Neil Young spreads rumours on the internets

Most thrilling about the hasty release of Neil Young’s new album-length outburst, Living With War – streaming online in its lo-fi entirety in the days leading up to its availability as a paid digital download – is the long-awaited embrace of the modern-day music distribution paradigm by a known major label artist. Friday morning, those who signed up for a mailing list were sent a guide to resources for spreading the virus, with the opportunity to use their own website to host an album stream (without the abiility to skip or pause), or interface via Neil’s page at MySpace (which makes it easier to re-listen to segments in the tradition of 8-track tapes). Coverage by Jon Pareles in The New York Times points out that while the “metal folk protest” message on Living With War isn’t terribly complex, “A song for the internet doesn’t have to be one for the ages.” And, in this case, the artist himself wholeheartedly agrees – Young was in fine form during a clip from Showbiz Tonight, viewed online by many more thousands via YouTube than ever watch CNN Headline News, refuting the hysterical inferences – taken from sites like NewsMax.com – that he’s an opportunistic washed-up Canuckistani bashing George W. Bush in order to score a quick hit record. But when was the last time that lyrics from a rock album were reported as news? Robert Everett-Green offered a full advance review in The Globe and Mail – facilitated by meeting Young’s brother “outside a bagel joint in north Toronto” and then taking notes in a Cadillac parked on a side street. An interview with The Guess Who dudes by the Toronto Sun provided the unsurprising revelation that while Randy Bachman admires the effort by his pal, Burton Cummings believes that someone not born in the U.S.A. shouldn’t be complaining about such issues, and both of them feel too old to write another “American Woman”. Most curious from an anthropological perspective is that Neil Young is just a few months older than the President he’s suggesting be impeached for lying – the generation gap between protesting rocker and political target has vanished. So, the likes of Don Henley, Stevie Nicks and Tom Petty unabashedly perform at the bat mitzvah at the daughter of a defense contractor, because where did that old hippie idealism ever get anyone, really? Well, it’s made Neil Young a new media superstar for one weekend in 2006 – sounding as if his 40 years of stateside residency was but a dress rehearsal for this 40 minutes of friction.