So, when I ordered Harvest 50, I also ordered Barn, Noise and Flowers and Return to Greendale on Blu-Ray to get free shipping to the Netherlands. Normally, everything would ship at once, but this morning I got confirmation the Blu-Rays had shipped. Seems a bit odd.
There's a temporary Neil Young Channel added to Sirius XM, apparently to promote World Record and Harvest.
HEADS UP WORLD RECORD: THE MAKING OF A chronicle of the music - 62 mins A documentary film on Neil’s new album. For 24 hours only in Hearse Theatre (Screen 3 -subscribers only) on NYA Happy Thanksgiving!
When does NYA start showing the Hometown movie in December? I know it's their traditional Christmas special, but unclear when it actually starts the run.
If nothing else, Rick Rubin's presence seems to have kept Neil on his best behavior - nothing even close to a rock star tantrum here. Neil is in a relentlessly good mood. The production team's response to "Break the Chain" is a fun moment. Other highlights: Neil literally kicking the bucket and the quiet and personal closing moments of the film.
The video really does look astonishingly bad. I’d still buy a Blu-ray assuming the audio is somehow better. (The streams of both the “Chevrolet” vid and the whole doc didn’t sound so hot to me.)
It's such a weird thing about Neil. He loves films, make tons of them, they obviously occupy a lot of his brain, but he just does not care about the quality of them at all. In interviews, he's been excusing this quality of "well, that's about the quality of an mp3, so I'm showing it to you visually." Honestly sounds like a cop-out for just not hiring a proper videographer. Even Noise & Flowers was pretty bad. They continually took far away video and zoomed and panned it, destroying the picture quality. It's a miracle Barn came out as well as it did, but maybe DH just didn't let his team fiddle with it. Adam Vollick is a great filmmaker (Le Noise), but I guess he only works on certain things? I'm kind of dreading the Alchemy film. Really looking forward to it, but dreading what they do with the video quality.
Neil's replies to letters have become less and less satisfying. Half of them are just "Thanks. Be well." I asked him if he could fill in the "It's all one song" story as it's always been unclear who he was talking to on Year of the Horse. His reply? "It's all one song!!" Dang it, Neil.
If you listen closely, there's a heckler yelling "it all sounds the same!" Neil was replying to him I think.
Hah last two posts are exactly why i wanted Neil to elucidate. First hand account isn’t taken at face value, cause of ongoing belief there’s a heckler. To me, the “it all sounds the same” sounds like Neil, not a heckler,
nope. that was neil (and he says, "they all sound the same"). again, i was there, and i was listening with my eyes. you can believe me.
I think with rare exceptions his replies have always tended to be non-responsive or evasive little snippets of affirmation.
i'm really at a loss here! i was there, saw the whole thing, heard neil say it (he was away from the mic, that's why it sounds different when he says "they all sound the same"), yet i'm being told it's a heckler, PLUS 6 people "liked" the post where i'm being told it was a heckler! god bless the internet. there is no truth anymore...it's about what people FEEL is the truth. (as an aside, anyone who thinks that's not neil saying "they all sound the same" might wanna get their ears checked.
That’s cool that you were there and can confirm it. Over all these years I assumed it was exactly that, because that’s exactly how it sounds.
I think people really want to believe that Neil was making a poignant reply to a heckler, when he was really making a joke to himself (or complaining about the sound?). I've always wanted to know why he said it in the first place. For awhile I wondered if he was making a sarcastic comment to Billy, who has always had some trouble with the changes on many songs.
I need to check the tape to be sure, but I believe the full quote was “here’s one that sounds just like the last one. They all sound the same! It’s all one song!!” The “last one” was “cinnamon girl”, which is in dropped d tuning, like “when you dance”. Occam’s razor, folks.
As for the "It's all the same, it's all one song" shout out didn't Rolling Stone complain in their review of Broken Arrow that the songs all sounded the same?
