Podunkian Music Club

Neil Young-Rockin’ in the Free world

Since the day he arrived in California with his guitar, Neil Young has been the landscape of American music. His transformations and musical ministrations have set the soundtrack through the decades of upheaval in the United States, the calm and the turbulent moments alike recorded in his unique storytelling.

Sometimes he features urgent missives for change, other times quiet reflections on things that have gone wrong. Always entrancing, his music reflects the world he sees and it's not always a pleasant vision.

Tonight on the Music Club it’s a look back some fifteen years, 1989's Rockin’ in the Free world is a vision of the American dream gone terribly wrong, Young walks the streets of America as though a harbinger of doom, all that’s missing is a scythe to suggest the end is nigh, and for many it probably was.

His music is never more entrancing than when he’s delivering a message, whether it was the early days with Winnipeg’s Squires, then on to the Buffalo Springfield with For What it’s worth, through the Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young era with Ohio and Chicago, or his solo material right up to the latest offerings from last year’s Living With War, his music is still topical and still immediate.

There’s much to choose from the Young library, many styles through the years, but still a relevancy to the issues of today. He's a crowd favourite here at the Music Club, an artist for which we frequently head to the well for more from.

Rockin’ in the Free World, is as current today, as it was the day it was first written. In fact it's a worrisome theme to realize that nothing, not a thing seems to have changed since that song was first composed, in fact in some cases it's probably only become worse.

Ours is a world that will no doubt leave him with no shortage of material to work with, tumultuous times need their historians, having dodged his own date with the reaper, we suspect Neil will be there to record it for us. His journey has been that of a contemporary historian and vital musician, with some kickin’ licks to go with the words.

Artist—Neil Young
Recording—Freedom