any of the commonly hated bands from the late 70s, at least in my book.

To me, train is like late 80's Aerosmith (Dude Looks like a Lady era) Bad, but nothing to call worst of all time.

Nickelback is the Mitt Romney (if you still remember him) of music. They are truly the worst. I really dislike but respect (to a tiny degree) Pearl Jam. Nickelback cashed on a bad sound and made it worse.

If you haven't heard Train's cover of Sugar's "If I Can't Change Your Mind" - well, good for you.

Train has been (ha) seconded. so i third them.

for me, hearing just a few seconds of that gut wrenching, flatulence inducing, fist clenching, ulcer aggravating, tinnitis inflamming, instant episodal (equal parts anger & frustration) seizure attack trigger of an excuse for a band, puts me in survival mode. fortunately, i have yet to be stopped from escaping the immediate area.



Post Edited (11-09-12 18:01)

Well, talking about the Dead to people that never went is like talking logic to a xtian: they continually move the goalposts.

Grunge jams don't go anywhere: hence Godfather of Grunge. Guess I just don't really like Crazy Horse all that much. Oddly, as it turns out I've sen Neil a bunch and have owned many of the albums.

So, this guy recently tells me he's the biggest Neil fan. When somebody whips that on me I ask "What's your take on Time Fades Away. Should he release it?". If they can't converse, bzzzt. This guy gave a blank stare. Fail.

"Well, talking about the Dead to people that never went is like talking logic to a xtian: they continually move the goalposts."

I've been to plenty of Dead shows (at least a dozen)--and was the owner of a healthy collection of boots in the 80s (Cornell '77, anyone?). It was the only way to relate to a lot of friends that I had and a lot of family and friends. They simply weren't hearing it when I tried to tune them into Echo and the Bunnymen.

At least I *tried* their stuff.

And my parents lived in Woodstock for 30 years.

So don't talk to me me about "never went."

"Well, talking about the Dead to people that never went is like talking logic to a xtian: they continually move the goalposts."

A guy I worked with at a record store 20 years ago made that same argument. So he brought in one of his Dead concert boots and played it in-store. It was, to my ears, worse than their studio records. The MST3K parody of the Dead in general and Garcia's alleged genius in particular sounded exactly like what I heard on that boot.

But there is the argument that a Dead concert was more about the experience than the actual music. Jim DeRogatis makes this point in Turn On Your Mind - he disliked the music but had a lot of fun at the show. That was never enough to make me go see them, though.

It's not the band I hate; it's their fans.

(courtesy: Sloan)

> Jim DeRogatis makes this point in Turn On Your Mind — he disliked the music but had a lot
> of fun at the show.

I can think of a couple of acts I've gone to see, whose music I didn't much care for — usually either because I got a free ticket or was going to please my significant other. In nearly all those cases, I did have fun at the show. But there are some rivers you just can't cross ... like the River Styx, for example.

Hmmm, another thread coming up. Please stand by.

Like anything else, it takes exposure and a willingness to give yourself over to the artist's vision. Like "suspending your disbelief" while watching a film.
To appreciate alot of good art, you have to give it time and educate yourself.

Art is like love. It can be easy come, easy go. But the more you put into it, the more you get out of it.

Speaking of long songs, might as well give a shout-out to Wipers' "Youth of America", about 10:30 of pure sonic pleasure. Ditto Ride's "Leave Them All Behind" (though that's "only" about 8 minutes or so) and Suicide's "Frankie Teardrop".

I'd also recommend various songs from Skullflower, Coil, and Ramleh, though those are probably more "journeys" (as per Totaji) than stuff that can be squeezed into that nebulous genre known as "pop" music.

Steve, your post reminds me of Nirvana's t-shirts when they were on SubPop (and called themselves "Crack-Smoking, Fudge-Packing, Satan-Worshipping Motherfuckers") and on Geffen (where they redubbed themselves "Flower-Sniffing, Kitty-Petting, Baby-Kissing Corporate Rock Whores"). Maybe Train can use your assessment to similar effect. Hey, it worked once ... no, twice!

that is some mad marketing demographics delvin.

I had never heard the Sugar cover. That only gets my interest. It is very vanilla but nothing to get my titties in a twist.

OK, I have to add, although I will probably get bum-rushed for this, Maroon 5 and Third Eye Blind. But that's just me...

Great long songs: "South Side Of The Sky" Yes, "Larks' Tongues In Aspic, Parts I and II" King Crimson, "Oh Well, Parts I and II" Fleetwood Mac, "Bound To Be That Way" Do Make Say Think, "DJed" Tortoise.

Again, just my opinion.