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Last updated on July 24th, 2017 at 10:49 am
Neil Young recorded this 25 years ago:
Got people here
down on their knees and prayin’
Hawks and doves
are circlin’ in the rainGot rock and roll,
got country music playin’
If you hate us, you just
don’t know what you’re sayin’Ready to go, willin’ to stay and pay
U.S.A., U.S.A.
So my sweet love can dance
another free day
U.S.A., U.S.A
Young can see into the future! His strange Canadian powers must be harnessed.
Not to get too far off topic, but I just saw a procession of what appeared to be the rear guard of the Sheehanovite legions marching beneath my window here a block from the White House. This particular parade numbered no more than 200 people (maybe this bunch got the date of the protest wrong). Pot-bellied, ageing hippies, non-descript permanent college students, used-book store proprietors, bongo players – the usual lot of John Does and Plain Janes, led by a fellow chanting “Peace, Salaam, Shalom” through a bull horn (or was it “Peace, SADAM, Shalom”?). Some folks wore slogan-bearing boxes around their midsections, suspended from ropes crossed over their shoulders (looking for all the world like fresh moonbat deliveries, right off the truck). Insipid beyond belief. They might have been a mob of tired shoppers streaming out of a K-Mart going-out-of-business sale at closing time.
paco: Lynard Skynard had it right: “Well, we don’t need Mr. Young, anyhow”
Lynyrd Skynyrd, _Sweet Home Alabama_: “I hope Neil Young will remember: A Southern man don’t need him around, anyhow”.
This line is a response to Neil’s _Southern Man_, which is largely an accusatory complaint about Southern racism, (in Alabama specifically, though not mentioned in the song)
In fairness, it was probably a valid complaint at the time.
TB: I hereby name this kind of entry a postpourri.
Said in a regal voice like the King guy talking to volfgang in _Amadeus_:
Too many links.
Posted by zeppenwolf on 09/26 at 12:21 PM • permalink
Thanks for correcting my somewhat misremembered lyrics. You’ve put the lyrics in the right context.
Without getting into the specifics of racism in the U.S., the complaint in “Southern Man” had already been overtaken by history. And as I recall, the album cover showed a shadowy photo of three or four clansmen on horseback – which would have been a grossly unfair depiction of southerners in general at the time the song was written, if that was Young’s intention (I don’t know that it was). My great uncle won a pulitzer prize for leading the fight against the clan in his newspapers in North and South Carolina in the fifties, and by the late 60’s and early 70’s the clan had become an ineffectual association of obvious nutcases. My larger point is that the U.S. didn’t benefit in the ‘60’s and ‘70’s from the smug, arrogant caterwauling of this songwriter, and is unlikely to gain any wisdom from tuning into him now.
To his credit, though, ole Neil actually performed Sweet Home Alabama at one of his shows right after the plane crash that killed Ronnie Van Zandt, et al.
Sister Sheehan has been arrested:
WASHINGTON – Cindy Sheehan, the California woman who has used her son’s death in Iraq to spur the anti-war movement, was arrested Monday while protesting outside the White House.… Police warned them three times that they were breaking the law by failing to move along, then began making arrests.
Looks like a cheap and desperate attempt to get some media attention.
Well, that explains all the cops around here. I await the scourging and crucifixion with great interest. I suppose her son, when he got to heaven, was issued wings AND a paper bag to wear over his head. Just a rotten, rotten shame that Sheehan’s heroic son is being commemorated by his mother in a way that, by all accounts, would have appalled him.
The protest Monday followed a massive demonstration Saturday on the National Mall that drew a crowd of 100,000 or more, the largest such gathering in the capital since the war began in March 2003.
How come 99,950 of them don’t show up in photos?
Posted by Stoop Davy Dave on 09/26 at 04:48 PM • permalink
Michelle Malkin has photos of the grieving mother being arrested.
Neil Young also wrote the song “Alabama” with lines like:
“banjos playing through the broken glass”
“see the old folks tied in white ropes”
“I come to you and see all this ruin”
etc
not complimentary stuff.
Sweet Home Alabama (whose chorus had a similar melody to Neil Young’s song but using major chords rather than minor) was partly a response to this song with the reference to “Southern Man” thrown in.
Paco—Never mind the scourging. They can hold her for 72 hours for psychiatric observation. I’d pay cash money for that video…
Posted by richard mcenroe on 09/26 at 07:56 PM • permalink
”… by the late 60’s and early 70’s the clan had become an ineffectual association of obvious nutcases. My larger point is that the U.S. didn’t benefit in the ‘60’s and ‘70’s from the smug, arrogant caterwauling of this songwriter, and is unlikely to gain any wisdom from tuning into him now.”
People like Neil Young and Mother Sheehan do not care whether or not their actions become catalysts for positive change. What they’re after is simply adoration from the leftwing nutters. It’s all about them.
If you want to see what I mean, look at the expression on Sheehan’s face. She’s happy, she’s got what she wants.
Posted by wronwright on 09/26 at 08:11 PM • permalink
OT, but all this talk about Neil Young reminds me of how many great bands of the late ‘60s and 70’s drew on southern music and heritage for their sound and image – sometimes making a better fist of it than the real deal. ‘The Band’ and ‘Heads Hands and Feet’ come to mind. Whatever else you may say about the south, it was the source or inspiration of some sublime popular music.
yeah, I’m pretty sure Francis H is more in line with what Lynard Skynard would react to…the song, “Alabama”, was pretty crude, rude, and stereotypical. The “Southern Man” thing just sounded good as a lyric and somewhat fit 🙂
Anyway, have always been a Neil Young fan despite some of his politics which sometimes tends to be oversimplified reaction to ‘the man’ type stuff. But really, he mostly seems to me to guage political winds but not really give too much of a damn one way or the other. He’s not a moonbat, anyway….not in agreement with the Iraq War but doesn’t demonize Bush. The song above, Hawks and Doves, as much of the album, was positively influenced by American conservatism during the early Reagan revolution.
I think Slammer is right there. If I cared about the political views of musicians I’d have nothing left but Frank Zappa and Alice Cooper records (and maybe the Who, i heard they disliked Woodstock cause they weren’t into all the peace and love stuff).
I get a bit impatient with lefties reacting against artists because they say something against their treasured policy positions.
I remember when Joan Sutherland made some old-fashioned and silly remarks about the growth in the asian population in Australia. The letter pages/talkback erupted with people wanting to sell their JS recordings. As if her views on multiculturalism affected her ability to sing. It was similar in tone to the bible belt burning Beatle records after the “bigger than Jesus” statement by Lennon.
zenpig: I’m pretty sure Francis H is more in line with what Lynard Skynard would react to…
Now that’s bad. I’ve already corrected the spelling of this band’s name once in this thread.
Come on now.
Take the name of their high school P.E. coach, (Leonard Skinner(?) or somesuch), replace vowels with Y’s, and make it rhyme:
Lynyrd Skynyrd
K?
All the crazy Oz-slang we yanks have to put up with here, I’d think you guys could do better in return.
Posted by zeppenwolf on 09/27 at 03:29 AM • permalink
#20. HH& F was around for a while in the late 60’s early 70’s. Don’t know a lot about them because I think they had already disbanded by the time I discovered them. I believe they were a bunch of Pommy session musos who formed their own band. Cut 2 LPs I’m aware of, although their stuff is no longer available. Anyway, they were damn good. A bit like a cross between Tony Joe White and Marshall Tucker Band – if you are familiar with them.
That seems to be a problem with the stuff I listen to. For example, They Might Be Giants used to be one of my favorite groups until I found out they were coordinating an effort to put together an album being used for moveon.org fundraising during the elections. Now I can’t stand to listen to them anymore. Boston falls in the same category. They’d always associated themselves with radical animal rights groups, but it wasn’t until their most recent album which was pretty much one big informercial for socialism that I couldn’t stand them either.
Others I can’t really stand anymore include Crosby Stills Nash and Young and CCR. Lately, I also seem to find John Lennon’s “Imagine” to be more offensive than I would find five minutes of uninterrupted swearing on the radio.
All the crazy Oz-slang we yanks have to put up with here, I’d think you guys could do better in return.
I am an American who doesn’t really listen much to Lynyrd Skynyrd ‘cept for what comes over the airwaves and just copy and pasted the name from an earlier post because I was being lazy. Any constructive critizism or you just gonna play the spelling nazi? 🙂
From 27 years ago, here’s The Fall:
SECOND DARK AGE
Fat conference women
Clap return of glass house
And the Arabs have it made
Oil is women in veils, eyes glazedSecond Dark Age. Death of the USA.
Return of the family.
The scooter cabbagesAnd the commune crapheads sit and whine
While the common near my birthplace is now a police collegeIt’s a second dark age.
No Psalm Sunday or any day.
The city is dead.
Bust. Ghost-dance rite. TepidI could join a pray-peace group
Spy in Norway
Cause groups can change the world
and meet Miss Fjord and Benny [1]
Miss Fjord and Benny: “Hi I am Benny”
Go where the brave prance
No Czechoslovak food queues are a party, foolA mediocre anti-Jew
And single people are screwed
in the Second Dark AgeI am Roman Totale XVII
the bastard offspring
of Charles I and the Great God Pan.Note: [1] Abba reference
Posted by Jim Geones on 09/28 at 11:36 AM • permalink
Boston falls in the same category. They’d always associated themselves with radical animal rights groups, but it wasn’t until their most recent album which was pretty much one big informercial for socialism that I couldn’t stand them either.
Boston?
Boston did a third album?
Boston exists?
Cool! I’m 21 again!Posted by Stoop Davy Dave on 09/28 at 04:51 PM • permalink
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I knew you were going to say that.