Samuels writes: "Neil Young is crankier than a hermit being stung by bees. He hates Spotify. He hates Facebook. He hates Apple. He hates Steve Jobs. He hates what digital technology is doing to music."
Neil Young. (photo: The New York Times)
Neil Young's Lonely Quest to Save Music
22 August 19
He says low-quality streaming is hurting our songs and our brains. Is he right?
eil Young is crankier than a hermit being stung by bees. He hates Spotify. He hates Facebook. He hates Apple. He hates Steve Jobs. He hates what digital technology is doing to music. �I�m only one person standing there going, �Hey, this is [expletive] up!�?� he shouted, ranting away on the porch of his longtime manager Elliot Roberts�s house overlooking Malibu Canyon in the sunblasted desert north of Los Angeles. The dial thermometer at the far end of the porch indicated that it was now upward of 110 degrees of some kind of heat. Maybe the dial was stuck.
When you hear real music, you get lost in it, he added, �because it sounds like God.� Spotify doesn�t sound like God. No one thinks that. It sounds like a rotating electric fan that someone bought at a hardware store.
No one in their right mind would choose to live in the canyons outside Los Angeles, especially in the summertime between noon and 5. There isn�t enough water or shade. After a few months of summer heat, the scrub on the mountainsides is baked dry. Then someone gets sloppy with a stray cigarette butt or a campfire or the power company fails to maintain a power line and a spark accelerates into a terrifying wildfire that sends up pillars of thick smoke that from a distance hovers over the canyons like an illustration from an old Bible. News crews record burning mansions, which are intercut with the winsome llamas of the rich and famous that have been safely removed to Zuma Beach. Stragglers are incinerated in their cars.
|
THE NEW STREAMLINED RSN LOGIN PROCESS: Register once, then login and you are ready to comment. All you need is a Username and a Password of your choosing and you are free to comment whenever you like! Welcome to the Reader Supported News community. |
Comments
We are concerned about a recent drift towards vitriol in the RSN Reader comments section. There is a fine line between moderation and censorship. No one likes a harsh or confrontational forum atmosphere. At the same time everyone wants to be able to express themselves freely. We'll start by encouraging good judgment. If that doesn't work we'll have to ramp up the moderation.
General guidelines: Avoid personal attacks on other forum members; Avoid remarks that are ethnically derogatory; Do not advocate violence, or any illegal activity.
Remember that making the world better begins with responsible action.
- The RSN Team
And if Obama wants to change his story maybe he should make sure the stories have a few elements in common!!
Here we have a President who periodically expresses his dismay at the damage these people have caused while raking in millions in campaign contributions from the same people and surrounding himself with Geithner, Bernanke, Summers, and that ilk.
It's a disgrace. Obama has been an utter failure as President. It is pathetic that we seem thusfar to have no better choices because he has forfeited the support of many people.
I can't wait to see his 2012 campaign swing into action. What will the new slogan be? "This time I really mean it"?
OhBombAh fooled us once, so shame on him. Allow him to fool/MSD us more, shame on u.s..
And, no more Bushwhacking and or Kochsucking either. The Greedy Old Party and their puppet whores are and have been shaming us into shaming ourselves for some time. A disgruntled Pres. named Ike tried to warn us.
How best to cure the greed and power addicted staph infection that's overcome so many of us in today's villainaire ruled world? How about looking hard at countries that are doing and being what we the 99% would like to do and be, with governments that work for/serve the people (i.e. Healthcare Not Warfare, very good and costless education for all, quashing of corruption in both the private and public sector, no torture/police state tactics allowed, etc.).
Then, work we must to do anything and everything it takes to install such good, well regulated and effectively regulating govt., and.....
UNDO OUR EVIL COUP!!!
The latter named miscreants being un-indicted co-conspirators . Let's DEMAND that O'Bama be challenged in a primary, so that we can present a proper candidate for the presidency.
He is the worst President we have ever had.
Obama is not the worst president we have ever had--think of McKinley, Harding, Hoover, Nixon, Reagan and the two Bushes. They did little or nothning for the ordinary citizen, while in some cases (Nixon and Bush 43) actually engaged in ourright crimial activity.
Obama is judged harshly due to the great promise that people heard in his campaign speeches and inaugural address, a promise largely unfulfilled. When great expectations are not realized, people will be very harsh in their judgment, understandably so. He deserves our stern critcism, maybe even condemnation, certainly for the decision to allow indefinire detention of American citizens on American soil, a terrible policy, regardless of the terrorist threat.
The real problem is a system of runaway capitalism and expansionism.
Sorry to see both of our comments here have been pulled or lost to the digital world somehow but thank you for your posts.
"If you don't shut up we'll kill you", always the tyrant's refrain...
When he was elected we got 'change' alright - a change from a president who, through his actions and policies, nearly ruined our government and way of life - to one who is adamant in finishing us off.
I would think that a republican president couldn't do any worse...except I have seen the republican slate...and realize how wrong I could be!
That's a poor choice of headlines. It suggests You are piling on to the right wing notion that the U.S. economy is a Ponze scheme when what You are really saying is that Obama has failed to indict the Guilty in the continuing Economic Collapse. Obama is our last best hope in the next term and your problematic headline isn't going to help us avoid Romney. While the gist of the article may be right the headline achieves the wrong result.
Thanks
http://contract.rebuildthedream.com/?rc=rtd_home
If President Obama wished to run in 2016, I would wish him well, hoping he had learned what is required to truly represent all of the citizens of this nation, not just the wealthy 2%.
Trenchant comment with which I'm in heartfelt agreement. We seem to be living inside the Lincoln aphorism about fooling the people. GeeDohbya tripped over himself just trying to quote it, but Obama has internalized it, used it artfully, speaking out of 3 sides of his mouth on a host of issues crying out for clarity, trust and promise-fulfill ment. Instead we get Ivy League doublespeak.
When I occasionally still think of election night, Nov., 2008, the energy, emotion and tremendous relief of that night, the tears flowing down the televised cheeks of Jesse Jackson (They were genuine; it was in the eyes), and compare it to where we are now, I can't help feeling a letdown comparable to Nov. 22, 1963, when my boyhood idol was murdered. I'm a lot older, wiser, more experienced, more cynical, but the hurt is still palpable, the deep disappointment in Obama very personal. After 8 years of Bush, Iraq and Afghanistan, how could it be otherwise?There are many who say it's "unfair" to put such a burden on Obama, that he came in facing a mountain of intractable problems, that he had no real experience dealing with such a gargantuan crisis. Perhaps that's all true, but real leadership could've overcome much of that shortfall in experience, surrounding himself with experts committed to real change. He has shown little if any presidential leadership. IMO, that makes him just another self-serving political hack who fooled most of the people.
rushing to cash in for personal gain and treating the People as fodder for their money machines. Anyone interested in starting a new country in a warm climate with beaches and tequila?
"You better watch out, You better not lie, You better not steal, I'm telling you why, Occupy is coming to town," protesters sang outside the home of Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del. "You're cooking the books, We're checking them twice, Gonna find out who's naughty or nice, Occupy is coming to town."
The protesters said they targeted the homes of Coons, Sen. Tom Carper and Rep. John Carney to present their concerns. Occupy Delaware has been protesting issues including social and economic inequality, corporate greed and government inaction."
obama the obfuscator has turned hope into hopelessness on every front.
the republican't clown college is graduating the goofiest goons in a generation...he ll-bent on biblicizing (with their particular brand of hypochristianit y)the body politic and easing access to the alters of greed and financial felony.
we seem to elect leaders interested only in raising enough money for the next election. and if our best interests are at stake...well, let's kick that can down the road for somebody else to consider. hopefully we can baffle the boobeoisie into forgetting how miserable we've made them.
will no one step up to squelch this never ending cycle? progressives with plenty of clout and cash...where is thy shame?
For some reason the names Beavis and Butthead come to mind. Lately my disabled son has been imitating them because he thinks they sound funny.
It seems we have to rely on committed activists, ethical attorneys-gener al, and above all election of better politicians. Without money in politics, they could work in the interests of the people instead of fund-raising to stay in office.
Twice in my life, I have had experiences that took me beyond my normal sense of self into a state of altered consciousness in which I mo longer felt bound to the ego-self. In that state, I experienced a total lack of fear and craving and knew a profound peace. I needed and wanted nothing. Sadly, the feeling was temporary, and I have not had the personal discipline to bring about a constant state of such consciousness.
What these experiences taught me confirmed what I had read and learned about formal methodologies for advanced transpersonal consciousness. We all need to grow in consciousness and spirit to a point where the addiction to material wealth is overcome.
The drive to acquire material wealth is a compensatory behavior, an attempt to overcome fear and craving via more and more acquisition of things. It doesn't work because it can't work. No amount of money will ever free us of fear and craving. Those emotions are only overcome by a breakthrough to higher consciousness.
I know that weary, stressed-out folks don't want to hear this; it's an old mesaage. However, this old cynic knows it is the only real solution: we need to grow up in consciousness.
Obama has done some good things - this is what we expect from a Democratic President who promised change. Point taken it is easier to be critical.
However, when the President supports questionable policies, he must be called out. There has been too much secrecy, lack of transparency, and collusion with entities that have no interest in helping the majority of Americans.
http://contract.rebuildthedream.com/?rc=rtd_home
If President Obama wished to run in 2016, I would wish him well, hoping he had learned what is required to truly represent all of the citizens of this nation, not just the wealthy 2%.
Analyze ex-regulator Bernie's Madoff scheme - money culture maximize profit ... it started long time ago with Alan Greenspan now Ben Bernanke ... this system made 1% rich - power that rules America.
Money Culture System is BROKEN - wake up.
All that said, I don't see any reforms of the financial system (or the system that oversees it) until there's a short leash put on corporate "free speech", especially their lobbying of government. If that doesn't happen soon, the people may finally get peeved enough to force some sort of change. The Occupy movement may prove to just be the tip of an ugly iceberg.
Our politicians have always been mostly in the pockets of the stateless money mandarins, but now they are mothing more than nearly mindless marionets, dancing madly on gilded strings. The super-rich who own them are narcissistic sociopaths in the mold of the Jensen character in the movie NETWORK. They will promote and finance any venal boob with the nerve to
pop his vest buttons in absurd pretense as a competent statesman.
The one woman in this calamitous circus--
Michele Bachman--is so deranged and ditzy that she hardly merits any comment at all. She will become just a minor footnote in political history, if that much.
Our sitting president may be the worst of the lot because he has betrayed the nation in supine compromises and largely superficial half-measures that don't truly solve the problems and crises being faced by the bulk of an abused citizenry. He is vastly more intelligent than the puny corporate puppets who oppose him, but that intelligence is wasted if it isn't backed up with courage, decency and independence from Jensen-style manipulators.