thenation--2020-08-14--Neil Young’s Journey Through the Past

Neil Young’s Journey Through the Past

Rumors swirling around Neil Young ’ s long-lost , mid-1970s album Homegrown , released in June to considerable critical acclaim , boded a sense of archaeological discovery .
The record had been shelved for decades because it was , in its composer ’ s words , “ a little too personal.
” Capturing the deterioration of Young ’ s relationship with actress Carrie Snodgress , Homegrown was mottled by bad vibes , with songs like “ Separate Ways , ” “ White Line , ” and “ Try ” tracing the tragic contours of love and love lost .
During @ @ @ @ @ @ @ record ’ s reputation swelled .
It became an almost haunted relic , too troubling to confront head-on , relegated to the dusty attic of memory , chains locked and tied across the door .
Around the same time Homegrown was recorded , Young ’ s roadies and touring crew crisscrossed the continent in handmade , ribbed T-shirts reading equal time for past present and future .
At the time , it was an oddball in-joke .
But it ’ s become something of a slogan for Young , whose current look in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ with a feeling of forging ahead .
Young received his American citizenship earlier this year , after living for a half century on visas and green cards , with the express intention of voting in American elections .
To mark the occasion , he has released a severely earnest political anthem , “ Lookin ’ for a Leader , ” and filed a lawsuit against the sitting president ’ s reelection campaign for playing some of Young ’ s songs ( including “ Keep On Rockin ’ in the Free World , ” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ) .
Officially an American for barely a year , Young is positioning himself as an elder spokesman of the protest movement , while simultaneously digging through some of the grubbier , grimier corners of his long and varied musical career .
At present , Young has one foot in the future , the other in the past .
But the hype that Homegrown might rank as some profoundly personal breakup album—Young ’ s Blood on the Tracks or Blue or Jagged Little Pill—didn ’ t really bear itself out .
The more @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and weedy , and cokey ) jams like the title track and “ We Don ’ t Smoke It No More , ” and a far-out spoken-word interlude , “ Florida.
” Bracketing its being “ too personal ” to confront head-on , there ’ s a more plausible explanation for why Homegrown languished so long in his vault : It was just too good .
In 1975 , Young gathered some friends where he was holed up in LA ’ s Chateau Marmont and played two unreleased albums back-to-back : Homegrown , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ return to form in the fashion of the 1972 best seller Harvest , and Tonight ’ s The Night , a rollicking , off-kilter , apocalyptic mess .
Young ’ s label , his manager , and his more sober-minded contemporaries all hated the latter record .
But the room of jumped-up musicians reacted rhapsodically .
( No wonder : Tonight ’ s the Night is the LP equivalent of a motel room ’ s worth of up-all-night coke bingers shambling into the street only to be denounced by the daylight . )
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ was , until now , shelved .
The album ’ s release is part of a larger Neil Young Archives enterprise , which includes reissues of live concerts , the unearthing of lost film footage , and an interactive website rebuilding , in incredible detail , the work of a major yet always elusive artist : a Vietnam-era protest rocker , turned Reagan-supporting ’ 80s square , turned grunge godfather , turned ceaselessly experimenting legacy act .
Much of this material—including the live releases Roxy : Tonight ’ s the Night , Songs @ @ @ @ @ @ @ year ’ s Homegrown , and the forthcoming follow-up to his Grammy-winning Archives Vol .
1 box set—devote attention to the period between 1973 and 1976 .
It was a wildly fertile period for Young that was , not incidentally , also a commercial nadir .
It saw him deliberately veering away from the mainstream success afforded him by albums like Harvest and After the Gold Rush and 1972 ’ s “ Heart of Gold , ” Young ’ s first ( and as yet only ) US No .
1 single , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the pantheon of the emerging ’ 70s soft rock sound .
“ ‘ Heart of Gold ’ put me in the middle of the road , ” Young wrote in the liner notes to 1977 ’ s Decade compilation .
“ Traveling there soon became a bore , so I headed for the ditch.
” If , as he sang on his breakout hit , Young was “ a miner for a heart of gold , ” the mid- ’ 70s saw him turning up a string of dead canaries .
Young has @ @ @ @ @ @ @ artist to welcome failure—to say , “ You ’ re okay with me , failure , come right in.
” Young ’ s years in the ditch period saw him not only embracing failure but actively quarrying for it .
Rising to stardom as a member of Buffalo Springfield before striking out as a solo artist , Young loosely fit the mold of the ’ 60s protest rocker .
Hits like “ Southern Man ” and “ Ohio ” were lacerating , name-and-shame anthems .
Across his “ Ditch Trilogy ” —On the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s the Night , and Zuma ( both 1975 ) —Young turned that scathing incision inward .
( I ’ d also include 1973 ’ s shambling live album Time Fades Away as part of the Ditch Expanded Universe . )
These are artifacts of what Rolling Stone ’ s Dave Marsh called “ the post-hippie , post-Vietnam demise of counterculture idealism.
” They were also records that , as Robert Christgau wrote in his review of On the Beach , proved “ easy to dislike.
” ( He gave it an A- @ @ @ @ @ @ @ effortlessly dislikable .
Gone were the hippie-friendly fringed leathers , replaced by utterly square seersucker jackets .
Now packing out hockey rinks , he ditched his acoustic for a Gibson Flying V , trading his early vulnerability for a parodic posture of rockstardom , antagonizing fans who came to hear the hits .
This reinvention teetered thrillingly on the verge of total career self-sabotage .
Thrilling because Young is at his creative best when , to all appearances , he ’ s at his worst .
He ’ s one of those rare @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ ragged , ” “ bleak , ” “ desperate ” ) as accolades .
In his ripping biography Shakey , author Jimmy McDonough praises a ditch-era live show as Young ’ s “ disillusioned best.
” Of all the backhanded compliments , that one sticks .
Neil Young is practically the poet laureate of disillusionment .
Disillusionment sparks from the friction between the dream and reality .
A cynic is never disillusioned , because he knows the dream is bogus to begin with .
To be disillusioned is to genuinely lose something—like @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Araby , ” who toddles off to a fancy bazaar to purchase a gift for his young love , only to find the enchantment conjured in his mind dispelled by merchants counting money , a scene of gaudiness revealing the romantic hero to himself as little more than “ a creature driven and derided by vanity.
” Disillusionment is the pain of the veil ’ s being lifted .
Young ’ s dream was that of any scrappy folkie coming of age in the ‘ 60s .
He wanted to make it .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ regular of Toronto ’ s lively beatnik scene based around a boho breeding ground now teeming with archly gaudy upscale retail , struck out southbound to Los Angeles in a secondhand 1953 Pontiac Hearse .
In his 2012 memoir Waging Heavy Peace , Young calls LA “ the promised land , ” where all the music was happening .
Barely a decade later , squarely in the ditch , his attitude had changed .
As he sings on the Manson murders-inspired “ Revolution Blues , ” from On the Beach : Yet , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of zero talent , Young ’ s embitterment emerged not from failure but success .
Whinging about the hardships of establishing oneself as a beloved singer-songwriter may feel a bit rich .
But Young ’ s complaint is less with achieving fame than with its character .
The rock star who finds success is forced to comport to expectations , robbed of the sense of individualism that was their sole commodity .
Young saw himself revealed , as he sings on “ Don ’ t Be Denied , ” as “ a pauper @ @ @ @ @ @ @ through a businessman ’ s eyes.
” Fames ’ s wages weighed heavier than its comforts .
Beyond his splintering relationship with Snodgress , Young ’ s post-stardom personal life was rocked by the fatal overdose of Danny Whitten , the singer-guitarist of Young ’ s backing band , Crazy Horse .
Barely a year later , veteran Young roadie Bruce Berry passed under similar circumstances , inspiring the doom-and-gloom deathwatch vibe of Tonight ’ s the Night .
But Whitten ’ s death , and its effect on Young ’ s mood @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , and ran deeper .
“ I felt responsible , ” he told Jimmy McDonough .
“ It was such a loss .
You can ’ t count on things.
” Time Fades Away , the 1973 live release that followed Whitten ’ s death , is shot through with yearning to return to some way-off , untroubled shore .
( On “ Journey Through the Past ” and “ Time Fades Away , ” he sings of his native Canada as if it were some mythic Xanadu of distant memory . )
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ through the ditch period records , and the Archives project itself .
Young ’ s songs—particularly in this period he seems so keen on revisiting—pine for the past in a way that resists simple nostalgia .
They ’ re suffused with pessimism , with the pang of wanting to get back to a place he can not access , because it was never there .
“ Cortez the Killer , ” Zuma ’ s seven minute mini-epic about the brutal campaigns of Hernán Cortez , provides Young ’ s clearest expression of this @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of Cortez ’ s Aztec victims in knowingly idealized terms : an Eden of beauty and noble sacrifice , where “ hate was just a legend.
” Suddenly , in the last verse , he blasts into the present tense , turning his mind to a love he let slip , wondering how he lost his way .
Connecting personal loss to the sweeping pain of colonial history , “ Cortez the Killer ” also ties the intimacies of individual passions ( that feeling of being in , or out of , love @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , of the singer of as some modern-day conquistador .
As the song abruptly fades out ( the result of an embraced in-studio error ) , it ’ s as if its singer , having lost his way , is renouncing the enterprise altogether .
Young indulges backwards-looking romanticism only to shrug it off .
Excepting a few of its weirder pieces , like the title track ( in which a wonderfully shaggy , out-of-step instrumental locks into a satisfying foot-stomper about growing your own pot ) , Homegrown feels out of place @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Its romanticism is earnest , played down the middle of the road .
It ’ s a record by the Neil Young who lives in everyone ’ s minds : the warbling , vulnerable songbird , turning blunt lyrical phrases like , “ Love is a rose but you ’ d better not pick it / It only grows when it ’ s on the vine.
” But its release is less about the easy nostalgia of revisiting a bygone era , and more about revisionism .
It offers a new vantage @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s career , inviting the listener to imagine a whole alternate history .
For Young , nostalgia is as seductive and empty as fame .
Instead , he practices what English historian J.H .
Plumb might term “ destructive ” history .
Yet it is destructive in a critical and ultimately productive way , because , as Plumb writes in The Death of the Past , it “ dissolves those simple , structural generalizations by which our forefathers interrupted the purpose of life in historical terms.
” As a song like “ Cortez @ @ @ @ @ @ @ flow of history offers , in the final analysis , little comfort .
When he sings , on “ Lookout Joe ” from Tonight ’ s the Night , that “ old times were good times , ” there ’ s a sense , given the song ’ s enumeration of tragedies befalling its colorful cast of characters , that he doesn ’ t really mean it .
Young ’ s fixation on pastness ( be it in individual songs or his whole Archives endeavor ) bespeaks a desire to reframe the present @ @ @ @ @ @ @ as an artist .
It ’ s an act not of self-exaltation but self-criticism—what Christgau called Young ’ s “ obsessive self-examination.
” These releases—oriented less toward lost masterpieces and more towards warts-and-all documentation , chocked with goofs , abandoned half-ideas , audience-alienating in-jokes , and bracingly honesty music—eat away at the idea of Young as an artist lost in wilderness in the mid- ’ 70s , adrift between radio hits like “ Heart of Gold ” and 1977 ’ s “ Like a Hurricane.
” Homegrown effectively proves that Young very well @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ) a friendly follow-up to Harvest : a record that would assure his place as another scraggly-haired , pigeon-chested soft rocker in the James Taylor mold .
He just didn ’ t want to .
There ’ s a political underpinning to all this , as penetrating as the more direct indictments of “ Ohio ” or “ Southern Man.
” Young ’ s unromantic streak puts the lie to moral majority , MAGA-style conservatism , which rings false precisely because it relies on an idea of the past that never existed in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ as a respectful young man regards his elders—with a crude sense of deference to his forebears .
The past is conceived as an inheritance , offering the repose of regarding oneself as part of a larger narrative .
Young ’ s on-the-sleeve politics , meanwhile , have always seemed a bit evasive .
Anti-Nixon protest songs led , in the ’ 80s , to wishy-washy support for some Reaganomic policies ( predictably , Young seemed to double down on this the instant he was called out for it ) ; lifelong activism around @ @ @ @ @ @ @ post-9/11 , pro-war torch song “ Let ’ s Roll.
” More recently , in addition to threatening to take the president to court ( embracing the tradition of eager American litigiousness ) , he has expressed support for Joe Biden , and for Black Lives Matter , writing on his website that America needs to “ deal with our white insecurities.
” He also , even more recently , vowed to uncouple his Archives website from Facebook , claiming that “ the corrupt social platform ” was “ screwing with our election.
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” —is significant .
It suggests that Young , a newly certified American , self-described “ old white guy , ” and consummate artist of disillusionment , hasn ’ t succumbed to the cynicism that US politics seems to encourage .
While Young may rebuff any strict adherence to anything like a progressive agenda , there is a progressive spirit that moves through his music .
It ’ s not about mining for one thing or another but an endless process of interrogation .
Not just self-sabotage but a productive , constructive form @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to square this wiggliness on certain issues with his refusal , always apparent in his music , to be pinned down .
Call him a hippie , and he ’ ll put on a seersucker jacket .
Call him a square , and he ’ ll drop an electro album .
He holds the rare honor of having been sued by his record label for not sounding enough like himself .
It hasn ’ t stopped him .

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Rumors swirling around Neil Young’s long-lost, mid-1970s album Homegrown, released in June to considerable critical acclaim, boded a sense of archaeological discovery. The record had been shelved for decades because it was, in its composer’s words, “a little too personal.” Capturing the deterioration of Young’s relationship with actress Carrie Snodgress, Homegrown was mottled by bad vibes, with songs like “Separate Ways,” “White Line,” and “Try” tracing the tragic contours of love and love lost. During its extended period in absentia, the record’s reputation swelled. It became an almost haunted relic, too troubling to confront head-on, relegated to the dusty attic of memory, chains locked and tied across the door.
Around the same time Homegrown was recorded, Young’s roadies and touring crew crisscrossed the continent in handmade, ribbed T-shirts reading equal time for past present and future. At the time, it was an oddball in-joke. But it’s become something of a slogan for Young, whose current look in his career’s rearview mirror coincides with a feeling of forging ahead. Young received his American citizenship earlier this year, after living for a half century on visas and green cards, with the express intention of voting in American elections. To mark the occasion, he has released a severely earnest political anthem, “Lookin’ for a Leader,” and filed a lawsuit against the sitting president’s reelection campaign for playing some of Young’s songs (including “Keep On Rockin’ in the Free World,” originally conceived as an anti-Bush I broadside). Officially an American for barely a year, Young is positioning himself as an elder spokesman of the protest movement, while simultaneously digging through some of the grubbier, grimier corners of his long and varied musical career. At present, Young has one foot in the future, the other in the past.
But the hype that Homegrown might rank as some profoundly personal breakup album—Young’s Blood on the Tracks or Blue or Jagged Little Pill—didn’t really bear itself out. The more intimate sentiments are buffered by boozy (and weedy, and cokey) jams like the title track and “We Don’t Smoke It No More,” and a far-out spoken-word interlude, “Florida.” Bracketing its being “too personal” to confront head-on, there’s a more plausible explanation for why Homegrown languished so long in his vault: It was just too good.
In 1975, Young gathered some friends where he was holed up in LA’s Chateau Marmont and played two unreleased albums back-to-back: Homegrown, which his label anticipated as a commercial return to form in the fashion of the 1972 best seller Harvest, and Tonight’s The Night, a rollicking, off-kilter, apocalyptic mess. Young’s label, his manager, and his more sober-minded contemporaries all hated the latter record. But the room of jumped-up musicians reacted rhapsodically. (No wonder: Tonight’s the Night is the LP equivalent of a motel room’s worth of up-all-night coke bingers shambling into the street only to be denounced by the daylight.) The matter was settled, and Homegrown was, until now, shelved. Popular "swipe left below to view more authors"Swipe → The Evisceration of a Public University The Evisceration of a Public University Lisa M. Corrigan The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks Chris Lehmann “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash Dave Zirin A Grim Chronicle of Trump’s Corrupt Public Life A Grim Chronicle of Trump’s Corrupt Public Life Chris Lehmann Popular "swipe left below to view more authors"Swipe → The Evisceration of a Public University The Evisceration of a Public University Lisa M. Corrigan The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks Chris Lehmann “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash Dave Zirin A Grim Chronicle of Trump’s Corrupt Public Life A Grim Chronicle of Trump’s Corrupt Public Life Chris Lehmann Singers & songs The Songs of Canceled Men Joe Bucciero
The album’s release is part of a larger Neil Young Archives enterprise, which includes reissues of live concerts, the unearthing of lost film footage, and an interactive website rebuilding, in incredible detail, the work of a major yet always elusive artist: a Vietnam-era protest rocker, turned Reagan-supporting ’80s square, turned grunge godfather, turned ceaselessly experimenting legacy act. Much of this material—including the live releases Roxy: Tonight’s the Night, Songs for Judy, and Tuscaloosa, this year’s Homegrown, and the forthcoming follow-up to his Grammy-winning Archives Vol. 1 box set—devote attention to the period between 1973 and 1976.
It was a wildly fertile period for Young that was, not incidentally, also a commercial nadir. It saw him deliberately veering away from the mainstream success afforded him by albums like Harvest and After the Gold Rush and 1972’s “Heart of Gold,” Young’s first (and as yet only) US No. 1 single, which positioned him near the top of the pantheon of the emerging ’70s soft rock sound. “‘Heart of Gold’ put me in the middle of the road,” Young wrote in the liner notes to 1977’s Decade compilation. “Traveling there soon became a bore, so I headed for the ditch.” If, as he sang on his breakout hit, Young was “a miner for a heart of gold,” the mid-’70s saw him turning up a string of dead canaries. Young has spoken thoughtfully about the importance of any artist to welcome failure—to say, “You’re okay with me, failure, come right in.” Young’s years in the ditch period saw him not only embracing failure but actively quarrying for it.
Rising to stardom as a member of Buffalo Springfield before striking out as a solo artist, Young loosely fit the mold of the ’60s protest rocker. Hits like “Southern Man” and “Ohio” were lacerating, name-and-shame anthems. Across his “Ditch Trilogy”—On the Beach (1974), Tonight’s the Night, and Zuma (both 1975)—Young turned that scathing incision inward. (I’d also include 1973’s shambling live album Time Fades Away as part of the Ditch Expanded Universe.) These are artifacts of what Rolling Stone’s Dave Marsh called “the post-hippie, post-Vietnam demise of counterculture idealism.” They were also records that, as Robert Christgau wrote in his review of On the Beach, proved “easy to dislike.” (He gave it an A-.) Current Issue View our current issue
Young likewise restyled himself as effortlessly dislikable. Gone were the hippie-friendly fringed leathers, replaced by utterly square seersucker jackets. Now packing out hockey rinks, he ditched his acoustic for a Gibson Flying V, trading his early vulnerability for a parodic posture of rockstardom, antagonizing fans who came to hear the hits. This reinvention teetered thrillingly on the verge of total career self-sabotage. Thrilling because Young is at his creative best when, to all appearances, he’s at his worst. He’s one of those rare souls who absorbs ostensibly negative descriptors (“ragged,” “bleak,” “desperate”) as accolades. In his ripping biography Shakey, author Jimmy McDonough praises a ditch-era live show as Young’s “disillusioned best.” Of all the backhanded compliments, that one sticks. Neil Young is practically the poet laureate of disillusionment.
Disillusionment sparks from the friction between the dream and reality. A cynic is never disillusioned, because he knows the dream is bogus to begin with. To be disillusioned is to genuinely lose something—like the narrator of Joyce’s “Araby,” who toddles off to a fancy bazaar to purchase a gift for his young love, only to find the enchantment conjured in his mind dispelled by merchants counting money, a scene of gaudiness revealing the romantic hero to himself as little more than “a creature driven and derided by vanity.” Disillusionment is the pain of the veil’s being lifted.
Young’s dream was that of any scrappy folkie coming of age in the ‘60s. He wanted to make it. So in 1966, Young, a regular of Toronto’s lively beatnik scene based around a boho breeding ground now teeming with archly gaudy upscale retail, struck out southbound to Los Angeles in a secondhand 1953 Pontiac Hearse. In his 2012 memoir Waging Heavy Peace, Young calls LA “the promised land,” where all the music was happening. Barely a decade later, squarely in the ditch, his attitude had changed. As he sings on the Manson murders-inspired “Revolution Blues,” from On the Beach:
I hear the Laurel Canyon
Is filled with famous stars
But I hate them worse than lepers
And I’ll kill them in their cars
Yet, unlike Manson, himself a failed songwriter of zero talent, Young’s embitterment emerged not from failure but success. Whinging about the hardships of establishing oneself as a beloved singer-songwriter may feel a bit rich. But Young’s complaint is less with achieving fame than with its character. The rock star who finds success is forced to comport to expectations, robbed of the sense of individualism that was their sole commodity. Young saw himself revealed, as he sings on “Don’t Be Denied,” as “a pauper in a naked disguise, a millionaire through a businessman’s eyes.” Fames’s wages weighed heavier than its comforts.
Beyond his splintering relationship with Snodgress, Young’s post-stardom personal life was rocked by the fatal overdose of Danny Whitten, the singer-guitarist of Young’s backing band, Crazy Horse. Barely a year later, veteran Young roadie Bruce Berry passed under similar circumstances, inspiring the doom-and-gloom deathwatch vibe of Tonight’s the Night. But Whitten’s death, and its effect on Young’s mood and music, was obvious even earlier, and ran deeper. “I felt responsible,” he told Jimmy McDonough. “It was such a loss. You can’t count on things.” Time Fades Away, the 1973 live release that followed Whitten’s death, is shot through with yearning to return to some way-off, untroubled shore. (On “Journey Through the Past” and “Time Fades Away,” he sings of his native Canada as if it were some mythic Xanadu of distant memory.) It’s a theme that runs through the ditch period records, and the Archives project itself. Young’s songs—particularly in this period he seems so keen on revisiting—pine for the past in a way that resists simple nostalgia. They’re suffused with pessimism, with the pang of wanting to get back to a place he cannot access, because it was never there.
“Cortez the Killer,” Zuma’s seven minute mini-epic about the brutal campaigns of Hernán Cortez, provides Young’s clearest expression of this idea. Young describes the unperturbed life of Cortez’s Aztec victims in knowingly idealized terms: an Eden of beauty and noble sacrifice, where “hate was just a legend.” Suddenly, in the last verse, he blasts into the present tense, turning his mind to a love he let slip, wondering how he lost his way. Connecting personal loss to the sweeping pain of colonial history, “Cortez the Killer” also ties the intimacies of individual passions (that feeling of being in, or out of, love) to the grander feeling of romanticism, of the singer of as some modern-day conquistador. As the song abruptly fades out (the result of an embraced in-studio error), it’s as if its singer, having lost his way, is renouncing the enterprise altogether. Young indulges backwards-looking romanticism only to shrug it off.
Excepting a few of its weirder pieces, like the title track (in which a wonderfully shaggy, out-of-step instrumental locks into a satisfying foot-stomper about growing your own pot), Homegrown feels out of place with much of the ditch era material. Its romanticism is earnest, played down the middle of the road. It’s a record by the Neil Young who lives in everyone’s minds: the warbling, vulnerable songbird, turning blunt lyrical phrases like, “Love is a rose but you’d better not pick it / It only grows when it’s on the vine.” But its release is less about the easy nostalgia of revisiting a bygone era, and more about revisionism. It offers a new vantage on this compelling era in Young’s career, inviting the listener to imagine a whole alternate history.
For Young, nostalgia is as seductive and empty as fame. Instead, he practices what English historian J.H. Plumb might term “destructive” history. Yet it is destructive in a critical and ultimately productive way, because, as Plumb writes in The Death of the Past, it “dissolves those simple, structural generalizations by which our forefathers interrupted the purpose of life in historical terms.” As a song like “Cortez” illustrates, situating oneself in some flow of history offers, in the final analysis, little comfort. When he sings, on “Lookout Joe” from Tonight’s the Night, that “old times were good times,” there’s a sense, given the song’s enumeration of tragedies befalling its colorful cast of characters, that he doesn’t really mean it. Young’s fixation on pastness (be it in individual songs or his whole Archives endeavor) bespeaks a desire to reframe the present, expanding and tweaking his own story as an artist. It’s an act not of self-exaltation but self-criticism—what Christgau called Young’s “obsessive self-examination.”
These releases—oriented less toward lost masterpieces and more towards warts-and-all documentation, chocked with goofs, abandoned half-ideas, audience-alienating in-jokes, and bracingly honesty music—eat away at the idea of Young as an artist lost in wilderness in the mid-’70s, adrift between radio hits like “Heart of Gold” and 1977’s “Like a Hurricane.” Homegrown effectively proves that Young very well could have offered label (and listener) a friendly follow-up to Harvest: a record that would assure his place as another scraggly-haired, pigeon-chested soft rocker in the James Taylor mold. He just didn’t want to.
There’s a political underpinning to all this, as penetrating as the more direct indictments of “Ohio” or “Southern Man.” Young’s unromantic streak puts the lie to moral majority, MAGA-style conservatism, which rings false precisely because it relies on an idea of the past that never existed in the first place. Conservatism regards history as a respectful young man regards his elders—with a crude sense of deference to his forebears. The past is conceived as an inheritance, offering the repose of regarding oneself as part of a larger narrative.
Young’s on-the-sleeve politics, meanwhile, have always seemed a bit evasive. Anti-Nixon protest songs led, in the ’80s, to wishy-washy support for some Reaganomic policies (predictably, Young seemed to double down on this the instant he was called out for it); lifelong activism around stewarding the environment was undercut by the post-9/11, pro-war torch song “Let’s Roll.” More recently, in addition to threatening to take the president to court (embracing the tradition of eager American litigiousness), he has expressed support for Joe Biden, and for Black Lives Matter, writing on his website that America needs to “deal with our white insecurities.” He also, even more recently, vowed to uncouple his Archives website from Facebook, claiming that “the corrupt social platform” was “screwing with our election.” Even that one word—“our”—is significant. It suggests that Young, a newly certified American, self-described “old white guy,” and consummate artist of disillusionment, hasn’t succumbed to the cynicism that US politics seems to encourage.
While Young may rebuff any strict adherence to anything like a progressive agenda, there is a progressive spirit that moves through his music. It’s not about mining for one thing or another but an endless process of interrogation. Not just self-sabotage but a productive, constructive form of destruction. It’s easy to square this wiggliness on certain issues with his refusal, always apparent in his music, to be pinned down. Call him a hippie, and he’ll put on a seersucker jacket. Call him a square, and he’ll drop an electro album. He holds the rare honor of having been sued by his record label for not sounding enough like himself. It hasn’t stopped him.


thenation--2020-08-14--I Lost My Son in a Hail of Bullets at an Israeli Checkpoint

It was supposed to be one of the happiest days of my life .
My daughter Eman was getting married .
What a joy to watch her dote on herself as she did her hair and put on make-up in shades unsuitable for an ordinary day in Abu Dis .
We did not tell her that Ahmad had been shot dead .
She looked so precious in her white dress , the way it hugged her waist and then flared out like a princess ; it changed the spring in her step .
So , we decided to wait to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a few photos unencumbered by a weight that would press on her for the rest of her lifetime : Israeli soldiers had shot her little brother , Ahmad , at a checkpoint and left him to bleed to death for over an hour .
Ahmad had been running errands for Eman ’ s wedding .
He was traveling between our hometown , Abu Dis , a small East Jerusalem suburb separated from the bustling city by Israel ’ s apartheid wall , to Bethlehem .
What used to be a busy thoroughfare for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Jerusalem is now a dead end .
Our backyard has been transformed into a series of 26-foot high concrete slabs that imprison us .
We can still see the golden reflection of Dome of the Rock , where we used to pray on Fridays and special holidays ; Israel has yet to steal the sky from us .
We have also found alternative routes connecting us to other Palestinians .
Ahmad was on one such alternative pathway to Bethlehem , a place he loved and a 15-minute drive from home .
He just @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , ” an infamous Israeli checkpoint .
Ahmad had passed through it many times before but on June 23 he was in a Hyundai he had rented for his sister ’ s wedding .
When the armed soldier motioned for him to pass , he lost control and the car veered into the kiosk where four soldiers stood .
The impact sent a soldier to the ground but , as the video footage shows , she jumped up quickly enough to watch another soldier shoot as many as seven bullets into Ahmad ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ out of the car , most likely in confusion and fear .
He tried to put his arms up but was shot before his elbows reached his shoulders and then he dropped , like a wilted flower , into a fetal position .
Other Palestinians waiting at the checkpoint watched and even videotaped Ahmad as he writhed in pain and slowly bled to death .
An Israeli ambulance arrived within ten minutes and treated the soldier for her light injuries .
They did not treat Ahmad .
The soldiers also refused access to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Ahmad .
My husband received a call and rushed to the scene , but the soldiers refused him the decency of holding his dying son .
Israel declared Ahmad a “ terrorist , ” the accident a car-ramming , and concluded that the shooting was self-defense and the denial of life-saving medical treatment and familial goodbyes were justified .
But there was no real investigation .
No one checked the car ’ s black box or , apparently , read the report in Consumer Affairs detailing Hyundai accidents in South Korea and beyond @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of the fact that even in times of war , incapacitated combatants are entitled to medical care .
No one bothered to consider that , as much as we all hate Israel ’ s occupation , we love our families more , and my Ahmad would never have done this , and certainly not on his baby sister ’ s wedding day .
Still , Israel has held his body captive , refusing us the dignity of a proper burial .
In the past two years , Israeli soldiers have killed over 200 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , many for the simple act of participating in the Great March of Return , after which the Israeli authorities have attempted to smear them as terrorists .
Yet , the record shows that in the vast majority of those incidents , the slain Palestinian did not even have a weapon .
The United Nations Human Rights Council has found that Israeli troops lethally shoot Palestinians on “ mere suspicion ” or as “ a precautionary measure.
” And in 2018 , the Israeli High Court sanctioned its shoot-to-kill policy against protesters in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Ahmad was not an aberration and , as we Palestinians know too well , he was not the first nor will he be the last to be mercilessly stolen from us .
Israel ’ s shoot-to-kill policy is embedded in its racist military regime and territorial expansion , and its commitment to Palestinian removal and dispossession .
We have been steadily squeezed into smaller and smaller spaces as Israeli settlements boom around us , atop our hills where settlers can watch us from above like prison guards .
Ahmad died a week @ @ @ @ @ @ @ another significant amount of Palestinian lands , as much as thirty percent of the West Bank , which could still take place any time .
While the world has been howling at Israel ’ s plans to officially annex West Bank land , we have already lived in a de facto annexation reality for more than 50 years .
Israel has been denying us our basic rights , evicting us from our homes and stealing our land in order to replace us with Jewish settlers , approximately 650,000 of whom now live in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ violation of international law .
We have existed in an annexation reality , with or without a formal declaration , and have been paying a heavy price for it .
Our existence has impeded Israel ’ s vision for uninterrupted sovereignty from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean .
As natives , we are inconveniently in the way , and so Israel , its army , and its armed settlers take away our lives with excruciatingly painful ease .
Ahmad was not the first nor the last one to be stolen from us @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it were not for American support , Israel would not be able to continue its theft of our land or dispossession of our people .
Despite our loss , we are heartened by recent efforts among members of the Democratic party to hold Israel accountable by conditioning the $ 3.8 billion the US gives to Israel each year .
This is the minimum step in the right direction .
Still , we know it is an uphill battle as Republicans and some Democrats insist the US continue to unconditionally support Israel , no @ @ @ @ @ @ @ from us , how many homes they destroy , how many walls they build , how many hilltops they desecrate , and weddings they turn into funerals .
And despite that US support , pressure from six U.S. senators advocating on behalf of Ahmad ’ s paternal aunts , uncles , cousins , and extended family has been impotent in influencing Israel to simply release Ahmad ’ s body for burial .
Ahmad deserved to live .
We deserve justice .
Palestinians deserve freedom .
We have submitted an appeal to five UN @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , and since 2005 there has been a grassroots boycott , divestment , and sanctions campaign for Palestinian rights and freedom .
There is no shortage of options for what the international community can do .
There is only a decision to make : will it continue to be a part of the problem or become a part of the solution ?

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It was supposed to be one of the happiest days of my life. My daughter Eman was getting married. What a joy to watch her dote on herself as she did her hair and put on make-up in shades unsuitable for an ordinary day in Abu Dis. We did not tell her that Ahmad had been shot dead. She looked so precious in her white dress, the way it hugged her waist and then flared out like a princess; it changed the spring in her step. So, we decided to wait to let her know until she had taken a few photos unencumbered by a weight that would press on her for the rest of her lifetime: Israeli soldiers had shot her brother, Ahmad, at a checkpoint and left him to bleed to death for over an hour.
Ahmad had been running errands for Eman’s wedding. He was traveling between our hometown, Abu Dis, a small East Jerusalem suburb separated from the bustling city by Israel’s apartheid wall, to Bethlehem. What used to be a busy thoroughfare for commerce and social life connecting us to Jerusalem is now a dead end. Our backyard has been transformed into a series of 26-foot high concrete slabs that imprison us. We can still see the golden reflection of Dome of the Rock, where we used to pray on Fridays and special holidays; Israel has yet to steal the sky from us. We have also found alternative routes connecting us to other Palestinians. Ahmad was on one such alternative pathway to Bethlehem, a place he loved and a 15-minute drive from home. He just had to pass through the “Container,” an infamous Israeli checkpoint.
Ahmad had passed through it many times before but on June 23 he was in a Hyundai he had rented for his sister’s wedding. When the armed soldier motioned for him to pass, he lost control and the car veered into the kiosk where four soldiers stood. The impact sent a soldier to the ground but, as the video footage shows, she jumped up quickly enough to watch another soldier shoot as many as seven bullets into Ahmad’s upper body. He had stepped out of the car, most likely in confusion and fear. He tried to put his arms up but was shot before his elbows reached his shoulders and then he dropped, like a wilted flower, into a fetal position. Other Palestinians waiting at the checkpoint watched and even videotaped Ahmad as he writhed in pain and slowly bled to death. An Israeli ambulance arrived within ten minutes and treated the soldier for her light injuries. They did not treat Ahmad. The soldiers also refused access to the Palestinian ambulance that tried to reach Ahmad.
My husband received a call and rushed to the scene, but the soldiers refused him the decency of holding his dying son. Israel declared Ahmad a “terrorist,” the accident a car-ramming, and concluded that the shooting was self-defense and the denial of life-saving medical treatment and familial goodbyes were justified. But there was no real investigation.
No one checked the car’s black box or, apparently, read the report in Consumer Affairs detailing Hyundai accidents in South Korea and beyond since 2009. No one took note of the fact that even in times of war, incapacitated combatants are entitled to medical care. No one bothered to consider that, as much as we all hate Israel’s occupation, we love our families more, and my Ahmad would never have done this, and certainly not on his baby sister’s wedding day. Still, Israel has held his body captive, refusing us the dignity of a proper burial. Popular "swipe left below to view more authors"Swipe → The Evisceration of a Public University The Evisceration of a Public University Lisa M. Corrigan The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks Chris Lehmann “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash Dave Zirin A Grim Chronicle of Trump’s Corrupt Public Life A Grim Chronicle of Trump’s Corrupt Public Life Chris Lehmann Popular "swipe left below to view more authors"Swipe → The Evisceration of a Public University The Evisceration of a Public University Lisa M. Corrigan The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks Chris Lehmann “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash Dave Zirin A Grim Chronicle of Trump’s Corrupt Public Life A Grim Chronicle of Trump’s Corrupt Public Life Chris Lehmann
In the past two years, Israeli soldiers have killed over 200 Palestinians under Israel’s shoot-to-kill policy, many for the simple act of participating in the Great March of Return, after which the Israeli authorities have attempted to smear them as terrorists. Yet, the record shows that in the vast majority of those incidents, the slain Palestinian did not even have a weapon. The United Nations Human Rights Council has found that Israeli troops lethally shoot Palestinians on “mere suspicion” or as “a precautionary measure.” And in 2018, the Israeli High Court sanctioned its shoot-to-kill policy against protesters in the Great March of Return in Gaza. Ahmad was not an aberration and, as we Palestinians know too well, he was not the first nor will he be the last to be mercilessly stolen from us.
Israel’s shoot-to-kill policy is embedded in its racist military regime and territorial expansion, and its commitment to Palestinian removal and dispossession. We have been steadily squeezed into smaller and smaller spaces as Israeli settlements boom around us, atop our hills where settlers can watch us from above like prison guards. Ahmad died a week before Israel’s threatened annexation of another significant amount of Palestinian lands, as much as thirty percent of the West Bank, which could still take place any time. While the world has been howling at Israel’s plans to officially annex West Bank land, we have already lived in a de facto annexation reality for more than 50 years. Israel has been denying us our basic rights, evicting us from our homes and stealing our land in order to replace us with Jewish settlers, approximately 650,000 of whom now live in the West Bank and East Jerusalem in violation of international law. Current Issue View our current issue
We have existed in an annexation reality, with or without a formal declaration, and have been paying a heavy price for it. Our existence has impeded Israel’s vision for uninterrupted sovereignty from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean. As natives, we are inconveniently in the way, and so Israel, its army, and its armed settlers take away our lives with excruciatingly painful ease. Ahmad was not the first nor the last one to be stolen from us, but he should be.
If it were not for American support, Israel would not be able to continue its theft of our land or dispossession of our people. Despite our loss, we are heartened by recent efforts among members of the Democratic party to hold Israel accountable by conditioning the $3.8 billion the US gives to Israel each year. This is the minimum step in the right direction. Still, we know it is an uphill battle as Republicans and some Democrats insist the US continue to unconditionally support Israel, no matter how many children they snatch away from us, how many homes they destroy, how many walls they build, how many hilltops they desecrate, and weddings they turn into funerals. And despite that US support, pressure from six U.S. senators advocating on behalf of Ahmad’s paternal aunts, uncles, cousins, and extended family has been impotent in influencing Israel to simply release Ahmad’s body for burial.
Ahmad deserved to live. We deserve justice. Palestinians deserve freedom. We have submitted an appeal to five UN special rapporteurs calling for justice for Ahmad, and since 2005 there has been a grassroots boycott, divestment, and sanctions campaign for Palestinian rights and freedom. There is no shortage of options for what the international community can do. There is only a decision to make: will it continue to be a part of the problem or become a part of the solution?


thenation--2020-08-14--Could Kamala Harris’s Presence on the Ticket Help Usher in a Third Reconstruction?

“ This is a historic moment in American political life .
Historic for myself , for my people .
For the first time in the history of this nation , a political party has chosen a Negro woman for the second highest office in the land.
” Charlotta Bass , an activist and the first Black woman to own and operate a newspaper in the United States , spoke these words in 1952 .
She was the first Black woman to be nominated as vice president of the United States .
As a nominee with the Progressive Party , her @ @ @ @ @ @ @ we win by raising the issues.
” The issues , as she saw them , included housing rights , labor rights , voting rights , and addressing police brutality and harassment .
The recent announcement that Senator Kamala Harris will serve as the Democratic nominee for vice president alongside Joe Biden highlights how Senator Harris stands on the shoulders of women from Sojourner Truth and Fannie Lou Hamer to Amelia Boynton , Shirley Chisolm , and Charlotta Bass .
Harris is one link in a very long chain of Black women , women @ @ @ @ @ @ @ who have pushed this nation toward a more perfect union .
This struggle has been a matter of survival and preservation , both for ourselves and our communities , in the face of racist , patriarchal power structures that have made every attempt to threaten and invalidate our very existence .
Regardless of political party , we who are the heirs of these witnesses must always stand first on the issues .
But the issues that matter to our communities are not separate from questions of representation .
As Alicia Garza wrote in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of Kamala Harris for vice president is “ incredibly significant , as a woman , much less a Black woman , has never served in this role in the 244 years since the country was established.
” Many of us have our voting rights today largely because of Black women .
From the Black women who marched in the suffrage parade in the early 20th century to Black women like Amelia Boynton Robinson , who helped initiate the Voting Rights Campaign in Selma in 1965 , the demographic Kamala Harris represents has consistently @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and marginalized communities .
Just this week , we marked Black Women ’ s Equal Pay Day , passing the number of days into the year that a Black woman must work to make what her white counterpart made last year .
Black women , who disproportionately serve as caregivers and frontline workers , know that representation and occupying a space are not enough .
For every Black woman who will make it into the halls of Congress or the White House , there are many others who will be left to struggle @ @ @ @ @ @ @ be heard too .
Whether this will be a truly transformative political moment depends to a large degree on the 74 million women who were poor or low-income before the Covid-19 crisis and the millions more who have joined them since March of this year .
If these women see not only a face but also a focus on issues that directly impact them , they could create a turnout that fundamentally changes what is possible in our politics .
If a new governing coalition in Washington is compelled to honor the hard @ @ @ @ @ @ @ who are being treated as expendable , the majority of whom are women and women of color , then we will know that this moment is about more than representation .
If we extend free health care to the 80 to 100 million people who were uninsured or underinsured before Covid-19 and the 27 million-plus who have joined them , a majority of whom are women , then we will make this a moment of transformative change .
If we fully restore and expand the Voting Rights Act , which has left millions @ @ @ @ @ @ @ suppression disenfranchised and without a voice in the political process , then this will be a moment to reconstruct democracy .
If we enact policies to protect and preserve our environment , redress the years of environmental racism , and prepare for a climate crisis that is already wreaking havoc on poor communities and communities of color , then we will know that this moment is not just about representation .
The choice of Kamala Harris can turn into the kind of public policy that raises these issues and addresses these inequities , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
If this happens , then this ticket is more than unbeatable .
It will turn the mourning in the streets into the kind of public policy that can push America into a Third Reconstruction , as transformative as the Reconstruction that followed after the end of slavery and the Second Reconstruction that transformed American society through the civil rights movement .
But if we don ’ t see the transformative change that Black women and women of conscience have always pushed toward , it will be a disappointment not only to this @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of matriarchs in our family and Senator Harris ’ s family .
We believe that deep down inside , Senator Harris knows this and will continue the tradition of the courageous women who came before her to fight for all of us .
The question is whether the Democratic Party can resist being defined by the labels of left or right and instead embrace the moral center of our deepest religious values and constitutional values , which demand that in every policy and decision we establish justice .
With the assaults on the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the resurgence of overt police and policy racism , and a public health crisis that is disproportionately claiming the lives of poor communities and communities of color , this moment requires nothing less than the radical reimagining of America that Black women have always championed .
True transformation , a radical restructuring of our society , and a genuine democracy inclusive of all of us is what our country needs now , more than ever .
The blood , sweat , and tears of those who struggled before us demands it and our @ @ @ @ @ @ @ under God , indivisible with liberty and justice for all ” depends on it .

Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II, Dr. Sharrelle Barber, Rebekah Barber

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“This is a historic moment in American political life. Historic for myself, for my people. For the first time in the history of this nation, a political party has chosen a Negro woman for the second highest office in the land.” Charlotta Bass, an activist and the first Black woman to own and operate a newspaper in the United States, spoke these words in 1952. She was the first Black woman to be nominated as vice president of the United States. As a nominee with the Progressive Party, her slogan was “Win or lose, we win by raising the issues.” The issues, as she saw them, included housing rights, labor rights, voting rights, and addressing police brutality and harassment.
The recent announcement that Senator Kamala Harris will serve as the Democratic nominee for vice president alongside Joe Biden highlights how Senator Harris stands on the shoulders of women from Sojourner Truth and Fannie Lou Hamer to Amelia Boynton, Shirley Chisolm, and Charlotta Bass. Harris is one link in a very long chain of Black women, women of color, and women of conscience who have pushed this nation toward a more perfect union. This struggle has been a matter of survival and preservation, both for ourselves and our communities, in the face of racist, patriarchal power structures that have made every attempt to threaten and invalidate our very existence.
Regardless of political party, we who are the heirs of these witnesses must always stand first on the issues. But the issues that matter to our communities are not separate from questions of representation. As Alicia Garza wrote in a recent Glamour article, the nomination of Kamala Harris for vice president is “incredibly significant, as a woman, much less a Black woman, has never served in this role in the 244 years since the country was established.” Many of us have our voting rights today largely because of Black women. From the Black women who marched in the suffrage parade in the early 20th century to Black women like Amelia Boynton Robinson, who helped initiate the Voting Rights Campaign in Selma in 1965, the demographic Kamala Harris represents has consistently led on issues that matter to poor and marginalized communities.
Just this week, we marked Black Women’s Equal Pay Day, passing the number of days into the year that a Black woman must work to make what her white counterpart made last year. Black women, who disproportionately serve as caregivers and frontline workers, know that representation and occupying a space are not enough. For every Black woman who will make it into the halls of Congress or the White House, there are many others who will be left to struggle in the streets, and they must be heard too. The First Kamala Harris Makes History, Many Times Over Joan Walsh
Whether this will be a truly transformative political moment depends to a large degree on the 74 million women who were poor or low-income before the Covid-19 crisis and the millions more who have joined them since March of this year. If these women see not only a face but also a focus on issues that directly impact them, they could create a turnout that fundamentally changes what is possible in our politics. If a new governing coalition in Washington is compelled to honor the hard work of the low-wage and essential workers who are being treated as expendable, the majority of whom are women and women of color, then we will know that this moment is about more than representation. Popular "swipe left below to view more authors"Swipe → The Evisceration of a Public University The Evisceration of a Public University Lisa M. Corrigan The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks Chris Lehmann “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash Dave Zirin A Grim Chronicle of Trump’s Corrupt Public Life A Grim Chronicle of Trump’s Corrupt Public Life Chris Lehmann Popular "swipe left below to view more authors"Swipe → The Evisceration of a Public University The Evisceration of a Public University Lisa M. Corrigan The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks Chris Lehmann “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash Dave Zirin A Grim Chronicle of Trump’s Corrupt Public Life A Grim Chronicle of Trump’s Corrupt Public Life Chris Lehmann
If we extend free health care to the 80 to 100 million people who were uninsured or underinsured before Covid-19 and the 27 million-plus who have joined them, a majority of whom are women, then we will make this a moment of transformative change. If we fully restore and expand the Voting Rights Act, which has left millions of women who suffer from racist voter suppression disenfranchised and without a voice in the political process, then this will be a moment to reconstruct democracy. If we enact policies to protect and preserve our environment, redress the years of environmental racism, and prepare for a climate crisis that is already wreaking havoc on poor communities and communities of color, then we will know that this moment is not just about representation.
The choice of Kamala Harris can turn into the kind of public policy that raises these issues and addresses these inequities, as women of conscience have always demanded. If this happens, then this ticket is more than unbeatable. It will turn the mourning in the streets into the kind of public policy that can push America into a Third Reconstruction, as transformative as the Reconstruction that followed after the end of slavery and the Second Reconstruction that transformed American society through the civil rights movement. But if we don’t see the transformative change that Black women and women of conscience have always pushed toward, it will be a disappointment not only to this generation but also to all the generations of matriarchs in our family and Senator Harris’s family. We believe that deep down inside, Senator Harris knows this and will continue the tradition of the courageous women who came before her to fight for all of us. The question is whether the Democratic Party can resist being defined by the labels of left or right and instead embrace the moral center of our deepest religious values and constitutional values, which demand that in every policy and decision we establish justice.
With the assaults on the very foundation of our democratic institutions, the resurgence of overt police and policy racism, and a public health crisis that is disproportionately claiming the lives of poor communities and communities of color, this moment requires nothing less than the radical reimagining of America that Black women have always championed. True transformation, a radical restructuring of our society, and a genuine democracy inclusive of all of us is what our country needs now, more than ever. The blood, sweat, and tears of those who struggled before us demands it and our collective lives as “one nation, under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all” depends on it.


thenation--2020-08-15--80 Days Until Election Day

80 Days Until Election Day

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thenation--2020-08-17--The 2 Maria Schneiders

The 2 Maria Schneiders

There have been two Maria Schneiders in the cultural arena—or three , counting the late French actor from Last Tango in Paris—until now .
The first is an internationally esteemed composer and conductor , the recipient of five Grammy Awards and 12 nominations for jazz and classical works lauded for their luxurious beauty , enveloping warmth , and connectedness to the natural world .
The second is a fiery political activist , an advocate of musicians ’ rights and a critic of tech companies , who has organized creative artists in resistance to the oppressive practices of Google and YouTube @ @ @ @ @ @ @ same body but at different times : one by night , onstage in concert halls and jazz clubs around the world , the other by day , at lecterns at universities and behind a microphone at congressional hearings .
The two Maria Schneiders have inched closer and closer in recent years , with the composer taking advantage of funding from the Library of Congress to experiment with music on the themes of the activist Schneider ’ s work .
I first heard the product of that commission , an 11-minute instrumental piece called @ @ @ @ @ @ @ club show by the Maria Schneider Orchestra , the 18-piece ensemble she has led since 1992 , at the Jazz Standard in New York City two years ago .
I was stunned—jolted and baffled and thrilled in a way I can compare only to the first night I walked into CBGB and saw Richard Hell and the Voidoids or the first time I experienced Cecil Taylor at the Village Vanguard .
With the exception of one song she arranged for another artist , nothing I had ever heard from Schneider prepared me for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Data Lords , ” and I had been paying close attention to the Maria Schneider Orchestra since the ’ 90s , when I went almost every Monday night to the group ’ s weekly residency at a little jazz club called Visiones in Greenwich Village .
As a composer and leader of her own ensemble for nearly 30 years , Schneider has recorded nine albums of music that certainly qualifies as jazz , with a few exceptions , and that has been performed , in most cases , by a band that is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ be reductive and misleading to call her work big-band jazz .
The music of the Maria Schneider Orchestra is orchestral in aesthetic as well as name : intellectually ambitious , texturally varied and complex , sometimes grand but never grandiose , and singular—unmistakably the work of a highly individualistic creator .
Her work , in its harmonic density and ever-shifting structure , makes no effort to hide the influence of classical composers such as Frederick Delius and Aaron Copland and of jazz bandleaders and arrangers like Claude Thornhill and Gil Evans .
( @ @ @ @ @ @ @ who was a protégé of Thornhill , and she assisted Evans in preparing the score for Martin Scorsese ’ s The Color of Money . )
At the same time , Schneider ’ s music has always been fiercely her own and most distinctive for its deep humanity and fearless beauty .
The one exception before the “ Data Lords ” piece I heard at the Jazz Standard was Schneider ’ s unexpected collaboration with David Bowie , the song “ Sue ( Or in a Season of Crime ) , ” which @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Created at his initiative after he saw a concert of Schneider ’ s , the song is a genre-blurring work of grim ecstasy , a message to a lover whom the singer ( Bowie ) plans to murder .
The accompanying music , performed by her orchestra with Schneider conducting , swirls like a room spinning in the last moments of consciousness and won her a Grammy in 2016 for best arrangement , instruments , and vocals .
He invited her to help make his next album with him , but she @ @ @ @ @ @ @ her tenor saxophonist Donny McCaslin , which Bowie did on what was his final release , Blackstar .
Schneider had a big project of her own to do , one that the aural mood of Bowie ’ s murderous ballad foreshadowed .
That big project was an album , also titled Data Lords , and with it , Schneider has fully united her musical and political selves , working with repurposed fearlessness to tackle the impact of the digital revolution on humankind .
Data Lords is a set of two albums : the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ industries and their purposes , overt and covert , called The Digital World , the second an ardent evocation of life before and apart from the wireless technologies , Our Natural World .
As a study of parallel worlds defined by their differences , the project clearly mirrors its creator ’ s two selves .
But it ’ s really not so binary .
Beyond the dualism in its format , Data Lords is a work of holistic creativity .
The music of outrage and critique in the first album has all the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of melancholy and reverence does in the second .
I can ’ t conceive of anyone else creating this music , unless Delius has been writing with Bowie on the other side .
The instrumental colors and rhythms in several selections on The Digital World ( Ben Monder on electric guitar on the opening track , “ A World Lost , ” Mike Rodriguez on electronically processed trumpet on the title track , and Greg Gisbert on processed trumpet on “ CG CG , Is Anybody There ” ) are programmatic in a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 21st century but not literally .
They sound like the way life in the age of omnipresent screens and never-present people feels—intoxicating , enervating , self-gratifying , and self-negating .
The six tracks on Our Natural World , much the same , evokes timeless but fragile beauties and mysteries of the earth with the sonic density and technical exactness of the tracks on The Digital World .
That Schneider refers to the natural environment but not the digital sphere as “ our ” world reminds us of our arrogant presumption of sovereignty over @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to it .
She writes with passion on both the preciousness of our natural heritage and the dangers in our reliance on digital devices in the 64-page booklet accompanying the music : One doesn ’ t have to agree with Schneider about the horrors of the digital culture or the glories of nature to be moved by this extraordinarily serious and emotive piece of work .
Yet the fact that it is so moving makes Data Lords persuasive .
Watching and listening to Schneider ’ s two selves over the years , I @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the composer ’ s art than the activist ’ s arguments .
Now that they ’ re united and I don ’ t have to choose , I ’ m with them both .

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There have been two Maria Schneiders in the cultural arena—or three, counting the late French actor from Last Tango in Paris—until now. The first is an internationally esteemed composer and conductor, the recipient of five Grammy Awards and 12 nominations for jazz and classical works lauded for their luxurious beauty, enveloping warmth, and connectedness to the natural world. The second is a fiery political activist, an advocate of musicians’ rights and a critic of tech companies, who has organized creative artists in resistance to the oppressive practices of Google and YouTube. Both Maria Schneiders have inhabited the same body but at different times: one by night, onstage in concert halls and jazz clubs around the world, the other by day, at lecterns at universities and behind a microphone at congressional hearings.
The two Maria Schneiders have inched closer and closer in recent years, with the composer taking advantage of funding from the Library of Congress to experiment with music on the themes of the activist Schneider’s work. I first heard the product of that commission, an 11-minute instrumental piece called “Data Lords,” in a club show by the Maria Schneider Orchestra, the 18-piece ensemble she has led since 1992, at the Jazz Standard in New York City two years ago. I was stunned—jolted and baffled and thrilled in a way I can compare only to the first night I walked into CBGB and saw Richard Hell and the Voidoids or the first time I experienced Cecil Taylor at the Village Vanguard. With the exception of one song she arranged for another artist, nothing I had ever heard from Schneider prepared me for the dark, cerebral fury of “Data Lords,” and I had been paying close attention to the Maria Schneider Orchestra since the ’90s, when I went almost every Monday night to the group’s weekly residency at a little jazz club called Visiones in Greenwich Village.
As a composer and leader of her own ensemble for nearly 30 years, Schneider has recorded nine albums of music that certainly qualifies as jazz, with a few exceptions, and that has been performed, in most cases, by a band that is certainly big. Still, it would be reductive and misleading to call her work big-band jazz. The music of the Maria Schneider Orchestra is orchestral in aesthetic as well as name: intellectually ambitious, texturally varied and complex, sometimes grand but never grandiose, and singular—unmistakably the work of a highly individualistic creator. Her work, in its harmonic density and ever-shifting structure, makes no effort to hide the influence of classical composers such as Frederick Delius and Aaron Copland and of jazz bandleaders and arrangers like Claude Thornhill and Gil Evans. (Schneider was a protégé of Evans, who was a protégé of Thornhill, and she assisted Evans in preparing the score for Martin Scorsese’s The Color of Money.) At the same time, Schneider’s music has always been fiercely her own and most distinctive for its deep humanity and fearless beauty.
The one exception before the “Data Lords” piece I heard at the Jazz Standard was Schneider’s unexpected collaboration with David Bowie, the song “Sue (Or in a Season of Crime),” which he released as a single in 2014. Created at his initiative after he saw a concert of Schneider’s, the song is a genre-blurring work of grim ecstasy, a message to a lover whom the singer (Bowie) plans to murder. The accompanying music, performed by her orchestra with Schneider conducting, swirls like a room spinning in the last moments of consciousness and won her a Grammy in 2016 for best arrangement, instruments, and vocals. He invited her to help make his next album with him, but she declined, recommending that he work with her tenor saxophonist Donny McCaslin, which Bowie did on what was his final release, Blackstar. Schneider had a big project of her own to do, one that the aural mood of Bowie’s murderous ballad foreshadowed. Popular "swipe left below to view more authors"Swipe → The Evisceration of a Public University The Evisceration of a Public University Lisa M. Corrigan The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks Chris Lehmann “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash Dave Zirin A Grim Chronicle of Trump’s Corrupt Public Life A Grim Chronicle of Trump’s Corrupt Public Life Chris Lehmann Popular "swipe left below to view more authors"Swipe → The Evisceration of a Public University The Evisceration of a Public University Lisa M. Corrigan The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks Chris Lehmann “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash Dave Zirin A Grim Chronicle of Trump’s Corrupt Public Life A Grim Chronicle of Trump’s Corrupt Public Life Chris Lehmann
That big project was an album, also titled Data Lords, and with it, Schneider has fully united her musical and political selves, working with repurposed fearlessness to tackle the impact of the digital revolution on humankind. Data Lords is a set of two albums: the first a musical consideration of the tech industries and their purposes, overt and covert, called The Digital World, the second an ardent evocation of life before and apart from the wireless technologies, Our Natural World. As a study of parallel worlds defined by their differences, the project clearly mirrors its creator’s two selves. But it’s really not so binary.
Beyond the dualism in its format, Data Lords is a work of holistic creativity. The music of outrage and critique in the first album has all the emotion and conceptual integrity that the music of melancholy and reverence does in the second. I can’t conceive of anyone else creating this music, unless Delius has been writing with Bowie on the other side. The instrumental colors and rhythms in several selections on The Digital World (Ben Monder on electric guitar on the opening track, “A World Lost,” Mike Rodriguez on electronically processed trumpet on the title track, and Greg Gisbert on processed trumpet on “CQ CQ, Is Anybody There”) are programmatic in a way, suggesting the sound of the 21st century but not literally. They sound like the way life in the age of omnipresent screens and never-present people feels—intoxicating, enervating, self-gratifying, and self-negating. The six tracks on Our Natural World, much the same, evokes timeless but fragile beauties and mysteries of the earth with the sonic density and technical exactness of the tracks on The Digital World.
That Schneider refers to the natural environment but not the digital sphere as “our” world reminds us of our arrogant presumption of sovereignty over nature as well as our common responsibility to it. She writes with passion on both the preciousness of our natural heritage and the dangers in our reliance on digital devices in the 64-page booklet accompanying the music:
While big data companies have only recently come under real public scrutiny, we musicians have had our eyes on them for years. We were among the first to see our life works exploited and traded on the internet for data. Now, nearly everyone’s life is similarly exploited. There’s hardly a place where some company isn’t extracting and refining the minutiae of our lives to manipulate us to buy things, to influence us, or to fuel machine learning and artificial intelligence.
One doesn’t have to agree with Schneider about the horrors of the digital culture or the glories of nature to be moved by this extraordinarily serious and emotive piece of work. Yet the fact that it is so moving makes Data Lords persuasive. Watching and listening to Schneider’s two selves over the years, I’ve always been more taken by the composer’s art than the activist’s arguments. Now that they’re united and I don’t have to choose, I’m with them both.


thenation--2020-08-17--Progressives, Get Ready to Push Them Left

Joe Biden ’ s selection of Senator Kamala Harris was received well across the Democratic Party ’ s political spectrum , setting up the final push to oust President Donald Trump and take back the Senate from majority leader Mitch McConnell .
It also clarifies the challenge that progressives will face after the election .
Pundits celebrated the elevation of a woman of color and a child of immigrants , saluting Biden for repaying the African American women so critical to his victory in the primaries .
Climate activists were enthusiastic given Harris ’ s early endorsement of the Green @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Progressive leaders ritualistically signaled their approval .
Jesse Jackson celebrated her as a “ proven vote getter , ” despite a surprisingly lackluster run for the presidency .
Elizabeth Warren hailed her for “ when she took on Wall Street during the financial crisis as Attorney General [ of California ] , ” a claim that would amuse Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin , the “ foreclosure king , ” whom she refused to prosecute despite evidence of “ widespread misconduct.
” Bernie Sanders tweeted his congratulations , noting that she “ understands @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for all , ” despite her awkward retreat from support of Medicare for All , which was costly to her presidential bid .
Numerous talking heads suggested she ’ d turn out a massive black vote , despite the fact that she ran consistently behind Bernie Sanders among black voters .
Trump ’ s insults have helped consolidate her support since she was announced , as he libeled her as an “ extraordinarily nasty , ” “ madwoman , ” and his campaign incoherently ranted that she was a too-tough prosecutor who would @ @ @ @ @ @ @ extremist too moderate to satisfy the Sanders voters .
In fact , Biden ’ s choice wasn ’ t much of a surprise .
In addition to repaying those who brought him to the dance , he chose someone who , like himself , is known less for her ideological commitment or her policy acumen than as an establishment politician , responsive to the party ’ s deep-pocket interests , who tacks to the party ’ s prevailing winds .
The Complete Dysfunction of the GOP Is on Full Display Congress Isn ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Relief That reality frames the challenge that progressives will face not only in the fall campaign but in relation to a Biden-Harris administration .
If victorious , Biden , as he has recognized , will take office amid catastrophic conditions not seen since Roosevelt took office amid the Great Depression .
In response , Biden—with a boost from Bernie Sanders—has begun to put forth an agenda embracing bolder measures , from a green growth investment plan to tuition-free college for 80 percent of Americans and more .
But the “ Roosevelt moment ” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ movements and activists .
When Roosevelt was first elected , he too wasn ’ t known for his ideological commitment or his policy acumen .
Walter Lippmann dismissed him as “ a pleasant man who , without any important qualifications for the office , would very much like to be President.
” FDR did understand that the economic crisis required bold action .
An early flurry of activity—much driven in the “ first hundred days ” —helped staunch the economic decline but wasn ’ t sufficient to end the Depression .
What FDR @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is called the “ second New Deal , ” the reforms in 1935–36 that included the Wagner Act , which transformed labor law and empowered workers ; the Works Progress Administration , which launched massive public works projects ; and the Social Security Act , which provided the beginnings of a modern welfare state—including retirement security , aid to dependent children , unemployment insurance , and aid to the blind .
Three elements were critical to these fundamental reforms .
The crisis demanded reform and weakened the ability of the discredited business lobby @ @ @ @ @ @ @ pressure—the growth of militant and increasingly disruptive strikes , the surging popularity of populist movements that challenged FDR politically—pushed Roosevelt and the Democrats to act before the 1936 reelection campaign .
Progressive liberals inside and outside the Congress and the administration devised , championed , and drove the reforms—often in the face of Roosevelt ’ s hesitations .
If elected , Biden and Harris will call for immediate action to address the calamities they inherit .
An administration significantly staffed by veterans drawn from the Clinton and Obama years will inevitably be too @ @ @ @ @ @ @ expansive abroad .
Entrenched financial interests from Wall Street to Silicon Valley will resist fundamental change .
If real reforms are to occur , progressives will have to drive them .
Fundamental change will require independent , militant popular mobilization building even in the face of Democratic demands for unity .
The historic Black Lives Matter demonstrations , the women ’ s uprising , the growth of wildcat strikes led by the teacher ’ s strikes and the Fight for $ 15 , the climate movement , the progressive revival sparked by the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ what must grow into a bonfire .
As in the New Deal , the weakness of organized labor will require independent organization to mobilize the anger of working and poor people .
As they did with Roosevelt , progressives inside and outside of Congress will need to act independently to craft reform legislation , convene hearings that expose the powerful , and provide public platforms that can drive bolder reforms .
In this regard , the continuing victories of progressive insurgents—represented by the victories of Jamaal Bowman , Cori Bush , Mondaire Jones @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ; the sweeping wins of the members of “ the squad ” ( Representatives Alexandria Ocasio Cortez , Rashida Tlaib , and Ilhan Omar ) over corporate-funded challengers ; and the growth and increasing clout of the Congressional Progressive Caucus under the leadership of Mark Pocan and Pramila Jayapal—put progressive reformers in position to drive the agenda in the Democratic House .
Progressive Senators led by Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren plus Sherrod Brown , Jeff Merkley , and a dozen more will have an outsize influence if Democrats take the Senate .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ more sophisticated and progressive think tanks , grassroots movements , and social media networks offers ideas and resources increasingly competitive with the established party network .
An era of reform requires a crushing repudiation of Trump and Republicans in the Senate .
Presidential leadership is important .
But far more essential are people ’ s movements and progressive leaders forceful enough to generate gale-force winds of change .
That isn ’ t the responsibility of Biden or Harris .
It is the challenge that activists and aroused citizens must meet .

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Get The Nation’s Weekly Newsletter Fridays. The best of the week. Email By signing up, you confirm that you are over the age of 16 and agree to receive occasional promotional offers for programs that support The Nation’s journalism. You can read our Privacy Policy here. Fridays. The best of the week.
Thank you for signing up for The Nation’s weekly newsletter.
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Sign up for our Wine Club today. Did you know you can support The Nation by drinking wine?
Joe Biden’s selection of Senator Kamala Harris was received well across the Democratic Party’s political spectrum, setting up the final push to oust President Donald Trump and take back the Senate from majority leader Mitch McConnell. It also clarifies the challenge that progressives will face after the election.
Pundits celebrated the elevation of a woman of color and a child of immigrants, saluting Biden for repaying the African American women so critical to his victory in the primaries. Climate activists were enthusiastic given Harris’s early endorsement of the Green New Deal and work against environmental racism.
Progressive leaders ritualistically signaled their approval. Jesse Jackson celebrated her as a “proven vote getter,” despite a surprisingly lackluster run for the presidency. Elizabeth Warren hailed her for “when she took on Wall Street during the financial crisis as Attorney General [of California],” a claim that would amuse Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, the “foreclosure king,” whom she refused to prosecute despite evidence of “widespread misconduct.” Bernie Sanders tweeted his congratulations, noting that she “understands what it takes to…fight for health care for all,” despite her awkward retreat from support of Medicare for All, which was costly to her presidential bid. Numerous talking heads suggested she’d turn out a massive black vote, despite the fact that she ran consistently behind Bernie Sanders among black voters. Trump’s insults have helped consolidate her support since she was announced, as he libeled her as an “extraordinarily nasty,” “madwoman,” and his campaign incoherently ranted that she was a too-tough prosecutor who would defund the police, and a socialist extremist too moderate to satisfy the Sanders voters.
In fact, Biden’s choice wasn’t much of a surprise. In addition to repaying those who brought him to the dance, he chose someone who, like himself, is known less for her ideological commitment or her policy acumen than as an establishment politician, responsive to the party’s deep-pocket interests, who tacks to the party’s prevailing winds. Popular "swipe left below to view more authors"Swipe → The Evisceration of a Public University The Evisceration of a Public University Lisa M. Corrigan The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks Chris Lehmann “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash Dave Zirin A Grim Chronicle of Trump’s Corrupt Public Life A Grim Chronicle of Trump’s Corrupt Public Life Chris Lehmann Popular "swipe left below to view more authors"Swipe → The Evisceration of a Public University The Evisceration of a Public University Lisa M. Corrigan The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks Chris Lehmann “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash Dave Zirin A Grim Chronicle of Trump’s Corrupt Public Life A Grim Chronicle of Trump’s Corrupt Public Life Chris Lehmann More From Robert L. Borosage Jesse Jackson Is Keeping Hope Alive July 13, 2023 The Left Should Support Ending Violence in Ukraine April 27, 2023 Biden, Go Bold in the State of the Union February 6, 2023
That reality frames the challenge that progressives will face not only in the fall campaign but in relation to a Biden-Harris administration. If victorious, Biden, as he has recognized, will take office amid catastrophic conditions not seen since Roosevelt took office amid the Great Depression. In response, Biden—with a boost from Bernie Sanders—has begun to put forth an agenda embracing bolder measures, from a green growth investment plan to tuition-free college for 80 percent of Americans and more. But the “Roosevelt moment” has far more compelling implications for progressive movements and activists.
When Roosevelt was first elected, he too wasn’t known for his ideological commitment or his policy acumen. Walter Lippmann dismissed him as “a pleasant man who, without any important qualifications for the office, would very much like to be President.” FDR did understand that the economic crisis required bold action. An early flurry of activity—much driven in the “first hundred days”—helped staunch the economic decline but wasn’t sufficient to end the Depression.
What FDR is most remembered for came in what is called the “second New Deal,” the reforms in 1935–36 that included the Wagner Act, which transformed labor law and empowered workers; the Works Progress Administration, which launched massive public works projects; and the Social Security Act, which provided the beginnings of a modern welfare state—including retirement security, aid to dependent children, unemployment insurance, and aid to the blind. Current Issue View our current issue
Three elements were critical to these fundamental reforms. The crisis demanded reform and weakened the ability of the discredited business lobby to block it. Mobilized insurgent popular pressure—the growth of militant and increasingly disruptive strikes, the surging popularity of populist movements that challenged FDR politically—pushed Roosevelt and the Democrats to act before the 1936 reelection campaign. Progressive liberals inside and outside the Congress and the administration devised, championed, and drove the reforms—often in the face of Roosevelt’s hesitations.
If elected, Biden and Harris will call for immediate action to address the calamities they inherit. An administration significantly staffed by veterans drawn from the Clinton and Obama years will inevitably be too cautious at home and most likely too expansive abroad. Entrenched financial interests from Wall Street to Silicon Valley will resist fundamental change. If real reforms are to occur, progressives will have to drive them.
Fundamental change will require independent, militant popular mobilization building even in the face of Democratic demands for unity. The historic Black Lives Matter demonstrations, the women’s uprising, the growth of wildcat strikes led by the teacher’s strikes and the Fight for $15, the climate movement, the progressive revival sparked by the Sanders’s campaigns provide kindling for what must grow into a bonfire. As in the New Deal, the weakness of organized labor will require independent organization to mobilize the anger of working and poor people.
As they did with Roosevelt, progressives inside and outside of Congress will need to act independently to craft reform legislation, convene hearings that expose the powerful, and provide public platforms that can drive bolder reforms. Pulling Left How to Move Biden Left John Nichols
In this regard, the continuing victories of progressive insurgents—represented by the victories of Jamaal Bowman, Cori Bush, Mondaire Jones, Ritchie Torres, and Marie Newman; the sweeping wins of the members of “the squad”(Representatives Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, Rashida Tlaib, and Ilhan Omar) over corporate-funded challengers; and the growth and increasing clout of the Congressional Progressive Caucus under the leadership of Mark Pocan and Pramila Jayapal—put progressive reformers in position to drive the agenda in the Democratic House. Progressive Senators led by Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren plus Sherrod Brown, Jeff Merkley, and a dozen more will have an outsize influence if Democrats take the Senate. On the outside, the proliferation of more sophisticated and progressive think tanks, grassroots movements, and social media networks offers ideas and resources increasingly competitive with the established party network.
An era of reform requires a crushing repudiation of Trump and Republicans in the Senate. Presidential leadership is important. But far more essential are people’s movements and progressive leaders forceful enough to generate gale-force winds of change. That isn’t the responsibility of Biden or Harris. It is the challenge that activists and aroused citizens must meet.