Neil Young: master of defiance

September 1, 2006 by  

Funny..I’ve been fixated on the word ‘defiance’ for months, maybe even a year since Katrina. I’m drawn to defiance and to anyone who shows it. Neil Young is at the top of my list and I was psyched to see him with CS&N last month. But it was an awful night; I left at intermission. It was not the band..they were awesome, especially the opening song: Flags of Freedom. But the crowd depressed me. They were appreciative, but they just didn’t connect! They got up, and down, and up and down…to where, for what? cigarette break? beer run? cell phone? blackberry? They cheered for the band, but when the band played they sat and talked to each other! They were mostly boomers, but even the younger audience seemed like they were acting a part and more interested in texting their friends about being there than actually being there!

I never leave a show, but I just couldn’t take it. I wrote it off to the bad energy of being in a casino arena and not my not being a big fan of the state of CT. But now I read this from the NYT about the same show at Madison Sq Garden and it was the same scenario. This writer blames it more on the younger crowd; but the Mohegan Sun audience was older. So I see it this way: its not the arena, its not the city, its not the age of the crowd, or CT… its the total lack of defiance or any real caring that makes us defiant. Maybe its the pharmaceuticals?. Or is it, as this guy claims, afraid of being called an appeaser? Anyway, I resolve to keep my defiance, to cultivate it and finely hone it every day for the rest of my life. I’m generally down on big pharma, but now I have new name for them: ‘defiance killers’. As far as being called appeaser..well, has anyone ever hear a song more anti-appeasement than Neil Young’s “Let’s Roll” (about flight 93 and Todd Beamer)?

Editorial Observer: There Is Silence in the Streets; Where Have All the Protesters Gone?: “Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young once echoed and personified a powerful political movement. Now their songs are just entertainment, something to leave behind in the concert hall.”

It was a surprisingly political moment for a rock concert in 2006. But when those four men sang their protest songs four decades ago, their lyrics echoed and personified a powerful political movement sweeping America. Now they are entertainment, something to leave behind in the concert hall.

There were a few political booths outside the Theater at Madison Square Garden. But the concert-tour T-shirt salesmen were getting all the business. The most noticeable sound was the cellphones being restarted by those few who had bothered to turn them off during the concert.

This, perhaps, is the ultimate difference between the Vietnam generation and the Iraq generation: When you hear Young and Company sing of “four dead in Ohio,” their Kent State anthem, it’s hard to imagine anyone on today’s campuses willing to face armed troops. Is there anything they care about that much?

(Via NYT > Most E-mailed Articles.)

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