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.