Happy Xmas, Ymas to all the Zumans along the Human Highway.
2017 was a rough year for this planet. We could expand on this ad nauseam.
Instead, here’s an excerpt from a Christmas story by Scott Young about his son, Neil Young, found in the book: “Home for Christmas, and other stories” on the blog, “The Dusty Bookcase” by Brian Busby.
Almost everyone has his own favorite Christmas story. I believe that I am particularly lucky in that my favorite concerns one of my sons. He is 19 now, a little taller than I am and a lot thinner. But this story happened six yard ago when he was 13 and delivered a Globe and Mail route on Brookdale Avenue in North Toronto.
I used to hear him almost every morning at six when he wakened. Usually the two hours after he left were my soundest sleep of the night.
On the rare occasions when he overslept, this built-in alarm mechanism in my mind brought me awake about the time he should have been moving. When I could not hear him I would tiptoe to his room and say, “Neil”.
“Yes,” he’d say instantly, sitting upright in bed, wide awake.
“I guess you overslept.”
“Guess I did.”
But on this Christmas morning of 1958 he was up on time and, like all other Globe and Mail boys up that morning, rose when the world was black and cold.
He made the blind trip to the bathroom and sleepily began to pull on his clothes.
Downstairs, he stood for a moment and looked at the stacked and laden Christmas tree, did the slow march past it, stopped to shake a parcel or two and stood like a robin to listen, and then went on.
A glass of milk and a brief forage in the refrigerator, and then on with his ear-covering cap and his scarf and parka and overshoes and mitts, on that ice-cold bicycle seat and down the driveway to pedal into the morning alone.
Enjoy the latest musical release by Neil Young and the Nelson brothers from Promise of the Real, along with your Independence Day festivities.
According to Rolling Stone,”Children of Destiny” is directed by Shakey Pictures, combines footage of recent large-scale protests alongside patriotic imagery like children waving American flags and Fourth of July cookouts.
“Preserve the land and save the seas for the children of destiny / The children of you and me,” Young sings on the track. “Stand up for what you believe / Resist the powers that be / Preserve the ways of democracy so the children can be free.”
In memory of Rainer B. (The Baron) on the anniversary of his journey to the celestial Human Highway.
Sept 30, 1964 to April 2, 2014
German physicist, administrator of Human Highway and Bad News Beat, dreamer, music aficionado, devoted Bayern futbol fan, quirky nerd with brilliant sense of humor, fierce friend and the perfect stranger, like a cross of himself and a fox.
Pegi Young sings of the heartbreak she endured when Neil Young cheated on her and their decades-long marriage and left her for Daryl Hannah, in her new album: “RAW.”
You can listen to a National Public Radio interview with Ms. Young at:
She sings: “Why’d you have to ruin ,my life, why’d you have to be so mean, why’d you have to tell me some lies, why not be straight with me.” She calls the album her “seven stages of grief.”
Here is the first song posted from the album set to be released this month:
“It confuses me to hear people shouting at us that musicians should just shu…t up and entertain. Where the hell did that lame-ass idea come from? Music was, is and always will be about social condition and cause and change. Music speaks for the oppressed and downtrodden. Music launches revolution. Woody Guthrie and Hank Williams and Bob Dylan and Joan Baez and Johnny Cash and Joni Mitchell and Willie Nelson and John Lennon and Eddie Vedder and Neil Young and all the giants of the art know this. What the fuck kind of music and musicians are these boneheads actually listening to?” by -- The Passenger
Neil Young on Tour
Sugar Mountain setlists
Tom Hambleton provides BNB with setlists, thankfully. His website is the most comprehensive searchable archives on the Internets about anything Neil Young related setlists. Goto Sugar Mountain.