BlowHard On Steve Miller

Those that know me must be wondering why Steve Miller would get my second music post instead of the first. Well, it just worked out that way. It is not my intent to flood this blog with Steve Miller but rather to cover the music topic of the day – of my day. Steve makes the blog today because I got 5 new Steve Miller Band CDs today!

It is my 50th birthday and I got the Steve Miller Band Boxed Set as a gift. That includes 3 CD's. I have wanted this set for years in order to complete my Steve Miller collection but I just never did bite the bullet and spend the money. I had all the music in the boxed set on the original albums (or at least the CD remakes of the albums) and the only thing I could get out of the boxed set was the gratification of knowing I had everything Steve Miller. Well, now I have it and I'm pretty gratified.

And a month or so ago, I ordered a copy of a European release of a CD for which I already had the USA version: Steve Miller Band – Young Hearts. It arrived today and that accounts for the other two CDs. This set was another self gratification purchase but this time I bought it for myself rather than waiting to get it as a gift. It was a special edition with a bonus CD and it was the bonus CD I wanted. I figured I better move fast to get it before it couldn't be bought anywhere. As it was, I had to order the CD from Italy to get it.

The bonus CD includes the rare long version of Steve Miller's Macho City. Of course, I have Macho City on the Circle of Love CD but now I can say I have it all when it comes to Steve Miller's music.

BlowHard On Neil Young

For some reason, when I was younger, I never got into Neil Young. I had only three Neil Young albums on vinyl: the first Buffalo Springfield album, CSN&Y's Deja vu, and Neil Young's Harvest album, but that's it. Now that I'm older and trying to regain my youth by building a collection of all the music I grew up with in the 60's and 70's, I have discovered Neil Young all over again. He'll never replace Steve Miller as my all-time favorite but he's near the top.

There is a lot of new music from old rockers – David Crosby for instance – that is pretty bad. At 50 or 60, their voices just don't work like they did when they were 20. Neil Young seems to be the one exception I have heard to that rule. I am not sure if it is because his voice isn't aging like so many others' or if it was just so good when he was 20 that the aged version is still good. I like his later and current work nearly as much as his early music.

I was listening to the song Carmichael on the Greendale CD tonight and thinking how awful the song was (as are most of the songs on the Greendale CD) but it is such a pleasure to listen to Neil sing that I just kept listening. I wonder how great of a band would have come out of merging the Zombies, a band with great music and bad vocals, and Neil Young with his great voice and so-so music. Neil's voice is like ranch dip: the taste is so good we don't care what vegetables we have to eat to taste it.