"Helpless" - Neil Young

Over the last year, it seems like every time I come back home on my breaks from school this wave of nostalgia overtakes me. It's not really something I ever expected to happen, considering I so desperately wanted to escape the south when I was living here full time. I suppose the fact that I'll be graduating college at the end of the New Year has something to do with this. Pretty soon I'm going to have to make some big decisions about what I want to do with myself or whatever, and I really just don't want to. So as a consequence of that I guess I'm feeling a little wistful for more carefree times or something.

"Helpless" is a really simple Neil Young song that you might call the centerpiece of Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young's 1970 album Deja Vu. If you ask me, most of the material that resulted from the collaboration between these former members of the Buffalo Springfield, The Byrds, and The Hollies, is mostly bland, uninspired stuff, but the group did have its moments. "Helpless" is one of them. Notable among its surrounding tracks for it's sheer sparseness, it very much resembles a Neil Young solo cut. The song itself is overtly nostalgic, and in the wrong hands it might be just that, but Young's earnest delivery lends the song an overwhelming sense of loneliness and yearning that transports it to a much higher plain.

Anyway, I’ve been thinking about this song a lot lately. As I said before, it’s ludicrously simple, with basically one verse repeated twice with some slight variations now and then. It’s also basically just one set of three or four chords all the way through. The lyrics have got this real wounded tone, and are childlike in their attention to detail.

Blue blue windows behind the stars
Yellow moon on the rise
Big birds flying across the skies
Throwing shadows on our eyes
Leave us helpless, helpless, helpless.

“Helpless”– Neil Young, Live at Massey Hall 1971

Buy it here: Amazon

Neil Young Bio: All Music

The Coolest Stuff I Came Across in 2007 (Off the Top of my Head)

The Orlando Magic – They are awesome now. I don’t care if they’re only third in the Eastern Conference: Howard, Turkoglu, and Keyon are gonna take it to tha Heece (as Prasad would say). If nothing else they’re going to go to town on the Knicks on Wednesday, and I’ll be in attendance to witness it first hand.

The New England Patriots – I really want the Celtics to crash and burn, but the Patriots are just really great. I kind of latched onto the whole New England sports bandwagon at the end of the Summer, since my two roommates are from Mass. and have been hardcore fans of the Sox and Pats since before it was cool. I’d love to see a perfect season in my lifetime, and you can’t hate them too much, since they still kind of have something to prove, having lost the Superbowl last year. Highlights of the season included a fantastic dropped lateral that miraculously resulted in a deep pass from T-Brad. In addition, Junior Seau is the perfect name for a linebacker.

In Rainbows by Radiohead – ‘Nuff said.

Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami – This is an old book, but I just read it a couple of months back. It’s basically just a really heartfelt adolescent coming-of-age story for introspective, slightly bitter college students like me. It’s a little romantic, sure, but everyone’s gotta feel sometime. If you’re interested, check the archives for my original review.

Live at Massey Hall 1971 by Neil Young – The second installment in the Neil Young Archives series, it’s an official bootleg that documents probably the most inspired phase of Neil Young’s artistic career. Sure, On the Beach, didn’t come around ‘til 1973 or ‘74, but in ’71 Neil Young’s entire body was twitchin’ with what Crazy Horse producer David Briggs would call “the Spook.” If you ever get a chance to listen to this, or better yet, pick it up for yourself, check out “Don’t Let It Bring You Down,” “Love in Mind,” “On the Way Home,” and “Ohio.”

Rap – It’s actually pretty cool, if you look in the right places.

The Office (US) – I was a fan of the UK version, but over the last year and a bit (season three) I really got into the US version. Seasons two and three are basically perfect and ought to be watched on DVD with all the deleted scenes. Season four not so much. Dwangela? Jam? I liked it better when the tension was there, to be honest, and it’s probably for the best that the writer’s strike has probably ended the show for good.

I’m sure there were more cool things, but I want to maybe eat some cookies now.

A merry Christmas to all…I insist.

In the G'rage... (Part One of ?)

Yesterday I finished up a semester interning at a lit agency, and as a going-away present I was allowed to take a couple of promo copies of books they have in stock from publishers. One of those books is Rolling Stone’s now out-of-print Alt-Rock-A-Rama. So far, I’ve only read through a few of the pieces compiled in the book, but I was inspired by one of the features, “The Original Punks: The Greatest Garage Recordings of the Twentieth Century,” by Robot A. Hull (no joke, guy goes by Robot), to do a post on a great garage-rock group of whose history and musical output I know almost nothing. They’re called The Loved Ones, and they’re from Melbourne, Australia.

I got the following track, “Surprise, Surprise,” from a blog post over on Aquarium Drunkard, a cool blog based in LA, that was part of a series on rare garage rock from the 1960s. Dig the metalic fuzz of the song’s opening—it’s a bit like the Rolling Stones’ early singles, but it doesn’t have any of the big corporate rock connotations they’ve gained by being stars for almost half a century. The Loved Ones aren’t nearly as obscure as some of the stuff Robot Hull talks about in his piece, such as The Memphis Goons (who sound pretty awesome, considering they referred to themselves as “Xavier Tarpit, Jackass Thompson and Vanilla Frog”), The Godz, or the Shaggs, but their material also isn’t as widely known as their more successful contemporaries such as ? and the Mysterians (“96 Tears”), The Kingsmen (“Louie, Louie”), or the Troggs (“Wild Thing”).

For these reasons, I thought I’d post “Surprise, Surprise” for your listening enjoyment. It’s got elements of the Kingsmen, the Beatles’ early releases, and the Stones for sure, but ultimately it’s just a damn good nugget of garage rock greatness. It might not be as perfect as the Trashmen’s cacophonous “Surfin’ Bird,” (“B-b-b-bird bird bird, bird’s the word") but it’ll be stuck in your head for at least the rest of the day.

“Surprise, Surprise” – The Loved Ones

Check ‘em out on Amazon.

Catch a Cannonball

Sometime last Summer a couple of my friends and I were hanging out watching TV and on a whim I put on my friend’s copy of The Last Waltz to watch the above performance of “The Weight.”

Very few times has a piece of music or film sent real chills up and down my spine. It happened to me when I heard the cascading refrain to Radiohead’s “Subterranean Homesick Alien” (uptiiiieeeettt) and it happened again when I watched The Band play this song at their farewell concert on Thanksgiving Day, 1976.

I didn’t really know very much about The Band until some car commercial used the song a coupla years back (kinda seems like this is the way a lot of people are introduced to music nowadays). Sure, I’d heard a little of Before the Flood, a live album capturing performances from a 70’s tour with Dylan, but ol’ Bobby sounds absolutely awful on that thing so I wasn’t exactly playing it to death. Anyway, I heard this song in a commercial, and suffice to say I found it a whole lot more interesting than buying anything with a hemi in it. Still, it wasn’t until some time later that I actually got wind of The Last Waltz.

Take a look at the video clip. Just listen to the way the Staple Singers, sing their hearts out on the chorus (one of the best in the history of rock ‘n’ roll) and watch the furrows flash over singer/drummer Levon Helm’s face as he belts the first verse. It’s so real and excruciatingly brilliant that it’s almost painful to watch. Spine tingling, as I mentioned earlier, it’s sensational in the most literal sense of the word. It’s incredible how well the whole ensemble pulls off such a stunning performance, considering that it was their last performance and tensions had been running high for a few years. Everyone’s in top gear here. Richard Manuel throws down a bed of Saloon-hall piano, Rick Danko’s all over the bassline, his high harmonies like the ghost of some long-gone vagabond, while Robbie Robertson’s glassy guitar twangs over the top of it all.

I can’t begin to express how thankful I am that footage of this unbelievable performance exists. You can watch the video on the link above, but I highly recommend Netflixin’ The Last Waltz for the full effect. Another personal favorite is “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down.” Make sure to watch Levon as he plays the living hell out of those drums, his shoulders twitching in time to each accented beat. You hear him singing about the defeat of Southern pride and the fall of the Confederacy and you’ll swear he was really there, sweating out on his front porch watching the haggard Yankees riding by.

Amen.

Breathless – Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds

I first heard Nick Cave when I caught a live video of “The Mercy Seat,” a song from his 1988 album with the Bad Seeds called Tender Prey. I ended up buying the CD a couple years later and became really thrilled by its harsh, bluesy sound.

This post isn’t about that album, but rather about a single I chanced upon when the Tower Records on Broadway was having its going-out-of-business sale last year (it was a pretty gruesome thing, a bit like watching a beached whale carcass rot away or something).

Anyway, I was digging through a bin of assorted singles of mostly appalling quality—A little Avril Lavigne, some bad neo-soul, you know the stuff—when I came across a sort of creamy blue colored one with a little picture of a robin sitting in a tree on the front. Turns out it was a single for the song “Breathless,” from Cave’s last outing with the Seeds, 2004’s double LP Abattoir Blues/The Lyre of Orpheus. It was ninety-nine cents or something so I grabbed it, not really having any expectations.

I should have had some. On the strength of this song I eventually bought Abattoir and it’s one of my favorite albums of the decade. That said, “Breathless” is pretty much an anomaly in the Nick Cave catalog (or at least what I’ve heard of it). I still prefer the mix on the single to the version on the album, since it nixes an ear-splitting spaghetti of flute runs in the intro, but what makes the song stand out from the rest of Cave’s tunes is the fact that it’s just a really sweet, ambling pop song. It's got a great groove and some awesome, soulful backing vocals too (something far from uncommon when the Bad Seeds are involved). Nick Cave’s also a master lyricist, tempering themes ranging from the political to the personal with dark stories filled with violence and ribaldry that somehow end up having hilarious punch lines. On “Breathless,” however, he sticks to a more traditional approach, and you get a glimpse of Nick Cave the romantic poet, spinning idyllic lines like “it’s up in the morning, it’s on the downs, little white clouds just like gamboling lambs, and I am breathless over you.”

I’ll shut up now and you can listen, whoever you are:

Breathless (Alternative Mix)

Lived in Bars - Cat Power

Check out the previous posts for a cool live mp3 from Paris '05.

Caricatures by Ken Knafou

Ken's another great artist who works at Sea World Orlando. Sketches like the one above are really making me look forward to working back at the park this winter break. More good stuff on his blog at the link below.

ka-blaam! Ken Knafou's Blog

Dreams / Blue Moon - Cat Power

Just the other week I finally picked up The Greatest, and after a few spins I’ve become completely infatuated with all things Chan Marshall. Here are three reasons.

1. She's from the South and her voice is the sound of soul. If I had to describe it, I would say it sounds like she was born in the window booth of a Georgia roadside diner—the kind of place where you wash down a stack of syrupy pancakes with three or four cigarettes and five or six cups of black coffee. It’s a lot more romantic in my mind than it sounds, trust me.

2. She can do indie-bleak better than anyone who comes from a place where it snows.

3. She's absolutely gorgeous.

Cat Power’s second album of covers, the aptly entitled Jukebox, comes out on January 22nd of next year, and to celebrate, (the royal) we here at Anesthetic Hymns are posting a smoky little medley of tunes by the Everly Brothers and the Marcels, respectively, bootlegged way back in ’05.

Listen, if you will, to the way she says, “moon” as if it were “moan.” I almost can’t stand it.

Right here, guy:
Dreams/Blue Moon (Live at Le Cigale, Paris 2005)