Neil Young & Crazy Horse - Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere Audio CD
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Band: Neil Young & Crazy Horse
Title: Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere
Rating: 
Release Date: 1990-10-25
Media: Audio CD
Tracks: 1: Cinnamon Girl - Crazy Horse, Neil Young & Crazy Horse, Neil Young & Crazy Horse, Neil Young & Crazy Horse 2: Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere 3: Round & Round (It Won't Be Long) - Robin Lane, Neil Young & Crazy Horse, Neil Young & Crazy Horse, Neil Young & Crazy Horse 4: Down by the River 5: Losing End (When You're On) 6: Running Dry (Requiem for the Rockets) - Neil Young & Crazy Horse, Bobby Notkoff, Neil Young & Crazy Horse, Neil Young & Crazy Horse 7: Cowgirl in the Sand
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Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere The album also did quite ok with the public and peaked at #34 in the Billboard 200. Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere being Neil Young's 2nd studio album and his 1969 release was well received by the critics and both Allmusic, Rolling Stone and Robert Christgau gave it favorable reviews. Songs that stand out on this great release are "Cinnamon Girl" and "Down by the River". The booklet contains no lyrics, but a list of whom plays what along with liner notes and many fine photographs of the band and even his dog. 5/5.
Forty Years Young
" It was an "aha" moment. I read recently that Neil Young had 103 degree fever when he penned "Cinnamon Girl," "Down By The River," and "Cowgirl In the Sand. There was always something strange--AND a little feverish--about those songs that I could never quite put my finger on. I loved the raw guitar sound that in its way, was as much of a rebuttal of the apit'n'polish virtuoso jamming of the late 60s as the proto-punk of the Velvets and the Stooges.
And now I find out (from an earlier review) that Neil apparently told an interviewer that there was no "real murder" in "Down By the River. " That had always been a little problematic for me, I gotta admit. By the late '60s, I was getting a little leery of the songwriters of the "Peace and Love Generation" making off-handed references to violent murder (I'd heard too many versions of "Hey Joe" and then there were songs like "Artificial Energy" by the Byrds--all good stuff but disturbing once you thought about it).
Lyrically, "Down By the River" was strange in other ways. Even if the narrator really hadn't shot his baby, can we assume that he's at least saying, metaphorically, that that relationship is so over. If so, who's he's talking to ("Be on my side, I'll be on your side. . . ", "You take my hand, I'll take your hand/Together we just might get away"). Is he trying to pick up SOMEBODY else? And if there was no murder, what's he fleeing from? Inquiring minds want to know? Or maybe we just have to accept their fevered nature and admit to ourselves that whatever the heck is going on in the song, it all just SOUNDS so right.
Come to think of it, I never quite got what a "cinnamon girl" would be--a little sweet and a little spicy maybe? And let's not even start with "Cowgirl In the Sand. " All great songs, and you gotta love them as much FOR their sketchy, cryptic lyrics as despite them. Neil was never much of linear storyteller, and with a 103 degree temp, well, forget it.
As for Crazy Horse, there was never a better band to spazz dance to than the former Rockets (and thank the good Lord that Neil thought that they were "old enough to change their name" to something more original than the g. d. "ROCKETS" for crying out loud: I mean how many THOUSANDS of bands must have gone by that particular moniker in the 60s?). I don't really recall whether or not there was much negative reaction to the record's relative rawness in my own circle of 60s friends, but I do recall feeling some relief that something was coming out of So. California that wasn't just another assemblage of smooth "tasty licks. " The record had guts, which is probably why it still holds up 40 (count 'em, FORTY) years later.
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Great album; Great Service
Of course, that would have been impossible to say when I first heard the album, way back in '69, but even then, I enjoyed hearing the songs repeatedly, and to me, that's the ultimate test of a song, that I can hear it again, in a day or so, and still enjoy it as much. Neil Young's Everybody Knows This is Nowhere really stands the test of time. The late night FM staples are there, of course, with Cowgirl in the Sand and Down by the River, but other gems are there, too, like Running Dry (Requiem for The Rockets) and that ethereal, haunting violin by Bobby Notkoff (thanks, Google). All in all, a pillar in the rock album temple. .
a brillaint album
neil at his best just before the bigt time
entire album is genius.
Solid but not splendid
Yet, aside for a fraction of songs on this brief disc, not much of the material stands out compositionally-wise. There is no denying Young's utter mastery of the fuzz-distortion electric guitar, and here we are privileged to hear some amazingly perceptive, hopelessly rugged solos.
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