Hey y'all 90's fans! My computer has come back from the dead after a long crash just in time for Halloween! If you're anything like me, the holiday season's starting to kick up and invites are piling up waiting for RSVPs...let me throw some more events on you just to make it even more confusing! Fun!!
In the Nineties, Neil Young enjoyed a renewed interest in his music, leading some enthusiastic critics to coin him the "Godfather of Grunge." In truth, this perplexed me quite a bit at the time, because a.) I hated the term "grunge," as it was a corporate misnomer that Seattle musicians famously lampooned, and b.) who was this codger Neil Young, anyway? Well, I definitely got to know this terrific musician over the years he spent playing and recording with Pearl Jam (who covered his excellent tunes "Rockin' In The Free World" and "F*&kin' Up," as well as collaborated with Neil to produce the 1995 album, "Mirrorball"), organizing the Bridge School Benefit concerts (The Bridge School was founded in order to help kids with physical impairments and other complex communication needs), and being generally politically outspoken and codger-ish, in an awesome way. He also has a habit of being covered by almost diametrically opposed bands (sound-wise), producing highly interesting and nearly unrecognizable versions of his popular songs. Also, he's Canadian.
This leads me to pleading with you to do yourself a Halloween favor and see Neil Young tomorrow at The Forum in Inglewood, CA. He's appearing with late 90's indie fave Death Cab for Cutie and newbies Everest.
For a visual illustration of why Neil Young was the Godfather of Grunge, I have two awesome clips of Neil Young performing an acoustic show live in 1971 that, I swear, if you just slapped an MTV logo on the bottom right corner and added some obnoxious commercial breaks, could be an episode of "Unplugged." Seeing him in these clips reminds me of when J Mascis and Dinosaur Jr. were really blowing up back in the 90's, the critics kept comparing J to Neil Young. Here is why:
Neil Young - "Heart of Gold" (Live 1971)
Neil Young - "Old Man" (Live 1971)
Look at the girl gazing adoringly at him at minute 1:38. That cracks me up. I know how she feels. Damn rock stars and their sensitively wounded yet guarded masculine charisma.
Here is the heavily-aired-at-the-time 1993 MTV Video Music Awards Neil Young and Pearl Jam performance of "Rockin' In the Free World." For those of you that missed this show, this was a good one, back when MTV was still relevant. I believe this was the same MTV Awards that had Nirvana playing "Lithium" and Krist Novoselic throwing his bass up in the air and landing on his head instead of in his hands, knocking him to the ground, and Red Hot Chili Peppers playing "Give It Away," with like a gazillion people onstage (including Angelo Moore of Fishbone), all in a row. It was awesome:
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