A Different Way To Be: in praise of a grassroots approach to releasing records

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Playlist #2

A selection of tracks from the last few albums featured (plus our short Daytrotter interview):

1. Otis Redding - I'm Sick Y'all

2. Neil Young - Tell Me Why [Live]

3. Robert Johnson - Love In Vain

4. Terry Allen - My Amigo

5. The Beatles - I've Got A Feeling

6. Talking Heads - Crosseyed and Painless [Live in Rome]

7. Plant and See - Put Out My Fire

8. The Beach Boys - Feel Flows

9.The Band - King Harvest (Has Surely Come) [Live in the studio]

10. Weird Fishes/Arpeggi - Radiohead [Live from the Basement]

11. Time Fading Lines - Woods [Daytrotter Session]

Click below for the playlist via YouTube:

After the Gold Rush by Neil Young

"There was even a credit for Susan Young's patches, featured in the back-cover close-up of Neil's ass."

 

 

After thinking for a long time that The Beatles were my band, the group that I enjoyed most completely above all others, I've had to admit to myself they are not. This comes after years of having invested a lot of time and money into their music and I was reluctant to give them up easily. But if I had to pick one artist whose music really means something to me, it is Neil Young. This is aided in no small part by learning more about the man after reading Jim McDonough's biography Shakey.

You can always question how much you really learn indirectly. I get the impression that McDonough gets as close as anyone is likely to to someone who, as Pitchfork's review of the book observed, is both 'inscrutable' and 'media-shy'. It's a book already heavily quoted in these pages. What comes across is a willful passionate musician who is compelled to make the music in him at the moment in time it hits him. I've never got that sense with The Beatles, hence I can now understand why, while greatly admiring them and their music, I have never fully felt connected with them.

With the exception perhaps of the early blues recordings, for me, most of Neil Young's records encapsulate the magic and fascination I have with recorded music; capturing a real performance, and in so doing, documenting a moment that can move you.

Despite being the album of Young's most likely to be reeled off in greatest album discussions, After the Gold Rush is the album of his I have taken longest to fully appreciate. Harvest is an obvious and easy starting point and by the time I came to hear On The Beach and Tonight's The Night I was immediately intoxicated by their powerful intense and dark looseness (or sloppiness even). Along the way, After the Gold Rush got slightly overlooked.

Pitchfork's review sets things straight: "Members of Crazy Horse appear in various combinations on a few of tracks, and songs like "Southern Man" and "When You Dance I Can Really Love" have the hypnotically stoned but sneakily intense groove of the previous record. But more precisely crafted songs like "Only Love Can Break Your Heart", "Birds", and especially the astonishing title track, which has become a rock standard, show Young's gift as a writer of original melodies of extraordinary beauty in full flower. It's an aspect of Young's work that can be overlooked: the guy can write a simple tune over a chord change that hollows you out completely. Sure, the record has a phrase or two that might sound a little dippy to those with an aversion to hippies (Young was one of those, though of a very individualistic sort), but After the Gold Rush is basically unassailable. There's a reason why it's the favorite Neil Young album for so many."

As for the back cover, as Jim McDonough notes: "Young's album packaging was becoming more personal: Gold Rush included a foldout insert of handwritten lyrics, plus - just to make everybody wonder - a list of songs that didn't make the cut. There was even a credit for [Neil's first wife] Susan Young's patches, featured in the back-cover close-up of Neil's ass."

Joel Berstein was again the photographer (see also Harvest), with art direction by Gary Burden.

Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band by The Beatles

Whilst being one of the most iconic album covers of all time, Sgt. Pepper suffers as a result. The Peter Blake designed image is one to which we are overexposed, arguably to the detriment of the enjoyment the music, or at least the frequency with which we return to it. That's my experience at least. It therefore benefits more than most from flipping over to the reverse side. It reminds us that The Beatles really were as progressive and as important as we are told they are, even if we might tire of their influence at times. They are also important in the history of back covers as they were first major band to print lyrics on the album sleeve (Dylan albums had had selections of his writings on the reverse before, but not his lyrics). That the lyrics were deemed important was noteworthy; 'pop' music was starting to be seen as a culturally significant, studied by academics and fans alike.

The American literary critic and professor of English Richard Poirier wrote, “Learning From the Beatles,” originally published in 1967, a essay on the cultural importance of the album.  As his New York Times obituary notes, the essay "lamented the lack of serious cultural criticism about rock ’n’ roll, it recognized the emergent interaction between “serious” and pop culture and recognized the revolution that the Beatles, their Britishness notwithstanding, had begun to effect in American cultural life."

The fan interpretations were more far fetched, with the back cover thought to hold clues to the (conspiracy) theory that Paul McCartney had in fact been killed in a moped accident in 1966 and had subsequently been replaced by an actor. On the back cover McCartney has his back towards the camera and George Harrison appears to be pointing at the words "Wednesday morning at five o'clock as the day begins", which was supposed to have been the time of Paul's fatal accident.

Three years later, Let It Be was an altogether less colourful affair reflecting the album's 'back-to-basics' approach (less psychedelic and less studio wizardry). The back cover states this in black and white: "they performed live for many of the tracks; in comes warmth and the freshness of a live performance". Although some don't agree that this ethos was necessarily preserved by Phil Spector's production. The cover was designed by John Kosh with photography by Ethan Russell. The individual stark images are in contrast to the band photographs of Sgt Pepper, and as Todd Leopold put it, "Russell's photographs show four men trying to rescue their fading musical marriage." Russell is apparently also the only rock photographer to have shot album covers for The Beatles, The Rolling Stones (Get Yer Ya-Yas Out) and The Who (Who's Next and Quadrophenia).