Super groups come and go, but if this is what HellYeah is capable of at its beginning... I hope they stick around for a few more rounds at the bar.
Glen Boyd "Ambulance Blues" from On The Beach by Neil Young.
Earlier this week, a guy I work with surprised me with a burnt copy of a 1974 Neil Young show from The Bottom Line. What made this show so special is that it features ultra-rare live versions of nearly all of the songs from On The Beach, which is in my mind the most underated record in Neil Young's entire catalog.
Depending on how you choose to look at it, the three songs comprising that album's original second side are either some of the most depressing, or the most beautiful and austere music Neil — or anyone else for that matter — has ever recorded. All I know for sure, is that whenever I used to play it around my friends (back when it first came out), I'd get lots of concerned looks and comments like "is everything okay, Glen"?
"Ambulance Blues" is the best of the lot and one of Neil's best ever. In it's seven or so minutes, the lyrical ground it covers alone is just staggering. From it's opening line about "back in the old folkie days," we soon find Neil snarling about "all you critics sit alone" with their "stomach pump and hook and ladder dreams." I have no idea what that particular phrase means, but when Neil sings it the words are sheer poetry. Later in the song Neil says something I've always wanted to say to a number of my acquaintances. Namely that "there ain't nothing like the friend, who can tell you that you're just pissing in the wind."
Earlier today, On The Beach kept me company on a particularly brutal drive back to Seattle from Portland, Oregon. And "Ambulance Blues" had me singing out loud in the traffic.
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Article comments
1 - Josh
C'mon, Sir Brewster, the man's name is Woody. How could you have missed it? ;-)
2 - Connie Phillips
Congrats! We are sharing this article with all our friends at Myspace.
3 - Connie Phillips
Shoot! I missed the deadline again. I actually picked up two new CDs last week, one being the Amy Winehouse everyone here as been raving about. Thank you to all who gave it a great review, I've been enjoying it very much. Now if I can just fine the time to write about it.
4 - Mat Brewster
I know, you wouldn't have thought with all that communism talk I would have been more keen on the sex.
5 - Josh
Why let a little sex interrupt some good commiepinko stuff. ;-)
6 - Mat Brewster
Wow, my sentence totally doesn't make sense. Glad you got the joke though. Must stop drinking at lunch.