Neil Young - On the Beach
|
List Price: Our Price: $5.54 You Save: $6.44 (54%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $4.86 (click here) Category: Music CD See more new music releases 
|
|---|
Canadian Music Store
Free Music Notes for On the Beach
Free Music Review: This is what the singer-songwriter genre was always supposed to be about.
Hit: 5 Stars
Neil Young's finest album by a fair margin. It's ungimmicky and aggressively uncommercial: let's see, we've got 3 or 4 twelve-bar blues songs, one banjo-pickin' slice of the Ozarks, two straight folk songs, and one ponderous ballad. Not exactly Harvest, Part II.
This is the album where Young finally learned to just not give a dang what anyone else thought he should be doing with his music. "Walk On" is a stoic but upbeat kiss-off to the people who'd claimed Young was artistically 'dead,' and it's intentionally mirrored in the last song on the album, "Ambulance Blues." The point of "Motion Pictures" has little to do with movies and everything to do with the lines "All those people think they've got it made/But I wouldn't buy, sell, borrow, or trade/Anything I have to be like one of them/I'd rather start all over again." Similarly, the cryptic lyrics of "For The Turnstiles" (which showcases one of the most taut, finely-calibrated arrangements of any Young song, period) are clarified by the final verse, where the narrator passively observes the fickle crowd abandoning its team, leaving them to "die on the diamond" while they scatter for the turnstiles.
As for "Ambulance Blues" (the best song) it may be poor taste to go directly after your critics, but the resigned manner in which Neil does it is absolutely essential to the concept of this album, whose overriding themes speak about strength through irony and wry detachment, and about throwing off the crippling yoke of others' expectations.
So I wonder if the symbolism of the title & cover isn't often lost on people. While most of these songs may sound extremely doomy, Neil is ON THE BEACH: he's come through the fire and made it to the water's edge. This shouldn't be heard as a dark and depressing musical experience, but rather as a passionately redemptive one. Which is why, if you buy into the confessional ethos of the singer-songwriter genre in the first place, this should be your alpha-omega album. Whatever it is you're looking for emotionally: it's in here.
Free Music Review: An absolute Classic
Hit: 5 Stars
1.Walk on- 9.5/102.See the Sky about to Rain 9/10
3.Revolution Blues 9/10
4.For the Turnstiles 9.5/10
5 Vampire Blues 8/10
6.On the Beach 8.5/10
7.Motion Pictures 8.5/10
8.Ambulance Blues 10/10
Being a huge Neil Young fan, I was very excited when On the Beach finally came out on CD, along with American Stars n' Bars, Reactor, and Hawks & Doves. On the Beach is a very short album but nevertheless a classic. This is his flawless classic after Harvest and After the Gold Rush. The album starts off with the rockin upbeat, Walk On, a rock and roll gem. Next we have see the sky about to rain, I enjoy this song a lot since I am more of a Neil Young folk fan than his raunchy stuff he does with Crazy Horse. Revolution Blues has a very good beat to it and would consider it a classic. For the Turnstiles is a very cool song, I first heard this song when I got Decade and I thought the adding of the Banjo was excellent, it is one of those different types of songs that get better with each listen. Vampire Blues is Neil's poorest effort on this cd, it has a blues flavour to it and is still good but doesn't compare to the rest of the album. On the Beach, the title track is a powerful song with a good edge, I enjoy this song and would reccomend listening to it. Motion pictures, a great folk tune, relaxing to listen to. Ambulance Blues!!! What a way to finish! The money for this album is worth it just for this song. I have been a Neil Young fan for a long time and would put this one way up there on my list of his favorite songs with Old Man, After the Gold Rush and Like A Hurricane. If you have never heard Neil Young you will like him after hearing this song. Overall On the Beach is an excellent album to buy for the beginner Neil Young Fan, and his Die Hard Fans. i highly Reccomend it.
Free Music Review: "Though your confidence may be shattered..."
Hit: 5 Stars
Neil Young is worthless to me when he's happy. Well, okay, maybe that's an exaggeration; I'm sure he had a smile on his face when he wrote "Cinnamon Girl." But aside from that, Young's best songs have almost always come from the darker regions of the human experience. His music is at its most powerful when dealing with angst, disillusionment, and uncertainty. By that token, this may very well be Neil Young's best album. Released in 1974, On The Beach rounds out a trio of albums commonly referred to as the "Ditch Trilogy," the other two being Tonight's The Night and Time Fades Away. Of the three, this is probably the most fully realized and fleshed-out installment. It's a collection of tense, brittle, rock songs and sickly ballads, of apathetic insults and haunted introspection. It's an album full of bitterness and black humor, and it's dark and mean and weary and absolutely, positively perfect. Well, maybe not "perfect," per se- "See The Sky About To Rain" is somewhat tedious - but it comes close. Very few songs in this world can match "Motion Pictures" or "For The Turnstyles" in terms of sheer spooked ennui, Fewer still can hope to compete with the vicious sarcasm of "Walk On." "Vampire Blues" is a cruel slab of mid 70s disillusionment that features, among other things, a guitar solo (or should I say anti-guitar solo?) that sounds exactly like a vampire suckling the last few drops of blood from a victim's neck. It's also got lines as deliciously bummed out as "good times are coming/ I hear it everywhere I go/ good times are coming/ but they're sure coming slow." Brilliant! The whole thing closes with "Ambulance Blues," which is a gorgeous and absolutely epic take on life after the storm, with its weary melody (nicely lifted from a Bert Jansch tune) and lyrics that are full of poetic imagery and symbolism. Great stuff.Free Music Review: Neil's masterpiece
Hit: 5 Stars
Let me try to write a few notes on the album:1) the album contains some of the greatest songs NY ever wrote, in particular "On the beach", "Revolution blues" and "Ambulance blues". These songs are just Neil Young at its best
2) this is not similar at all to Harvest or Rust Never Sleeps, this was written during a very bad period in which Neil was haunted by several demons (a friend had died, he had split form his wife, he was really too popular, and I think he was drinking far too much...)
3)the album was never released in CD until this year, this was a crime by Neil Young, who probably hated the record (or loved it too much). However some clever guy made a site on the internet with a petition by fans to release the record, I think he got a few thousand signatures on the petition (included mine) and probably Neil found out about it (at least I like to think this was the reason)
4)the record is interesting because it's not similar to anything else by Neil, in general the songs are a bit bluesy, with some ballads like "see the sky about to rain", "Ambulance Blues" and "for the turnstiles" who are more acoustic, and some very slow blues songs like "On the beach" and "Vampire blues". There is also a blues-rock piece, called "Revolution Blues", which is one of the best of the album, very aggressive both in lyrics and music
5) I rate it 5 stars because it's probably his darkest and more peculiar record, and to me his best, however if you never listened to NY you should start with Everybody Knows This is Nowhere or Rust Never Sleeps, or Zuma, this is a bit too difficult for beginners
6)Let's hope Neil keeps on rocking forever, and maybe he will give us another jewel like this.....
Free Music Review: A Lost Desert Island Disc
Hit: 5 Stars
This is surely the most long-awaited CD release of any album in the classic rock canon. Those of us who have long testified to the sheer power of the songs on this downbeat, chilling and unforgettable set could never understand why 'Harvest' was rated so highly by comparison.'On The Beach' showcases Neil Young's songwriting at its most bitter and at its most beautiful. The funereal Ambulance Blues is the most savage indictment of the cynicism and disillusionment of the post-hippy Nixon-era of the mid-1970s.
"I never knew a man who could tell so many lies. He had a different story for every set of eyes," Neil wails. And then the clincher line which sums up the sense of impotence of many old idealists at that time "You're all just pissin' in the wind. You don't know it, but you are. And there ain't nothin' like a friend......who can tell you you're just pissin' in the wind."
But that's not all. On 'Vampire Blues', Young serves up an acute and angry observation of 'oil crisis' Middle East politics as you are ever likely to hear and one that rings just as true today under the Bush administration.
'On the Beach' is not all anger though. 'See the Sky About to Rain' is one of the most lyrical and beautiful country songs Young ever wrote, with a stunning arrangement. 'Walk On' is a song at once fondly remembering the old and more simple days, while making a plea to move on. "I remember the good old days," Neil sings, "stayed up all night, getting crazed."
This album, for me, sums up the vacuum of the mid-1970s better than any other. But what makes it a classic is that it carries just as powerful a message today - lost idealism, estrangement and the search for personal redemption. All of it is there - 'On the Beach'