Pullin’ ‘Tubes: Neil Young’s “Odd” Period

Ladies and gentlemen, we give you our newest contributor, Sleepy Floyd…

“I wonder what Old Man is going to sound like?” That’s just what this Berlin audience was probably wondering during this odd, 1980s skinny tie period for Neil Young during his 1982 Trans tour. Bob Dylan went through some phases, like Christianity for example, but you just can’t picture Dylan going Kraftwerk and shaking his ass during Idiot Wind. Trans featured Neil singing through a vocodor on five of its nine tracks, including the following “dance” number, Sample and Hold.

As Neil struts the catwalk singing through his vocodor, the crowd appears to be in “What The Fuck?” lockstep, with only a few of the usually musically orgasmic Europeans clapping or pumping a fist. And that’s E-Street Band guitarist Nils Lofgren gettin’ funky with Neil, while Crazy Horse member Ralph Molina lays down the snappy beat. Strange times.

[youtube]D0pubgjW3yw[/youtube]

This performance might be a Moog solo short of some sort of folk Funkadelic, but the only thing more confusing is that Shakey decided to go Rockabilly and then straight country on his next two album, 1983’s Everybody’s Rockin’ and 1985’s Old Ways. Who goes from Flock of Seagulls to Willie Nelson so quickly?

Related Content

6 Responses

  1. Amazing. I would’ve loved to have seen that. This is from Wikipedia, certainly not concrete, but I remember hearing this before from a reliable source….

    “Recorded partially with vocoders, synthesizers, and other devices that modified instruments and vocals with electronic effects, it is sometimes considered an experiment related to finding a technology that would become a means to communicate for Young’s son (with his wife Pegi), Ben, who has severe cerebral palsy and cannot speak”

  2. Pingback: 3e09c0aaa4e0

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Recent Posts

New to Glide

Keep up-to-date with Glide

Twitter