The 1981 Listening Post - Neil Young & Crazy Horse - Re-ac-tor

 Neil Young & Crazy Horse - Re-ac-tor

#492

October 21 1981

Neil Young & Crazy Horse

Re-ac-tor

Genre: Rock

2.75 out of 5

Highlights:

Southern Pacific

I imagine this is because I am coming to him in the 80s and not during his influential years the decade before but I am not a fan of Neil Young. 

I don’t care for his songs, his lyrics or his voice. 

This album is not helping.

Nine minutes of one stupid riff, Neil? The insipidity of “T-Bone” renders the rest of the experience redundant. “Got mashed potato, ain’t got no T-bone”????

Stop it. You will never convince me that Young is deserving of his high regard in the pantheon of rock because every time you do I will repeat that lyric and bring up the Pono. 

https://music.apple.com/us/album/re-ac-tor/1179513804

The 1980 Listening Post - Neil Young - Hawkes and Doves

 Neil Young - Hawks & Doves

#434

November 3 1980

Neil Young

Hawks & Doves

Genre: Rock

3.25 out of 5

Highlights:

The Old Homestead

Captain Kennedy

It’s possible that Neil Young is the only Canadian I don’t care for. 

I don’t get this. Can someone explain this to me? I mean, I understand it if you told me that Neil was a guy who played the jamborees and, eventually, hosted his own traveling music variety show but that’s it. Amidst the hay bales and the hokum, I’m left wondering…why is this guy someone I should care about? 

I mean, outside of creating the Pono, of course. 

I’m torn. I should put “Little Wing” on the Highlights cuz…well…everyone seems to think it’s genius. But it feels unfinished and it left me wanting. I prefer the epic western “The Old Homestead” and I wish the album had more of that. 

https://music.apple.com/us/album/hawks-doves/1179541500

The 1986 Listening Post - Neil Young - Landing on Water

Neil Young - Landing on Water

#297/1422

July 28 1986

Neil Young and Crazy Horse

Landing On Water

Genre: Rock

1.5 out of 5

My exposure to Neil is very limited. That shitty rockabilly nonsense and reading about Pono. It’s weird to me that Neil would be so committed to audio fidelity and yet have an album with terrible synthesizers and processed 80s echo drums in support of mediocre songs in his repertoire. 

This does not endear me to Mr. Young. In fact, the giants of the 60s and 70s like he and Dylan…if their 80s output is your exposure (as it is mine and, no doubt, other youngsters) saying, “Butbutbut, ya gotta listen to their earlier, great stuff!” isn’t going to work. 

Based on this there is no reason to go back and listen to his catalog, he’s a second rate Lindsey Buckingham or Kenny Loggins here. But, at least they can hold a note. 

This is terrible

https://music.apple.com/us/album/landing-on-water/1443868337

The 1985 Listening Post - Neil Young - Old Ways

Neil Young - Old Ways

#294/929

August 12 1985

Neil Young

Old Ways

Genre: Country

3.75 out of 5

Highlights:

The Wayward Wind

Get Back to the Country

Um…Allen…this is…psst…this is country. You said we weren’t doing country. 

Well, Allen, that’s true. I did say that. I am also a creature of whimsy. And I would tell you that, if we were doing The Listening Post 2019 we would absolutely cover Springsteen’s Western Stars. And if this was The Listening Post 1981 we would most definitely be listening to Elvis Costello’s Trust. And, heck, we give The Knitters a listen. 

Look, “rock music” was going through one helluvan identity crisis in 1985. Everyone wa doing something different, be it use synths instead of guitars, doubling down on alternative sounds, or playing in different idioms. And this is Neil Young. You sorta have to cover it, no?

Neil is lamenting the loss of something. It feels like he’s longing for an ideal that America was built on but he knows (and you and I know) that it probably wasn’t real. It was a fiction. Which is what makes this album even more honest to me. Because I enjoy incongruity. And I enjoyed this. Because when he is earnest it makes me wonder if that means that he was being earnest on the songs where he sounds ironic and snarkily sarcastic. And that works in reverse. His snark makes me wonder if the heartfelt honesty of, say, “Once an Angel” or “My Boy” is actually sarcasm.

Young is a victim of his own intelligence. 

And his voice works here. 

This album is a nice curve off the rock and roll highway. I’m here for it. Thanks, Neil. 

https://music.apple.com/us/album/old-ways/1443623555

The 1983 Listening Post - Neil Young and the Shocking Pinks - Everybody's Rockin'

Neil Young and the Shocking Pinks - Everybody's Rockin'

#133

August 1 1983
Neil Young and the Shocking Pinks
Everybody’s Rockin’
1 out of 5

If you were 35 in 1983, you were at the height of your buying power. You had discretionary cash. A sports car. Or you’ve just started a family but you are upwardly mobile.
You were also born in 1948 and about 10 years old when Rock and Roll was in it’s heyday.
Using that metric, two things are apparent to me:
The 50’s nostalgia craze should have come as no surprise.
That explains the recent 80s revival.

So, in the early 80s we had Stray Cats, Polecats, The Blasters, and a host of other retro-revivalists, mining that early sound.

Neil young’s entry to this is garbage.

I can’t tell if it’s a fuck you to his contract at Geffen or he just lost his mind but it’s horrible and it should be heard by no one and all available copies should only exist on Pono music players