Neil Young Blows It

Tin soldiers and Nixon coming,
We’re finally on our own.
This summer I hear the drumming,
Four dead in Ohio.

Gotta get down to it
Soldiers are gunning us down
Should have been done long ago.
What if you knew her
And found her dead on the ground
How can you run when you know?

Gotta get down to it
Soldiers are gunning us down
Should have been done long ago.
What if you knew her
And found her dead on the ground
How can you run when you know?

Tin soldiers and Nixon coming,
We’re finally on our own.
This summer I hear the drumming,
Four dead in Ohio.

Yesterday was the anniversary for the Kent State Incident. Which, since I personally have no connection to it and it’s simply a historical note to me, naurally makes me ponder the differences between his politically charged song of the time (with Crosby, Stills, and Nash) and what Neil Young thumped out with “Let’s Impeach the President”.:

The President Sucks
And He likes to Hunt Ducks
I say about this “Oh Shucks”
‘Cause We are all the Sitting Ducks.

Well, no, those are not the lyrics. These are the lyrics. It’s not a terribly good song. Sometime after “Ohio”‘s jab at Nixon, “Rocking In the Free World”‘s attack on Bush I, and “Southern Man” on the Civil Rights Movement — strong enough to warrant an attack from Lynrd Skynrd… he’s lost it. The song will soon be forgotten, and played nowhere.

I believe the problem is that the political song has lost its sociological import. Go back to “Ohio”, and the song is actually about these College Students’ “on their own”, when — “BANG!” — the “tin soldiers” kill some of their friends (or some of their generation) dead — and goddamned it, I need to get over there to Ohio for Solidarity — Nixon hatred is a backdrop.

Green Day’s “American Idiot” album ends up as something akin to — say, a suburban C-Student with vaguely “mall-punk” attributes going on to Community College and a bad minimum wage job, watching some of his friends enlist to join the Military with hopes that it will get them some way out of this burg (and besides, the military was quite aggressive in their recruitment jobs at the old high school, and the kids were largely directionness), and shipped off to Iraq, and thus… Bush II enters their world.

Neil Young’s new semi-hit gives us… Bumpkis.

Incidentally, Jon Bon Jovi has written a new country song, but as Tim Riley put it, it’s really written by Karl Rove.

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