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Since Cobain stole my pick, I'll take what I thought he was gonna select.
2.05 Rockin' in the Free World (Freedom, 1989)
This song was also a very significant stop on my road to Neil fanaticism. I first encountered Neil through my parents' love of CSNY, then through their acquisition of Rust Never Sleeps. In high school in the late '80s I started adding the "big" solo albums to my collection, but ignored his current stuff (which would be rectified in later years), since he was working in genres that teenage boys don't really care about. I just wanted him to rock, man. Cut to freshman year of college, fall 1989. Season opener of Saturday Night Live, Bruce Willis is the host, Neil the musical guest. I had no idea what he was going to trot out given how all over the place his recent stuff had been, so I didn't have much in the way of expectations. Our floor had thrown a huge party the night before, and I had gotten totally wasted on whatever booze was left over. When Neil came on, he launched into this song, jumping about spazmodically onstage (he had refused to participate in camera blocking), and rocking like he hadn't rocked since Side 2 of Rust Never Sleeps, 10 years earlier. "Holy $#!t, he's back!" I slurred at the top of my lungs. His second bit (a medley of The Needle and the Damage Done and No More) was just as excellent. I was so excited that after the show I decided to call one of my high school buddies (who was still living at home) to tell him about this. Trouble was, all I had in my room was a rotary phone, and I was so hammered that I couldn't dial it properly. Sometimes I combined his number with my ex-girlfriend's; sometimes the dialing was just an abject failure on the part of my fingers. But I persisted and finally got it right after MORE THAN AN HOUR. Unfortunately, he was not amused about being woken up at 2 AM, and neither was his mom!
On a less embarrassing note, prompted by the SNL performance, I went out and bought Freedom as soon as it came out, loved the whole damn thing since he had finally decided to be NEIL again, and have not missed a new Neil album since then.
The SNL version is not on Youtube or Hulu, so I posted a version he did with Pearl Jam.
2.05 Rockin' in the Free World (Freedom, 1989)
This song was also a very significant stop on my road to Neil fanaticism. I first encountered Neil through my parents' love of CSNY, then through their acquisition of Rust Never Sleeps. In high school in the late '80s I started adding the "big" solo albums to my collection, but ignored his current stuff (which would be rectified in later years), since he was working in genres that teenage boys don't really care about. I just wanted him to rock, man. Cut to freshman year of college, fall 1989. Season opener of Saturday Night Live, Bruce Willis is the host, Neil the musical guest. I had no idea what he was going to trot out given how all over the place his recent stuff had been, so I didn't have much in the way of expectations. Our floor had thrown a huge party the night before, and I had gotten totally wasted on whatever booze was left over. When Neil came on, he launched into this song, jumping about spazmodically onstage (he had refused to participate in camera blocking), and rocking like he hadn't rocked since Side 2 of Rust Never Sleeps, 10 years earlier. "Holy $#!t, he's back!" I slurred at the top of my lungs. His second bit (a medley of The Needle and the Damage Done and No More) was just as excellent. I was so excited that after the show I decided to call one of my high school buddies (who was still living at home) to tell him about this. Trouble was, all I had in my room was a rotary phone, and I was so hammered that I couldn't dial it properly. Sometimes I combined his number with my ex-girlfriend's; sometimes the dialing was just an abject failure on the part of my fingers. But I persisted and finally got it right after MORE THAN AN HOUR. Unfortunately, he was not amused about being woken up at 2 AM, and neither was his mom!
On a less embarrassing note, prompted by the SNL performance, I went out and bought Freedom as soon as it came out, loved the whole damn thing since he had finally decided to be NEIL again, and have not missed a new Neil album since then.
The SNL version is not on Youtube or Hulu, so I posted a version he did with Pearl Jam.
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