Neil Young hasn't exactly been the prophet of change, whether it was plugging a high-priced FLAC music player or retrofitting Lincoln Continentals with electric drivetrains and battery packs, his so-called LincVolt. Conceptually, the Pono player was nice but you can install a FLAC player and download FLAC music files for free on your computer, so there really wasn't much hope this nifty little player would take off. It will become a collector's item of course, much like the Japanese mini-vinyl players from a few years back that Crosley has repackaged as miniature turntables. As for the LincVolt, anyone can buy an electric conversion kit for virtually any model car, which is basically what Neil did.
But, Neil keeps on digging into his archives and offering up lost albums like Homegrown, released this summer to much fanfare. I should probably be more excited about it, given I have a pretty large Neil Young collection. However, a few years back I lost interest, especially since many of his albums are simply repackaging of previous material. For instance, Weld duplicates much of Rust Never Sleeps and Live Rust, so what was he doing here? The only thing that made this set worth while was the addition of Arc, which was later released on a 3 CD box set. The so-called Arc-Weld album. I expect a similar experience with Homegrown, as it falls in the "Snodgress years" between On the Beach and Zuma, when the actress Carrie Snodgress was his muse. It probably offers much the same type of music even if these were new compositions at the time.
Neil Young is one of those guys who has to stay relevant, whether it was teaming up with Pearl Jam back in the 1990s or voicing his antagonism toward Trump by suing him for the use of Rockin' in the Free World at his rallies. He's really proud of the fact he was recently naturalized as an American citizen and will be able to vote in this year's general election. He doesn't have much chance of winning his case against Trump because the re-election campaign team cleverly takes advantage of venues that have blanket license agreements with recording companies. The venue plays the music in the background, "unassociated" with the event. It sucks but there is nothing a musical artist can do about it.
Anyway, I can't really say I'm too concerned by all this as Young has burned quite a few bridges in recent years. It stems from his ugly divorce with Pegi, in which he pissed off pretty much everyone around him including his former bandmates Crosby, Stills and Nash. He had found a new muse in Daryl Hannah and left behind the wife he extolled to great lengths in his autobiography Waging Heavy Peace. They had built so much together, including the Bridge School, which worked with children with severe physical and speech impairments like their son, Ben, who also is given a lot of space in Neil's autobiography. It was interesting to hear what Pegi had to say in her album that followed the breakup.
Neil can do whatever he likes, but these copious releases are getting a bit tiresome. He did put out some new music on Colorado, but it was pretty much in the same vein as everything else. It really sucks growing old.
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