Discography - Summer 2019

And here we are with the latest of our Discography One-Offs, as we listen to new music and gather energy to tackle another year's worth of music and analysis.  Lately I've been getting grief for not starting up again, so I suspect people are getting ready. The task this week is for each of the noted musicologists to create a museum or hall of fame dedicated to their favorite artist and then choose what five songs would be the foundation. They could be the "best" songs or instead the songs that are most representative of the different aspects of that artist. Until the every end, when it all falls apart, this is pretty amazing.

Bob Craigmile

Hello music nerds.  Welcome to RUSH.  The band has taken indefinite hiatus aka retired.  It was sad to read about, but honestly I haven't kept up with their  music in 30 years (!).  Alex (guitar) has developed arthritis in his hands; Neal (drums) found the physical demands of touring too, well, demanding on his 66 year old body; Geddy (aka Gary Lee Weinrib, vocals, bass and keys) now has to screech to reach notes that he sang effortlessly 20 years ago.  It was time.  

Why love this band?  The question is fair;  they are "prog rock", one of the more hated subgenres of rock by the cognescenti in the music media.  It's always odd when smart (?) people hate smart things.  What strikes some as an interesting blending of jazz and rock, others hear as snobbish attempts to impress.  Geddy's voice is usually an issue for listeners too.  

Here's the thing:  if you can "rock out with yer cock out" and still have smart lyrics while going beyond 4/4 and three power chords, you've done something remarkable.  I came to Rush in college in the early 80's.  LIke everyone else in the Chicago area, I only knew Tom Sawyer, but then heard Exit Stage Left (their live album. I'm a sucker for greatest hits collections and parentheses).  

I was amazed at the musicianship and how it sounded like an orchestra playing due to the synths Lee had plunged into.  He'd also figured out a way to play bass notes using pedals while doing keys (and pedals to play synth while playing bass).  While singing.  So basically, JS Bach met Robert Plant.

I'm not a hardcore fan; others go to RushCons and make youtube videos of their tribute songs and have all the albums.  I've not done any of these.  Yet I consider myself a solid fan of an era in the 80's when they dominated FM rock radio.

So, to the list.

The Spirit of Radio.

This song has a mesmerizing guitar intro that should itself be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.  This is prime Rush for me.  The lyrics allude to the music biz:

All of this machinery
Making modern music
Can still be open-hearted
Not so coldly charted
It's really just a question
Of your honesty, yeah your honesty

One likes to believe
In the freedom of music
But glittering prizes
And endless compromises
Shatter the illusion
Of integrity, yeah

This song really has all of the elements of what made them great.  Tight musicianship (breaking into a reggae bridge) and offering homages to other songs:  

For the words of the profits
Were written on the studio wall 

Art and commerce have been intertwined since at least the medieval era.  Rush nearly flamed out when their record company cut them off (which lead to the epic 2112 album).  If you want to make art, do it your way, but remember, the

"Concert hall...echoes with the sounds, of salesmen"

Limelight

Yet another song about the music industry.  Yet another song started with a crunchy guitar riff.  

But wait, what's it like to be a "rock star" REALLY?  Bob Seger and others have tried to share the drab, dull side of diners and motels.  But there is a level of personal alienation to be someone you're just not.  Peart, the drummer/lyricist, warns:

Living in a fish eye lens
Caught in the camera eye
I have no heart to lie
I can't pretend a stranger
Is a long-awaited friend 

So much for winning the "meet and greet" from the local 50,000 watt station.  Backstage passes be damned, he won't enjoy meeting you because he's had to meet you 30 times on this tour alone.  Oh, you're with the local free weekly and want an interview? 

Cast in this unlikely role
Ill-equipped to act
With insufficient tact
One must put up barriers
To keep oneself intact 

Nerdy deep dive: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4P-yUOlOC5M

Subdivisions

Growing up, it all seems so one-sided
Opinions all provided
The future pre-decided
Detached and subdivided
In the mass-production zone

Nowhere is the dreamer
Or the misfit so alone

Okay, we've got the alienation thing going again.  So now this is clearly more about me than the band.  Why am I like this?  Why does this music resonate with me and a million other (mostly) white guys in the midwest who came of age in the 70's, the "Me" decade, where drugs were available and the government was actively trying to kill our older brothers in a war that made no sense?  

I have no idea.

Subdivisions
In the high school halls
In the shopping malls
Conform or be cast out 

No doubt your sociology professor would find this amusing, if trite.  But to a young person at the time, it made things click into place.  Someone else knew what was up.  And they had a microphone.  

While the punks are of the same generation as Rush, they wanted to destroy the system (it seemed), but only had a guitar so that would have to do.   There are other parallels here but I will not make them now.  There was no way Rush was smashing their instruments, because they loved them too much.  They're from the suburbs. 

Red Barchetta

He mispronounces the name ("k" not "ch") but it's a great song nonetheless.  

It starts out with guitar "harmonics" which are those chimey notes you can do if you lightly (VERY lightly) fret the strings on the 5th, 7th and 12th while picking.  I remember Tuck Andress saying that his wife Pati wanted him to do a whole song of harmonics, but since he held his breath while doing it, it would kill him.

Rush is a literate band, and often stayed in their rooms reading or watching the Cubs (Lee is a huge baseball fan and collector of some note) while on tour.  

This song is based on a short story and describes a futuristic boy daring to take out an old car in a time when cars are outlawed.  Sure enough, they're spotted by the nanny state police who chase them in "gleaming alloy air cars".  So tires are the real problem?  Whatever.

The joy of driving an old sports car illicitly is pure thrill:

Well-weathered leather
Hot metal and oil
The scented country air
Sunlight on chrome
The blur of the landscape
Every nerve aware  

Somehow, our hero eludes the agents of President AOC and big solar.   

Race back to the farm
To dream with my uncle at the fireside  

You can have his fossil fuel based car when you pry it from his cold, dead hands.  You'll have to catch him first.

La Villa Strangiato

No lyrics!  No screeching! Just pure instrumental showoffery: Several guitar sounds.  Lee playing synths with his feet while plucking the bass.  It features a shoutout to Powerhouse (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r3FLN0iQ9SQ ) among other things.

https://youtu.be/eK1hmDpa8bo

The bass is, as the kids say, sick. 

Mike Kelly

The Jay Farrar Hall of Fame 

Lots of times on this blog, we wax on about the subtleties of the songs that we love and the lyrics that are easy for the untrained ear to miss, but sometimes the simple things are the truest.  Such is the case for my first argument Jay Farrar Hall of Fame Nomination.  Put simply, listen to this guy's fucking voice.  The rich baritone allows him to carry a quiet confidence through the intense navigation of the unknown that the subjects of his song often encounter.  

For instance in, "Looking for a Way Out" -- Uncle Tupelo, there's a realization that sometimes even the best of dreamers don't get what they think is coming for them and that time is fleeting.  At a time in American music where all the cool kids were either listening to 2Pac or Fugazi, this UT song split the difference in previously unreachable ways for my 16 yr old self.   In lots of these songs, there's an understated urgency that permeates how we all live, but don't admit all that often. 

However, time can be long too.  "When morning comes twice a day or not at all/ If I break in two will you put me back together" is the resonate line that speaks to the agonizing pace of being banged up from last night and desperately missing someone that makes "Still Be Around" -- Uncle Tupelo -- a representative sample of a Hall of Fame career.  

But here's the thing.  One of the most noteworthy things about JF songs is that they are timeless.  Songs like "Tear Stained Eye" -- Son Volt --  could just as easily fit in on country radio in the late 1950s or provide two people a soundtrack for driving on rural highways through the American South 15 years from now.  There's lots of good choices in this HOF ballot, but they are mostly linked to an era in ways that Jay Farrar songs are not.  

It would be sort of easy to typecast Jay Farrar as nothing more than John Cougar Mellancamp who happened to read a few more books. To that end, I wanted to include "Medicine Hat" -- Son Volt --

in the Hall of Fame discussion, not because this is one of his better songs, but to show the lyrical and emotional depth of how he's accurately able to tell the story of what a life is and can be.  "There will be strains that break out of straight time/paved with grace/different roads to the same place" is the line that reminds us to embrace the predictable uncertainties of being alive.  

Sometimes, things really are that simple though. In  "World's on Fire" -- New Multitudes the importance of a simple, "I've got your back" is all the song needs to be.

Cyndi Brandenburg

Neko Case

Let me begin by saying what I assume to be obvious: pinpointing a “favorite” artist and then doing right by that artist in a paragraph or two is damn near impossible. But identifying a compelling person whose talents slipped into my consciousness unexpectedly and have remained there so appreciatively ever since, and feeling challenged to demonstrate why that might be so to a broader audience, well...that seems more doable. So for this discography one-off, I am going to try to either lure you into loving Neko Case for the first time or remind you why you love her even more than you thought you did in the first place. Seriously, you need read no further....just listen to the links below because some things go without saying. However, I have provided a wee bit of context for my particular choices in case that helps, highlighting the range of experience and expression that she is capable of offering. For me, it is the growth and change of my own relationship with her music over time that matters, because the trajectory of how people’s tastes evolve and the anticipation around what they might discover next is what it’s all about. In that vein, I’m excited to hear what everyone else posts to this challenge.

I Wish I Was The Moon was my gateway Neko song—kind of like a first crush that I should have payed more attention to. It took me a while before I started listening to her other work, and looking back now I wonder why I couldn’t see more clearly where this one was heading.

Whip The Blankets is just super fun....teasingly playful and simultaneously urgent, when I first heard it I thought to myself, “turns out I do like to steep in the pleasure of a little country after all.”

I blogged about the song Furnace Room Lullaby before. I still find this hauntingly soulful brooding selection to be strangely reassuring, and I still listen to it for comfort in the middle of the night when I get stuck in a 3am sleepless mind-loop.

This Tornado Loves You is quintessential stormy Neko Case, with lyrics that capture desire-fueled desperation wreaking havoc on the world like no other.

I heard Neko Case perform Sleep All Summer live at the Flynn Theater about five years or so ago, and started looking for a recorded version online the very next day. This one, a duet with Eric Bachmann, appears on her latest album. The timing of the slow wistful harmony gets me every time. I’ll be listening to it a lot over the next few months.

Finally, it is only fair to recognize the great contributions she has made doing lead vocals for The New Pornographers over the years. The song Challengers is a favorite, and I guess it sort of works as a metaphor for negotiating a complex musical career that defies the odds and challenges expectations? Nah, actually it doesn’t. I just chose it because I like it.

Alice Neiley

What is this "favorite artist" crap, anyway? Who has just one? Who can choose THAT without a tremendous amount of anxiety? Well, apparently I will have to suck it up in order to avoid eye rolls and subsequent teasing from Mike Kelly because I "always bend the rules". 

Since there likely IS already a museum of sorts dedicated to Ella Fitzgerald (who would be my first choice), I will go with Patty Griffin, whose lyrics and melodies I've been in love with since I first heard "Useless Desires" 14 years ago. It was 2005, a year after her album Impossible Dream was released. I was sitting at a red light at the four way stop near the Shelburne Country Store, and the tune came on Burlington's best independent radio station, The Point 104.7 :). It was about 2pm.  I remember where I was and the time so specifically because those lyrics, that melody, made me feel like someone had reached into my life and heart and made a song. As it turns out, about 90% of her songs are that way for me -- like sudden little moments of heat from embers that were already there. 

The five songs I would choose for the Patty Griffin museum: 

1. Useless Desires (Impossible Dream album)

2. Rowing Song (Impossible Dream album)

3. Long Ride Home (1000 Kisses album) 

4. Go Wherever You Wanna Go (American Kid album)

5. Blue Sky (Flaming Red album) 

**runner up** (shutupmikekelly): When It Don't Come Easy (Impossible Dream album) 

Dave Kelley

Anyone that has known me for at least a day is aware that Springsteen is far and away my favorite musician.  I thought of going with a different artist because he is such an obvious choice and because the odds are good that he will also be Dave Wallace's selection as well.  I decided to stick with Bruce.

The analogy of blind individuals each feeling a different part of an elephant is an old, tired, and overused cliché.  But since I am also an old, tired, and overused cliché, that is what I will go with for my blog entry.  I chose the five songs that I did, because each in its own way represent a different aspect of Bruce's music that I love.

One of the many things that I love about Bruce is his versatility in terms of style, sound, and mood.  At his live shows he switches on a dime from loud, boisterous, funny, and celebratory to somber, quiet, contemplative, and even morose.  These are not my five favorite Springsteen songs by any means, but I love them all and taken together I think that they encompass many of the things that I love about him and his music.

 "Born to Run".          This will probably always be his greatest song.  It was written when he was twenty-five years old and in danger of being dropped by the record company if his third record did not sell much better than his first two.   Steve Van Zandt has said that what separated Bruce from all of the other countless other young musicians that he knew was that Bruce never had nor wanted to have a plan B.  His only ambition was to be a great musician.  In the documentary about the making of the Darkness record Springsteen said that more than being rich, or famous, or even happy, he wanted to be great.  Perhaps that is why instead of recording a seaside party song filled with pop hooks guaranteed to get radio play, he decided to write an incredibly complex song that included every musical instrument known to man.  I wrote extensively about this song in the original blog so I won't go overboard.  To me this song is about being young, ambitious, and wanting EVERYTHING.  Most of us never really get to that place where we really want to go, but we should sure as hell try.  To paraphrase a better writer than I, the crucial line in the song is "but till then."  Can we live and be happy and fulfilled "until" we get to that mystical place where we have everything we want.  We better be able to because we probably ain't ever getting there.  

 "Born in the USA"  If "Born to Run" is a song about wanting to strike out and leave your home to find something better, "Born in the USA" is about being stuck where you are.  The singer has been lied to by his government, shipped off to fight an ill conceived and pointless war, and then returned home to a "thanks but we got nothing for you."  The singer in Born to Run believes he has countless options, the singer in Born in the USA believes he has none.  Apparently the original lyrics had lines about Richard Nixon should have his balls cut off.  Maybe that dipshit Reagan would not have tried to appropriate Bruce's music had that stayed in the song.  Bruce avoided the draft due to injuries he sustained in a motorcycle accident and is still haunted by wondering who went in his place and what happened to that person.  No wonder that he is one of the biggest supporters of combat veterans that we have.

"State Trooper".  For the follow up to his sprawling best selling double record :"The River" Bruce released...…...an album of stark acoustic songs recorded at home on a 4 track tape machine.  I read an interview in which he said that when he presented the record to Columbia Records he could see in the executives' faces that they were saying goodbye to a Christmas bonus.  Bruce wrote extensively in his autobiography about his personal and family history of depression.  Much like Neil's "Tonight's the Night" this is his dark night of the soul.  Another similarity between Bruce and Neil is their willingness to follow their muse wherever that might lead.  In Bruce's world, isolation is a very dangerous and toxic thing.  The singer in this song is a very dangerous man indeed.  He is furiously praying that the state trooper does not pull him over because it seems like the trooper would survive the encounter. 

"Darkness on the Edge of Town"    I was certainly not the first or the last person to view the singer of this song as the guy from "Thunder Road" with a few more years of life behind him.  There is no longer a hope that the right girl, and the right car, and the right destination will cure all that ills you.  Now his marriage to Mary is over, and he is stuck back in the town he was so desperate to leave.  I find that "Darkness" has a perfect blend of despair and defiance.  Do you have the guts to go on after your dreams crumble to dust.

"tonight I'll be on that hill , cause I can't stop

I'll be on that hill with everything that I've got

with lives on the line, where dreams are found and lost

I'll be there on time, and I'll pay the cost

for wanting things, that can only be found

in the darkness on the edge of town"

"Just Around the Corner to The Light of Day"  Bruce wrote this for Joan Jett and to my knowledge has never released a studio version of his own.  He does pull it out in his live shows on occasion and to my mind it fucking kills.  Bruce and the E Street Band are such a fucking joy to see live.  There are so many great musicians on stage that have played together forever.  I had to include this to convey how joyous the live shows are.  For someone who is very shy in interviews, Bruce is just an uninhibited nut onstage.  I find watching this live clip a way to remember the sheer rapture he and the band convey onstage.  

Phil Seiler

As much as I would have liked to do a left turn with this theme and pick a beloved but not most beloved artist (Prefab Sprout, Neil Finn, Kate Bush), I must adhere to the rules and so my artist is Todd Rundgren. This is a huge challenge in and of itself as there are so many different incarnations of Todd: Pop Todd, Rock Todd, Prog Todd, Utopia Todd, Broadway Todd, Goofy Todd, Rap Todd. Just 5 songs is a major ask. But, once again, I will adhere to the rules (haha, not really.) I will, however, askew Todd's two biggest hits: Hello It's Me and Bang the Drum All Day. There are better choices. I have discographied Temporary Sanity

before and even though it is a perfect song, I will give it a pass for this exercise as well.

1) International Feel - Let's start close to the beginning. In 1973, after a breakthrough double-album of pop gems, Something / Anything, including his biggest hit, Hello, Its Me, Todd released the album A Wizard, A True Star. The title is less hubris than cheek as Todd was surely aware of the fleeting nature of fame. But genius he had aplenty as he kicks off this album with International Feel, a rollicking bit of weirdness that is a complete departure from most of his catalog before. Starting with a pulsing synthesizer that surely is meant to evoke a plane taking off into a rocket liftoff into transcendence (????) into a beautiful melodic riff into the opening lyrics: "Here we are again / the start of the end / But there's more / I only want to see / if you'll give up on me" Barely in his twenties, Todd makes just an astounding observation of an artist wrestling with the direction his muse is taking him versus his audience (and the world's) expectations. How many artists have summed up their 50 year musical careers so succinctly in a song so early in their career?

2) Bread - The Hermit of Mink Hollow is such a beautiful pop album full of amazing tunes that us Todd fans remain utterly confused that it is so little known. Oh sure, some people might recognize "Can We Still Be Friends" but this album is literally 12 amazing songs showcasing Todd's talent. I really want to include "Too Far Gone" as I just saw a video of this live from his most recent tour where he is celebrating his autobiography and this song is a description of the year he took off, buying one Pan Am ticket that allowed the flyer to stop as many times as they wanted, for as long as they wanted, as long as they continued in the same direction when they got back on. Instead, I need to feature Bread. This was the start of side B and was one of those songs that absolutely stuck in my craw as a young Republican as I couldn't shake the legitimacy of the message. "I hear the cries of the children at night / I watch their faces grow sallow with hunger / who draws the line between what's wrong and right / and when I ask what my life is for it's all been for nothing / save your regrets for the dead / but for the living / give them love, give them bread". I'm not sure a message ever resonated with me so deeply. Onwards comrades! Worth also noting that for a softer song, there is some lovely guitar work here, an underappreciated strength of Todd's music.

3) I Love My Life - In 1989, Todd entered the studio to record Nearly Human. Unlike so many of his previous albums where he recorded and layered all the instruments, vocals, and tracks himself, this album was to be recorded live with a cadre of musicians he had worked with over the years including members of his band Utopia, The Tubes, Bourgeois Tagg, and future wife Michelle Gray. The album is organic and lively and thoughtful. It shows the hallmarks of both 4 years of pent up creative energy and an attention to detail, perhaps to make this his last true attempt to reach the charts. The excellent single Want of a Nail made it but only barely. Thankfully, we were about to enter an era when artists could fund their music and creativity with methods other than labels and hits. The album closes with the gospel inspired anthem "I Love My Life". If you can't hear the joy in all the singers and players in this recording, you need better headphones. Try not to raise your hands and testify as Todd preaches about time (although it does appear he misuses the word ameliorator in his sermon and later live recordings show he changed it to "compromiser".) On the other hand, I know of no other pop song to use the word ameliorate. Todd's vocabulary has always been an unexpected little gift in his music.

4) Afterlife - From the underrated 2004 album Liars comes the track Afterlife. Liars is a thematic album built around all the lies we tell ourselves and are told to us as truth. But Afterlife stands out as a testament to what may come next and what is truly important. Musically, this song showcases Todd's ability to build a song around an infectious hook. It's just a beautiful melody with the right layers of harmony (catch those backing vocals rising and disappearing into the ether.) But the message is again the motivation for my inclusion of this song. "Kiss it all goodbye / It was just a clever lie / If I could never see your face / then I would have to fall from grace / even in my afterlife". There is only now. Find the love that you would fall from grace for.

5) Healing Part I - Part II - Part III - I don't actually care if nobody ever hears what I hear in this opus and it is probably the worst track to try to highlight Todd. If forced to have one piece of music on a desert island this would certainly be among my top choices. Todd plays and sings every note in this piece, layered with his studio skills. I especially love the triangle, playing on the off beat in the part 1 as it is clearly before computerized instruments. You can hear the occasional pattern changes and they give the piece so much vibrancy and life. Much like a classical composition, Part II slows down and settles in for a quiet meditation on self. And then Part III picks up the pace with the uplifting message that I always found in Todd's work: you are your own savior. "Listen to the voice / That whispers in the silence / listen as the voice / solidifies your self-reliance / Let the peace that you've discovered / Be a guiding light / Let the cry that you've uncovered / Set the world aright / You could not be closer to your maker / Never more or less alone / If you know thyself there's nothing else to know / you are whole / you are whole". To this day I cannot tell if that first "whole" is actually "home" but Todd clearly wants that ambiguity as he vocally ad libs "Welcome home" soon after. Almost homophones, almost synonyms. It's those little lyrical touches that move me.

So there is my celebration of Todd and it omits at least three other songs I started writing about and abandoned. It also omits any songs that the average listener might actually know Todd for. It is the deepest of catalogs, after all, and worth exploring in depth for the ambitious. Finally, let me offer two little codas: one for our blog host, Utopia's celebration of the desert: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rXnfMc8lqOg">Caravan. Can't imagine why it makes me think of him. And to the rest of the world, Todd's final track on Runt: The Ballad of Todd Rundgren: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z4vJIhv67M4">Remember Me.

Gary Scudder

Like most of us I found this to be a difficult challenge, but unlike most of you I can only blame myself for it. For the rest of you your personal responsibility ends at being dumb enough to have me as a friend. As I said previously I was determined to not focus on Neil Young because I had already done something similar to this in the 110 NY songs better than Heart of Gold blog post. So, then I moved on to Lucinda Williams, Kathleen Edwards and the Drive-By Truckers - only to discover that I had already written on most of the songs that would have constituted my top five for each of their museums/halls of fame. This is what happens when you hit every week for both years of the Discography (and also have more limited musical knowledge than the rest of you).

So then I started over. And in this case I truly thought of this assignment as a museum, and created what amounts to a travelling exhibit for a Neil Young Museum (although I did see, at least the outside, of the now sadly-closed Neil Young Museum in Omemee).For some time I've argued that while some singes/artists are the Artist of the American Dream or the Artist of the Failure of the American Dream or the Artist of the Broken Heart or the Artist of the American South or the Artist of the Poor and Disenfranchised, Young is the Artist of the Liminal Space. So many of his songs exist in that ambiguous space between worlds, and this case his weakish voice and opaque lyrics are a perfect fit.  Take a song like Harvest; I think every line of the entire song is a metaphor for liminal spaces. With this in mind, I then decided to set myself the challenge of taking it to the next level, and associating the top 10 songs from the Heart of Gold List and picking out a painting that spoke to the song and it's existence in the liminal space (it all made much more sense when I thought of it while walking my dog one afternoon).

Anyway, here you go. I've started with the original list and commentary, and then included a piece of art and new commentary. Obviously, I think this shows that I've ready for the Discography to start up again full-time.

1. Helpless, Album: Deja, Vu, CSNY (1970)

"There is a town in north Ontario, with dreams, comfort, memory, despair." Or something like that.  I've also seen it listed as "dreams, comfort, memory, to spare," which, truthfully, doesn't make any sense to me at all.  I've sometimes used it in class as a perception/memory experiment.  I literally can't hear it as "to spare."  The song is so cripplingly elegiac that "despair" seems to be the only way to read it.  Either way, it is a song that is so beautiful that it still makes the hair stand up on the back of my neck.  When my friend Mike Lange and I drove to Omemee, Ontario a couple summers ago to almost visit the Neil Young Museum there I made sure that this was playing as we drove into the town.  It is actually in southern Ontario (unless you're completely Toronto-centric), but northern just fits the mood. Young is infamous for having a warehouse full of tapes (which I'm certain is what Lucinda Williams is referring to to Real Life Bleeding Fingers and Broken Guitar Strings) and it is supposed to relate to the fact that the definitive version of this song was never recorded because some stoned techie forgot to turn on the tape machine.  After that he recorded everything himself endlessly.

Paul Cezanne, The House with the Cracked Walls (1894)

*** It wasn't until I started teaching Aesthetic Expressions that I truly grasped how influential and profoundly great Cezanne was. The first time I was teaching the class a group of students had clearly not done the reading in Gombrich and I, in frustration/anger, projected a Cezanne painting (not this one) on the board, dramatically locked the door, told the students to group up, and let them know that no one was getting out alive until they could tell me why the painting was great and transformative (and such the in-class analysis exercise was born). In his The Story of Art, Gombrich proposes that modern art was born with Cezanne, Gauguin and Van Gogh and one shared concept: dissatisfaction. One could probably make the same argument about rock, true rock.

2. Like a Hurricane, Album: American Stars 'n Bars (1977)

I just wrote at length about this song recently on our main Discography discussion thread so I don't know what else I would have to add.  At the time I made the point that I always spun the song around because I've always felt that people saw me as a hurricane and just couldn't get past the gale force winds of ego and temper and general snarkiness.  More importantly, this is just soaring guitar work from Crazy Horse vol. II.  It's not as precise as the golden age Crazy Horse with Danny Whitten (see below) but you can see why to an entire generation of great bands Young was the Godfather of Grunge.  The version off the album Live Rust is my favorite version.

Tracey Emin, More Ugly, More Self (2009)

*** Tracey Emin is one of the many artists I discovered because I teach Aesthetic Expressions. One of the many things that makes teaching such a great gig is that we actually get to learn new things all the time (which may be the biggest defining attribute between great teachers ["we get to learn new things"] and those who phone it in ["wait, what, we have to learn new things?"]). She has a definite edge, which turns off many people, which she obviously doesn't care two fucks about (a constant of great artists).  

3. Expecting to Fly, Album: Buffalo Springfield Again (1967)

To me this is classic Young, and almost ended up being number one on the list.  The lyrics are maddeningly opaque and just seems to capture an age, which probably explains why it shows up in films like Coming Home.  In most ways it's just a song about a breakup, but it seems to be about so much more.

Anne Harris, Self-Portrait (with Jane's Eyes) 1998

*** In my Concepts of the Self first year class we look at self-portraits every day, every single day, much of the chagrin of my long-suffering students. In ArtStor I have dozens and dozens of folders, and one is chock full of nothing but self-portraits, and this is one of them. And what could be more representative of a liminal space than a self-portrait that makes use of someone else's eyes.

4. Powderfinger, Album: Rust Never Sleeps (1979)

Not surprisingly, this is a song that I associate with my son, but it could be any young person faced with an impossible situation as they pass into adulthood.  It's a song that still makes me very emotional, and at times has been very difficult for me to listen to.  During one of the times when my son disappeared for months on end I found myself listening to this song endlessly and, almost uncontrollably, constructing tombstones quoting lines: "Just think of me as one you never figured to fade away so young/with so much left undone/remember me to my love/you know I'll miss her."  It's difficult to imagine a song that does a much better job getting at the end of innocence. His version off of Live Rust is the closest Young ever came to perfection.

Paul Gauguin, Life and Death (1893)

*** The second most well-known fact in the world (after only the fact that Dave Kelley's favorite musician is Bruce Springsteen) is that my favorite painter is Paul Gauguin. Brow-beaten Scudder veterans can, unbidden, fill in the blanks to these statements in class: "If you approach me with a request to look at an attempted late submission you will be met with [cold, derisive laughter]" and "Every right-thinking individual in the world knows that the greatest painter of all time is [Paul Gauguin]." To me this painting captured the cruel/cold/uncertainty between life/death and innocence/experience that Young celebrates in the song. 

5. Soldier, Album: Journey Through the Past (1972)

I discovered this song when I first began to understand the allure of kicking back against authority, and what better choice than a song that was both anti-military and anti-religion.  Young wonders why the soldier's eyes "shine like the sun," and later asks the same thing about Jesus, after proposing that he can't believe him because "he can't deliver right away."  It's a song I tend to post on Twitter or Facebook on national holidays celebrating war.  I included a link to the version off of the compilation album Decade because I like it a little better than the original, which is featured on the film and album Journey Through the Past.  Beyond singer/songwriter/activist there is also Neil Young filmmaker, and he's really bad at it.  A reporter once asked Young's long-time collaborator Jack Nitzsche why in the hell anyone allowed Young to make a film.  His response is one of my favorites of all time: "When you deliver an album like Harvest, record companies will let you cum in their mouth."  It's more than slightly indelicate and inappropriate, but it captures the mood of the 1970s, the age of the artist as auteur.  It inspired genius but also excess (with the passing of Michael Cimino, we can remember The Deer Hunter and Heaven's Gate).  Oddly, the film has a couple inspired moments and a couple good songs, which cannot be said for Human Highway, which is an hour and a half I'll never get back.  That said, Young is very honest about his failings as a director.  He says he does it to jump start the creative process when he's stalled, but allows that it's an entire learning process, which is what gets his juices flowing.

Marc Chagall, War (1943)

*** So many paintings would have worked here, but I've always had a soft spot for this Chagall painting.

6. Running Dry (Requiem for theRockets), Album: Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere (1970)

It may seem strange when talking about an album which features Cowgirl in the Sand, Down by the River and Cinnamon Girl, but most of the time I think Running Dry is the best song off of Everybody Knows This is Nowhere.  In the midst of an album with a lot of thrash Running Dry is a slow brooding song that beautifully features some haunting fiddle work from Wilson Thibodeaux.  "My cruelty has punctured me/ and now I'm running dry."  It is classic Young in that it is wildly evocative and completely draws you in, whether it is the first or the thousandth time you've heard it.  Young is probably singing about the crimes that he committed against a lover, although before Crazy Horse was Crazy Horse they were a California bar band that Young discovered and rechristened.  Running Dry really showcases Young's ability to construct a complex song.

Paul Gauguin, Spirit of the Dead Watching (1892)

*** My all-time favorite painting for one of my all-time favorite songs. I guess this selection works for me because it's that constant reminder that the end is always near (and that it's not actually that scary of a concept) but that consequently the consequences of your actions are always near, not that you're paying for them as part of some sort of divine retribution, but rather that your ability to make up for hurting people is gone.

7. Sugar Mountain, Album: Canterbury House (1968) and Decade (1977) (released initially as B side single, twice)

Another Young song that was almost too obvious to place this high on the list, but it's just an amazing song.  He wrote this on 12 November 1964 on his 19th birthday.  It didn't show up on an album till 1977's compilation album Decade.  It's actually taken from the Canterbury House recording from 1968, that was released a few years ago.  I am always wont to opine that no one sings about desire like Lucinda Williams.  In much the same way, I just don't think anyone sings about innocence and the terrifying boundary areas leading to the loss of innocence like Young.  "You can't be twenty on Sugar Mountain, even if you think you're leaving there too soon."  It's funny to hear him talk about it being an "oldie," although in 1968 the four years that had elapsed since he wrote the song was an awfully long time.

Andrew Wyeth, Christina's World (1948)

*** Last night one of my students posted on Twitter that she had just turned twenty and had mixed feeling about it. I just typed in the words "Sugar Mountain". She replied with a gif of a confused puppy tilting his head. This is all you need to know about the failure of modern American education. I guess using Wyeth's classic Christina's World is pretty cliched here, but I still think it works.

8. A Man Needs a Maid, Album: Harvest (1972)

Harvest was Young's best-selling album, and was actually the best selling album of 1972.  In my mind A Man Needs a Maid is by far the best song on the album.  It has been criticized, mildly, as being misogynistic, or at the very least dated, but I don't read it that way at all.  I think the point is that it's a tortured soul so shredded by a series of terrible relationships that he can't begin to think about being with anyone, but yet he somehow needs human contact, even if it's just a maid.  Some critics also thought it was a bit overdone (it was recorded with an orchestra), but Young said that it was one of Dylan's favorites and that's all he needed to know.

Judy Dater, Self-Portrait with Stone (1982)

*** Another self-portrait that I routinely show in Concepts of the Self. Usually it's the first one I share because half of the students don't actually recognize Dater's body as, well, a body, so it works very nicely as a metaphor that they're now in college and they'd better start looking more closely and deeply at everything. I chose it for this NY song because I think it speaks to the pain and alienation at the heart of Young's work.

9. Cowgirl in the Sand, Album: Everybody Knows This is Nowhere (1970)

And speaking of Golden Age Crazy Horse.  Young, like Dylan, is one part reality and about nine parts legend.  Allegedly Young wrote Cowgirl in the Sand, Down By the River and Cinnamon Girl in one afternoon when he was laid up with 104 F fever.  It's funny to go back and read the initial reviews of Everybody Knows This is Nowhere, and especially this song.  Some critics loved it, and others felt that it was essentially unfinished and needed some editing (we were at that period of massive over-dubbing, which Young was certainly guilty of as well; such as Broken Arrow from his Buffalo Springfield days).  I think the guitar work is just blistering.  The song is either about - and it sort of depends upon what mood I'm in when I listen to it - a promiscuous woman or Young himself and his inability to stay faithful to any band.

Edvard Munch, Vampire (1895)

*** Like A Man Needs a Maid, I think Cowgirl in the Sand speaks to the almost unimaginable pain of love, and thus my second favorite Edvard Munch painting seems like a perfect fit (and, no, my favorite is not The Scream).

10. Tired Eyes, Album: Tonight's the Night (1975)

I really struggled with where to rank Tired Eyes, or, for that matter, any of the other songs from Tonight's the Night.  As I will drone about endlessly, and as all-right thinking individuals know, Tonight's the Night is the greatest rock album of all time.  Did it ever have a hit?  Not even close. With the exception of a small lunatic fringe (at least one of which lived in southern Indiana), the world was generally horrified.  This wasn't Harvest Revisited.  However, I would argue that Tonight's the Night holds together better and more consistently than any other album.  It has a message without falling into the trap of a clumsy concept album.  Two of Young's closest friends, original Crazy Horse guitarist Danny Whitten and roadie Bruce Berry, had just died of heroin overdoses and while Neil could have written more anti-drug songs he decided to take the listeners on the most exhaustive, drugged out overnight road trip imaginable.  You want to understand the undercurrent of the drug world, OK, hop in.  Any aspiring artist should read the chapter in Shakey on the recording of the album, which was done at 3:00 a.m. when everyone was appropriately drunk and tired enough to get the vibe right/wrong.  Of course, take everything I've just written with a large grain of salt because my son assures me that the only reason I teach or am on social media is to champion this album.

Paul Cezanne, Pyramid of Skulls (1900)

*** OK, I guess this is probably a "duh" but ever since I had this thought I can't hear the song without this Cezanne painting arriving unbidden.