Tag Archives: Neil Young

Neil Young and The Chrome Hearts at Deer Lake Park

All along the Navajo Trail
burnouts stub their toes on garbage pails

Ambulance Blues

Frankly, I was wondering which Neil would turn up. Would it be grumpy Neil? Would he decide to sing the whole first side of one of his lesser-known albums? Would his voice be up to it? So, when he opened with Ambulance Blues, I was relieved, I immediately forget the hassle to find parking, the draconian security check (apparently my backpack was too big and not the right shape),and the maze -like journey to get a beer because: ………

Ambulance Blues, a relatively obscure track from the “On the Beach” album is one of my favourite Neil songs never mind that it is almost 10 verses long , doesn’t really have a chorus, just alternating verses with different chord structures and he then follows it with “Cow Girl in The Sand” and he continues that way all night the old and the new and the sometimes forgotten and when he hits the chorus of Harvest Moon the guy beside me who knows all the words to every song and also likes to play air guitar, he joins in and so does his partner/girl friend who sings harmony along with the rest of the crowd and just then a yellow moon rises above the trees, no big birds flying but still…. and I’m thinking Neil has super powers and later when he hits the opening riff of My, My, Hey, Hey, I’m transported back to Pine Knob Michigan 1978 and Star Wars has been released the year before so Neil’s roadies are dressed as Ewoks and there are two giant speakers on each side of the stage and when the roadies are finished and the stage is empty, there is silence, then we hear the opening chords of Sugar Mountain and Neil’s voice and we can’t tell where it is coming from until there is movement on top of one of the giant speakers and yes it’s Neil shaking off a blanket and how he got down from there I don’t know but here he is now many year’s later and he hasn’t lost the magic and I know that this is a run on sentence because Copilot keeps telling me but I’m thinking and I know it’s a tad puerile but I’m thinking “bugger off Copilot, stop bothering me, I can work it out myself and AI and all that other crap we don’t need will never write anything close to what Neil can write”

and he hasn’t burnt out,

he hasn’t faded away.

Taking part in Open Link over at dverse

(not sure if this qualifies as a poem, a haibun maybe?)

Neil Young and those “lorries rolling by”

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Old man lying by the side of the road
With the lorries rolling by
Blue moon sinking from the weight of the load
And the buildings scrape the sky
Cold wind ripping down the alley at dawn
And the morning paper flies
Dead man lying by the side of the road
With the daylight in his eyes

When I first heard this song (“Don’t let it Bring you Down”), I thought : “What’s with the ‘lorries’ , Neil? I mean you’re a Canadian, living in California, should they not be ‘trucks’?”

A side note: The word ‘lorry’ is a word used in Britain and it comes from the verb “to lurry”, meaning “to pull or drag”.

On reflection:

Of course, if he used “trucks”, it wouldn’t scan, but he could have sang “big trucks rolling by”. However, as we all know, Neil is a poet and the answer lies in his ear, not for music but for the music in language.

Consider the letter ‘L’, it appears in every line of the verse: “old, lying/ lorries, rolling/blue, load/ buildings/ cold, alley/ flies/ lying/ daylight”.

Consider the letter ‘O’ as in assonance, look at its role in the first three lines: “old, road/ lorries, rolling/ moon, load”; its repetition in lines 5, 6, 7: “cold, down/ morning/road”.

Consider the inversion, how the “lor” in ” lorries” becomes the “rol” in “rolling”.

No, “trucks” would just not hack it.

Phew! Glad to get that out of my system, otherwise, after a few pints I might start regaling my wife and two daughters with these insights and have to watch them getting that “beam me up Scotty look in their eyes”.

Photo (by Marie Feeney): Neil and Paul McCartney at Desert Trip 2016.

Taking on Open Link over at dverse. (This is not a poem obviously, but it is about poetry so I hope it fits!)

Wild Mind

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Wild Mind

I’m on the bedroom floor
doing some stretches,
above my head
in the blue rectangle of the skylight
an eagle soars.

I’m thinking about an article a friend sent about “solo polyamory”.

I start a poem:
he was a sensitive guy
he didn’t have the armory
for solo polyamory
he wanted to marry
settle down
maybe do a bit of farmery
somewhere far away
from the clamor,
the goddamery
of big city life.

Well, they can’t all soar like an eagle.

Apropos of nothing
I think about my recent technology issues.
Last week I spent an hour talking to a nice guy from Apple Help,
he was in Arizona, temperature in the low sixties
down where Fahrenheit still rules,
I had iPhone issues which he did not resolve,
he could not meet my iNeeds
but as a result my IOS updated
and every time I turn on the phone
it asks me about my iPreferences
my preference would be to turn on my phone
and be left alone
but call it coincidence, serendipity, synchronicity
because of the update
my Spotify app does not work
so I decide to delete the app
because every time I use it
I think of Joe Rogan
spouting bollocks about freedom
and if, and it’s a big if,
I ever meet Neil Young
I want to be able to look him in the eye.
Now I’m algorithm free
and I’m listening to music
on a chunky old iPod
I found in a drawer
and you know what?
It sounds good and I picked all the songs myself.

I think of an opening to a poem:
he walked into the room
his eyes like fugitives
looking for a window,

I think of a song title:
Stuck in E Minor Again

I think of a song chorus:
born in the wrong key
there was always something different about me
until you came along
and changed my song
now it’s all sweet harmony.
Sappy, yes, but is it sappy enough?

I think of that eagle
I think, what is that eagle thinking?
I think he’s thinking this:
Man, these thermals are good
I could stay here all day.
Hang on a minute
is that a mouse on that garbage bin
in the laneway north of King Edward
east of Dunbar,
they don’t call them eagle eyes for nothing.
Forget the mouse,
I’ve got soaring to do,
soaring to do before the day is done.

In Brendan’s excellent post over at earthweal, he posits, among other things, that “our brains themselves have been disrupted by digital media.” He also says:

The mind must feed on wild sources; greening is both invitation and surrender. Dogen, again: “Are you going to improve yourself or are you going to let the universe improve you?”

Well, that’s where I started.

Five Miles Outside of Austin (Rhymes and Tropes) Again

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Listening to alt country on Spotify I begin to wonder….

who are all these country boys
with their cowboy hats, pickup trucks and beards
staring clint-eyed into the mythical distance
listening for the call of who knows what
a phantom cattle drive, perhaps,
anything at all to git them
back on the road again;
and who are all these country girls
left behind or waiting
and why the hell do they care
about these feckless drifters
who love their whiskey
as much as they dread commitment
and why does all this happen in Texas?

rhymes and tropes, folks
rhymes and tropes

and slowly through
a Spotify fog
a Spotify trance
in the distance
a song emerges…..

Five Miles Outside of Austin

I’m five miles outside of Austin
with a pounding in my head
full of yesterday’s whiskey
and wishing I was dead

I left a girl back there sleeping
as dawn began to break
I gave her all that I could give
and I took all I could take

and I wish I had done better
that I hadn’t stayed so long
now I’m five miles outside of Austin
and I’m stuck inside this song.

Five miles outside of Austin
and I’m stuck inside this song.

II
Down the road, a girl is waiting,
drinking beer and playing pool
waiting for deliverance
waiting for another fool

and I’ll dust the road off of my coat
and walk through that door
she’ll say “howdy stranger,
I ain’t seen you before”

but now my head is beating like a bass drum
there’s stubble on my tongue
I’m five miles outside of Austin
and I’m stuck inside this song

Five miles outside of Austin
and I’m stuck inside this song.

Photo (by Marie Feeney) of Lukas Nelson and Neil Young at Desert Trip

Five Miles Outside of Austin (Rhymes and Tropes)

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