Neil Young - Zuma

barstool blues

YOU'RE JUST A STUPID GIRL
YOU REALLY GOT A LOT TO LEARN

I can't ignore Cortez - I can't even remember any of the other tracks!

that is exactly why i should have excluded it.

cortez, what else. probably the greatest rock song of all-time.

jesus christ you people suck. ok i already knew 'alex in mainhattan' sucked.

i don't get it. if you wanted to make a poll on zuma excluding cortez you should have excluded it.

barstool blues > lookin for a love > don't cry no tears > danger bird > through my sails > cortez the killer > drive back > pardon my heart > stupid girl

x-post yah but i mainly thought it was for people who liked the album

i mean it's probably neil's most consistent album imo, so i just get a little exasperated when people are like omg cortez the killer because they've heard decade

'like a hurricane' on an american stars n bars poll i can understand.

Barstool Blues

neil's most consistent album

"harvest"

I dunno, this might be my favorite Neil record, but yeah, it's definitely not as consistent as others. Maybe if it was all Crazy Horse, it'd be a little more so. But throwing "Pardon My Heart" and "Through My Sails" (which are both great) make it a little more piecemeal than some others. I voted for "Barstool Blues" an insanely wonderful three minutes. Goes to show that Neil can be at his best when he's concise, too. But no need to get upset about people voting for "Cortez" -- that is an incredible piece of music.

Danger Bird- heavy, man

honestly, i would vote "Barstool Blues" over "Cortez" anyway

This album is so awesome that even the CSNY blandness of "Through the Sails" works in context. "Drive Back" is my choice, for that RIFF. Nothing like this was hitting the Billboard Top 40 album chart in '75.

barstool blues.next.

one of the best sounding records i own. um, on vinyl that is. i've never heard the cd. just so fuckin' beautiful. i love the whole thing.

gonna get a dog, name her zuma.

"Don't Cry No Tears". Haven't we done this before?

This is probably the Neil album that best showcases his ability as a guitarist, gorgeous production too. Went for 'Danger Bird'.

barstool blues

I'm guessing bb and cortez will be 1 and 2

Wow, I was just playing this yesterday and wondering what I would pick in a poll. And "Danger Bird" it is. This my favourite NY album.

Must load into ipod tonight, but probably danger bird.

Yes! a Danger Bird rally. Really though there are no losers on this fine album. On any given day I could pick just about anything. Oh yeah, Pardon My Heart-- what a great ballad.

Lou Reed famously praised the guitar on "Danger Bird."

This is pretty solid throughout.

voting Pardon My Heart...Barstool Blues may be better, but for me it's reeeal close...it might be one of Young's best ballads...the way those Neil argues with those "You've-brought-it-all-on" call and response vocals, the way he argues with the song itself, the end where he loves the girl for the moments they have or haven't shared...it paints a very clear and detailed pciture of the path to closure after a relationship breaks down...(made all the more astonishing by being dropped into the middle of the cheeseburger paradise that is Zuma)...shows exactly why Neil is one of the best songwriters around.

"Danger Bird" juuuuuuuuust barely over "Barstool Blues".

oh man this is a good album

saw him on sat night and tbh Cortez was the highlight of the show, with this repeated 'dancing across the water' refrain at the end....total chills down the spine. it's not normally my favourite on here (any one of the run from Pardon My Heart thru Barstool Blues usually is) but i might have to vote for it just for that performance.

After relistening, I have come to the conclusion that my first impulse was correct - sometimes the obvious thing is the right thing, and just comes dancing across the water right at you.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

This is damn tough- I'll start with songs I wouldn't vote for: Stupid Girl, Drive Back, and Through My Sails (though I do dig these three as well.)

I guess I'll go with Lookin' for a Love just because it's a beautiful country-rock number and I'm afraid it won't get many votes.

I can't believe anyone would consider Harvest better than this- for one thing, most of the best versions of the songs on Harvest are found elsewhere: specifically, A Man Needs a Maid/Heart of Gold and Old Man from Massey Hall. If I want to hear mellow Neil it's usually Massey Hall or Live at Sugar Mountain or the second half of On the Beach.

x-post to Alex

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Cortex the Killer is a tremendous guitar epic the likes of which Neil Young hasn't played in years.

Cortez is what I actually meant!

This is perhaps the wrong thread to revive but I can't find a better one for it. So anyway: any views on the Ducks? I listened to a show from here. "Your Time Will Come Around" and "Hold On Boys" seem to be Ducks originals, and are excellent; the latter in particular would have fit right in on Zuma. Also check out "Windward Pass", an 8+ minute instrumental with Neil in full liftoff throughout---but I think I also hear synths in the background, giving the song a beachy ambience suiting the song's title (a very Santa Cruz sound). It's gorgeous.

it's an interesting little sidetrip, for sure. Neil's material is obviously head and shoulders above the other songwriters' stuff, but it's still cool to hear him play the role of a guitarist in a band -- he's a bit more versatile than you might think! The Ducks seem like an attempt to get some of the spirit of Buffalo Springfield going ... It is kinda too bad they didn't make a record, probably would've been cool. Wonder if they ever did any studio recordings?

Yeah, I mean, I love Moby Grape, but "Mr. Soul" here just tears. Also: do you know if any of the three songs I mentioned were Neil's, or if not, whose were they?

Neil calls "Comes A Time" a Ducks original on the show too, which was interesting, at any rate.

some funny details on their wiki page:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ducks

this recording is great, had never heard of this before.

ha, kind of a cool little history there. I guess even if there aren't any studio recordings, Neil probably has at least a gig or two recorded in sbd quality in the archives. all of the circulating recordings are audience, right?

acc. to the Wiki page (and the related Thrasher's Wheat page), fans at the shows said they saw mobile recording units at some of the shows. So there's likely something in the archive.

the duck calls in the crowd of this show is pretty hilar.

The band focused on topics such as trucks, girls and bars.

lol

weird I don't remember any mention of this in Shakey but maybe I'm just forgettin

think it's sorta glossed over in a page or two ... wonder if they played Hey Hey My My? Blackburn is the co-writer ...

Lou Reed loved "Danger Bird" iirc

"Stupid Girl" has great unusual chord changes.

Plus great guitar sound/playing.

Young's gee-tar has never been mixed on an album to sound this crinkly and awesome

Pretty sure every single solitary man of his generation has problematic beliefs about how to treat women.
“Stupid Girl” does not move me and I consider it filler but easy to skip/endure when every other song is good on the album.

Pretty sure every single solitary man of his generation has problematic beliefs about how to treat women.
“Stupid Girl” does not move me and I consider it filler but easy to skip/endure when every other song is good on the album.

I was thinking about "Through My Sails" and how, up to that point (it gets worse starting with Long May You Run), uniformly excellent Neil's songs are whenever he got together with CSN: "Helpless," "Country Girl," "Sea of Madness," "Ohio," "Through My Sails," probably a couple of others. I imagine--I'm sure others have suggested the same--Neil loved showing off, loved to remind them how much better a songwriter he basically was.

I could never love this record, I find the epics dull. My favourite extended Crazy Horse song is "Change Your Mind".
"Barstool Blues" would have been my pick from this one.

I tend to skip "Cortez...," yeah.

I don't object in principle to Neil playing three chords endlessly, but the song itself has to mean something to me.

If you don’t like the slow jams are you even listening to Neil Young?

"On the Beach" is more my speed.

also, technically it's three chords i guess but they are turned into quite the maze

"Cortez" means everything to me, though I might have trouble explaining why.

Neil's slow ones are spookier than his quickies: "Running Dry (Requiem for the Rockets)," my god

"On the Beach" is more my speed.

Not enough electric guitar.

Attempting to duplicate the atmosphere described in Shakey, two buddies and I about fifteen years ago tried the recipe for honey sliders at my place: honey, a little butter, lots of weed in a frying pan at low heat. We spooned the coagulated shit. It tasted like burned spaghetti. For fifteen minutes we condemned our stupidity. Then...holy shit. We couldn't move. The nicest low-hanging buzz.

I've been wondering if these archival releases will uncover a hitherto-unknown full reggae version of Cortez he laid down and then forgot about.

now I imagine Tonight-era Bowie covering it in a reggae version.

Plus marimbas.

he came dancin' across da watah mahn

Maybe as a duet with Iggy?

Iggy from "Taxi" maybe.

A calypso version, even

Guys, I'm going to bed soon, dreamlessly, I hope.

"On the Beach" is more my speed.

― Halfway there but for you, Tuesday, March 23, 2021 8:00 PM (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

so three chords is boring, but four chords is totally cool

i personally don’t think the number of chords correlated to the quality of a song, but i digress

I said I don't object to three chords.

"Cowgirl in the Sand" and "Change Your Mind" are based around the same two chords, but I find the latter more meaningful as a song, as a lyric and performance.

cowgirl in the sand has way more than two chords?

Yeah the bridge/chorus has at least 5 iirc

Yes, but at least half of each song is jamming on the same two chords.

They can’t all be “Roadrunner”!

counting the number of chords used in a song strikes me as the absolute worst way to engage with music

I still can't remember when
Or how I lost my way

dume is def my favorite disc on archives 2 so far. never loved danger bird but at the same time a 7 minute doper jam fits so well right there in the 2nd slot, especially balancing out cortez at the end. the dume version of powderfinger probably works as a good replacement

Blues Guitar Solo Heatmap (Free Download) (upper mississippi sh@kedown), my point was that the quality of Neil's songs isn't consistent with how many chords they have.

for real though, i remember the first time i heard "cortez," i thought the extended intro was like slowly pulling back layers of an onion or something, it was almost bewildering in its meandering raggedness, but obviously the feeling of the thing has a pretty direct and strong trajectory like almost everything neil did in the classic years.

One thing that can be said in favour of songs based around a limited set of chords is that the form is highly conducive to improvised lead work. (John McLaughlin would doubtless disagree, but whatevs)

https://dangerousminds.net/content/uploads/images/made/content/uploads/images/neil_young_zuma_1975_465_240_int.jpg

The best album ever.

The best beach ever.

Santa Monica Beach is the location chosen by photographer Bob Seidemann for the cover of Neil Young's fifth album, “On The Beach ” which was released in 1974.

why the hell would you do that when zuma is like 10 miles down the road, lol. pure laziness? some money thing?

On the Beach is a different album from Zuma

Only 70s Neil album I'm all that bothered about (and maybe Rust) and what is surely now one of my favourite album billboards.

On the Beach is a different album from Zuma

― Josefa, Wednesday, August 31, 2022 6:25 PM (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

jesus, what a brain fart lol

James Mazzeo, the Zuma (and other Neil projects) artist, passed away recently: http://neilyoungnews.thrasherswheat.org/2022/08/james-mazzeo-1944-2022.html

Wow, that Zuma drawing looks great in color.

RIP "Sandy" Mazzeo, one of the standout supporting players in Shakey