This album is made out of simple, spare materials — banjo at the forefront, fiddle, acoustic guitar and synth drones filling out the backdrop. But somehow, Johnny Bell’s Mountain States manages to sound absolutely immense and sweeping, like the stark, wide-open landscapes of the musician’s home state of New Mexico. On a similar level as the great Nathan Bowles, the banjo isn’t some dusty Americana relic in Bell’s hands; it’s a living, breathing thing, resonant details and sparkling melodies ringing out with every pluck and strum.
As a bootleg bonus to this week’s “T-Bone”-tastic All One Song episode with Matthew Specktor, here’s a little something I threw together — a live Re·ac·tor redux made up of performances spanning 1978-2013. Neil and Crazy Horse didn’t tour behind this album, so these songs never really became onstage standards — and indeed, this little megamix is incomplete since both “Rapid Transit” and “Get Back On It” have never been played live. There’s still time, Neil!
What a strange album though, even by Neil’s standards — its themes seem to be transportation, gentrification and frustration. Also career choices.
One interesting thing is that “Southern Pacific,” “Motor City” and “Shots” are all represented here in solo renditions, giving Re·ac·tor that acoustic/electric duality that Neil was so fond of at the time. That “Southern Pacific,” taped in 1999, is particularly breathtaking, the haunting banjo and harmonica helping Young find the devastated heart of the song. Hear that lonesome whistle blow!
Poncho Says: I heard one writer refer to [“Surfer Joe”] as Neil’s slap back at Warner Brothers, Mo Ostin and all this other crap. In all my memory, every time we met with Mo and Lenny [Waronker] and all the guys from Warner Brothers, it was very sweet and loving. We liked each other. There was no animosity. No one ever put Mo or Lenny down. Never. Ever. It was always beautiful. Those guys are really into what they’re doing, and they really supported us and helped us out a lot. So just to clear that up: that song has nothing to do with talking shit about them. I’m sure Neil was sorry that he ever left Warner Brothers. [On “Surfer Joe”], I added all of the background vocals that go [Ahhhing ensues]. I started singing those and nobody could stop me. I’m not a singer really, but I can sing on stage any time without a microphone and people can hear me. I sing really loud. And then even when we’re soloing sometimes and you see Neil coming over to me, a lot of times I’ll just be humming or chanting the line that I hear in the song. I’m like [Ohhhhing ensues] and just going along and he looks at me and his eyes go back like, “Oh shit. Ponch is in another world.” But it’s inspiration. The music inspires me.
We were blessed earlier this year with a mostly unheard late ‘72 tape of the (original) Modern Lovers at the Mercer Arts Center; now, we’ve got a previously uncirculated New York Dolls set from a few weeks earlier! It was just issued in a very groovy / very limited vinyl edition, but you can also hear it here. And hear it you should, whichever way you please. This is an awesome, essential document of the Dolls back in the USA on their home turf, playing for the NYC faithful, and capturing the debut of drummer Jerry Nolan. Historic!
The man we have to thank for both the Modern Lovers and NY Dolls tapes is the late/great Paul Nelson, the critic who at the time was the “house hippie” for Mercury Records. Nelson was thoroughly besotted with the Dolls and moved mountains to get them signed to Mercury — an effort that would ultimately lose him his job. Worth it? Yeah. Since we’re hearing this Mercer performance through his ears, let’s give Paul the final word here:
Nelson Says: The Dolls and their early following were those kids who used to sneak into the Fillmore East every Saturday night; years later, when their musical time came, they couldn’t wait to build their own homemade rocket ship and send it flying toward the moon on a return trip to innocence. If the fuel was more amateur energy than professional talent — well, one had to make do with what was at hand, surely the primary law of the streetwise. And it was a wondrous thing to see the group play rock & roll with the enthusiasm of five people who felt and acted as though they’d just invented it, hadn’t quite worked out the kinks yet, but what the hell? — it was raw flash, honest fun, erotically direct, and seemed to define them to, and make them inseparable from, their own kind. While they invented nothing, they did present a peculiar vision — lost youths roaming the nighttime city “looking for a kiss, not a fix,” cosmic jet boys “flying around New York City so high,” the teenager as group Frankenstein—and carried the music back to simpler times; there were almost no solos, and everybody played and sang as hard as they could until they got tired. Which wasn’t often.
Hello out there — it’s another week, and that means another episode of All One Song. I’ve been spending some time this spring talking with some of our favorite artists, writers and musicians about their favorite Neil Young songs. And I’ve been having a blast doing it. I hope you’ve been having a blast listening.
Before we get to this week’s song, I want to give a little bit of time to something very important … a website! AquariumDrunkard.com! Aquarium Drunkard is coming up on its 21st anniversary; a thousand lifetimes when it comes to other online destinations. For more than two decades, the site has been an oasis for music lovers, a place driven by the passion for sharing music both new and old; insightful reviews, extensive interviews, exclusive sessions, esoteric mixtapes, dusty bootlegs, curated radio shows, wide-ranging podcast conversations. It’s a place that celebrates creativity and eclecticism, and (importantly) a place that isn’t beholden to editorial calendars or flavor-of-the-month topics. Whatever appears here is part of that very basic ethos: Only the good shit.
Delivering that good shit — week after week, month after month, year after year — it takes effort. AI this is not. The increasingly far-flung Aquarium Drunkard team puts a lot of work into ensuring that the site chugs along, and we moved over to a subscriber-supported model a few years back. Thanks to our partners at Talkhouse and Qobuz, the Transmissions podcast feed is free for all. But by supporting AD with your hard-earned cash, you’ll be keeping this little corner of the internet alive and well. Head over to AquariumDrunkard.com and join us!
Ok, enough of that. Let’s get back to Neil Young, and this week’s song. Throughout seasons one and two, we’ve jumped from era to era, from style to style, from album to album. But no one has had the guts yet to tackle one of Neil’s true masterpieces, his most visionary set of lyrics, his most powerful statement. That’s right, friends, I’m talking about “T-Bone.”
Released in 1981 on Re*ac*tor, “T-Bone” is perhaps the most boneheaded, monomaniacal tune in Neil’s entire discography, a grinding, nine-minute three-chord Crazy Horse jam that features only these words to guide us: “Got mashed potatoes, ain’t got no T-bone.”
Our guest today is far from boneheaded (T-boneheaded?), however. Matthew Specktor is a novelist, a memoirist, a critic, a screenwriter, an editor and much more. His most recent pieces of nonfiction, Always Crashing the Same Car and The Golden Hour are fascinating blends of autobiography, Hollywood history, cultural criticism and more. Specktor brings bygone years and characters to vivid life, finding emotional resonance and insight in unexpected zones, and delivering biting wit and hard-earned wisdom on every page. These books are also terrifically entertaining — check ‘em out, you will not be disappointed!
And hopefully you will not be disappointed as Matthew and I make a five-course meal out of “T-Bone.” But before we kick things off, a couple fact checks for our fact-checking cuz-es and infamous brothers out there: Matthew and I refer to Re*ac*tor as Neil’s first album for Geffen Records, when it was actually his last album for Warner Reprise! Sorry about that. I also make the incredible observation at some point that no one was really making retro records in the early 1980s … when just a few years after “T-Bone” Neil released the very retro Everybody’s Rockin’. Hey, nobody’s perfect!
Bonus Track: Neil has only played “T-Bone” live twice, if you can believe it, and only one of those performances was taped — you can hear it on the Way Down in the Rust Bucket release from a few years ago. So for a bonus track today, check out the Minus 5 raging through the tune back in 2012. It rocks! I think we need to get Scott McCaughey on the pod … Scott?! Are you out there???
Get in the Van — we’re headed back in time to Austin, TX, to check out the Caledonia Soul Orchestra at Armadillo World Headquarters! This previously uncirculated soundboard of Van Morrison and his big band at the legendary Lone Star State music hall/beer garden is an hour-and-a-half of pure good times.
Van and the Orchestra had spent much of the previous year touring all over, performances that resulted in the classic It’s Too Late To Stop Now live LP. In 1974, they took a victory lap, and the bond these musicians shared is ever present everywhere, whether it’s on churning boogies like “Domino” and “I’ve Been Working,” or extended mystic trips like “Listen to the Lion” and “Cyprus Avenue.”
Morrison may be renowned as a grouch, but this era feels positively joyous and open — at the end he even asks for the house lights to be turned on so he can gaze into the Eyes of Texas, honky-tonk angels all gathered round.
Van Says: A lot of times people say, “What does this mean?” A lot of times I have no idea what I mean. If you can’t figure out what it means, or it’s troubling you, it’s not for you. Like Kerouac, some of his prose stuff, how can you ask what it means? It means what it means. That’s what I like about rock & roll — the concept — like Little Richard. What does he mean? You can’t take him apart; that’s rock & roll to me.
Just what the doctor ordered — a set of absolutely sweet twin-guitar + drums burners from Carrboro, NC. In their bio, Object Hours joke that they “try to keep songs under 25 minutes for your sake” … but hey I wouldn’t mind if these dark-toned jams ran free forever. Jenny Waters, Nora Rogers and Harrison Haynes have been playing together in various configurations for literal decades now, and there’s an elemental interplay throughout Solved By Walking’s seven tracks, the hypnotic/telepathic pulse of three musicians becoming one. There are moments when you feel like you’re eavesdropping on a particularly righteous Sonic Youth rehearsal, and others that made me think of The Cure on a motorik kick. Whatever comes to mind for you, these are Hours well spent.
Neil Young’s performance at the Harvest The Hope anti-pipeline benefit in September 2014 has come up on two consecutive All One Song episodes. Micah Nelson mentioned it because it was the first time he played onstage with Neil. Simon Joyner mentioned it because he was in the audience, getting his face fried by not only Old Black but by the harsh Nebraska sun.
So hey, let’s listen to the extant audience tape! Neil starts the show off solo, playing old faves like “Comes a Time” and “Heart of Gold” but also spouting off angrily in-between songs about inept/corrupt politicians and pressing environmental issues. If only he knew what was on the way in the next dozen years! Yeesh.
Halfway through, Neil invites the Promise of the Real (minus bongos) up to jam. And jam they do! As Micah noted, this was a pretty impromptu deal; they had rehearsed only briefly on the day of the show. And to be sure, it is very loose at certain points! But the raggedy spirit is infectious/invigorating, everyone clearly having a blast — especially on the 20-minute “Down by the River.” Who can resist. The chemistry is readily apparent, and for the next several years, the band playing in Neil’s head would be Promise of the Real …
Thanks to Jordan for alerting me to the recent upload of this classic, one-time-only (?) team-up — Chan Marshall and Loren Mazzacane Connors in NYC at the turn of the century. I’ve known and loved the audio for many years now, but had no clue that there was a video!
Somehow, seeing it all go down is even more transfixing than hearing it all go down, the two players weaving in and out of songs, finding notes within notes, ghostly resonances floating around the room. These two should get back together, right? Right! All hail Trond S. Trondsen, whose YouTube channel has some other sweet stuff.
Pretty much every All One Song guest complains about one thing: having to pick just one Neil Young song. And yeah, it’s a catalog of such consistency and strength that it can feel virtually impossible to have a single favorite. So as a disclaimer, all of our guests could’ve chosen maybe a dozen other songs. Or more. We just cruelly forced them to whittle it down to one.
But I’ve often wondered … what is Neil Young’s favorite Neil Young song? Maybe it’s always the newest song he’s written. But if you look at songs that Neil’s performed most over the years … well, maybe that’s a clue of some kind. “After the Gold Rush” is certainly up there in terms of live outings; the crucial Neil head website sugarmtn.org tells us that, as of today, he’s played it 698 times since its debut in the fall of 1970. I’m guessing it’ll make it to 700 in no time. He’s rarely left “Gold Rush” out of setlists for very long over the decades — it’s definitely a fan favorite. But hey, maybe Neil just really likes it too.
And why shouldn’t he? The title track to After the Gold Rush is a total classic. And it has so much packed into a relatively compact space. With just three verses and a couple of chords, it takes the listener on a kaleidoscopic trip through time: past, present, future. It’s an ecology song, a dream song, a myth song, a burnout song, a time-travel song, a sci-fi song, an apocalypse song. And no matter how many times I hear it, “After the Gold Rush” still seems to contain untold mysteries within.
So it was great to chat with Simon Joyner, our guest today, about “After the Gold Rush.” The Omaha-based singer-songwriter has a career stretching back to the early 1990s; you might call him a songwriter’s songwriter — at least he’s got a ton of peer admiration. But even if he remains somewhat under the radar, trust me that if you pick up any one of Simon’s many albums, you’ll be rewarded with heartbreaking melodies, cut-to-the-quick lyrics and imaginative arrangements. Simon has a new one coming out — his 19th studio album! — on May 22. It’s called Tough Love, and it’s full of everything that makes Joyner one of our best voices. Don’t miss it.
But before that, don’t miss Simon’s very own beautiful cover of “After the Gold Rush,” which we’ll play for you at the end of our conversation. It’s part of a newly recorded Lagniappe Session from Simon and the Nervous Stars— and guess what? It’s all Neil Young songs. Head over to Aquarium Drunkard dot com to hear the whole thing.
Bonus Track: Since its debut, “After the Gold Rush” has stayed pretty much the same over the years — a solo piano song, occasionally a solo pump organ song. But in 2014, Neil and the Talbot-less Crazy Horse played an interesting full band arrangement of the tune. Check it out.
I read Jimmy McDonough’s remarkable Gary Stewart bio this past month and was suitably blown away. I Am From The Honky Tonks is an unflinching portrayal of a singer-songwriter whose abundant talent was only matched by his desire to get well and truly fucked up. Forty years in the works, McDonough’s book is quite an achievement, getting into amazing (and sometimes amazingly sordid) details not only about Stewart and his art but also his family, friends and milieu. At time, it’s like Faulkner in 1980s Florida. But even when things get absolutely grim, what comes across most powerfully is the humanity of McDonough’s subjects. Anyway, you should read it!
And you should dig into the various Stewart documents that have risen to the surface on the internet over the past several years. McDonough himself shared some live and unreleased material, all of which is fascinating and essential, giving us a glimpse of Gary that the records never revealed. And then there’s this must-see 1979 public access show taped in Whitesburg, KY, featuring an emotional reading of “Silver Cloud.”
McDonough sets the scene: Gary’s sitting on a couch in a drab paneled room with an innocuous framed landscape hanging behind him. Bedecked in black, Stewart throws his whole scrawny body into the number, forcefully strumming the guitar, his quavering voice vulnerable, yet deliberate. His eyes are closed for most of the song, but he stares into the camera as he sings, “Prepare for death and follow me.”
I saw guitarist/vocalist Tom Smith play a few times well over a decade now with the great, under-heralded Bay Area band Social Studies. Smith takes center stage with Otoliths — and their new debut album is a crackling collection of slightly skewed jangle pop, packed with sweet melodies, endless hooks, and crunchy guitars. Those elements provide a killer backdrop for Smith’s lyrics, which expertly walk the line between wry and lovestruck, witty and heartbroken. Occasionally, an LP along these lines hits just right; Lithos is one of those LPs! Classic songwriting, high-energy performances, pleasing production. The good stuff!
Since we talked to Micah Nelson on All One Song this week, let’s check him out in action with Neil and the Chrome Hearts, live at Fiddler’s Green in Englewood, CO last year. It’s May Day today, and it was Labor Day then, so like Neil said in “Union Man”: “Live music is better— bumper stickers should be issued!”
And hey, I was there, too! It was a great time, and this tape is also a great time. Thanks to the taper! By this point in the tour, the setlist had settled for the most part, opening with the stunning one-two punch of “Ambulance Blues” and “Cowgirl in the Sand.” There’s a live album, As Time Explodes, out now (I think?) drawn from the Chrome Hearts’ 2025 shows, but somehow it does not include that powerful sequence. Bizarre! Perverse! Oh well!
Even as Shakey rapidly approaches his 80th birthday, it’s incredible to see this guy up there, dominating the stage, leading the band, finding the heart of these songs, all with power and grace. The jams occasionally felt relatively truncated—feel free to let “Like A Hurricane” go on forever, guys—but Neil’s electric guitar work is as corrosive and intense as ever, a direct expressway to (and through) your skull. And whatever he’s lost in the upper ranges of his vocals, he makes up for in awesomely lonesome cracks and crags. In front of more than 10,000 people, Young remains willing to let it all hang out, unfiltered and fearless.
Gillian Welch and David Rawlings took their Dead set on the road over the past several weeks — and by my reckoning, it was amazing. Even better than I expected, and my expectations were high! These shows were a perfect synthesis of the Welch / Rawlings sound and the Dead repertoire, performances that felt joyous and celebratory without just being total nostalgia trips. Gillian and David (with bassist Paul Kowert in tow) also managed to deliver what I imagine is the only Dead tribute that Jerry Garcia himself might’ve enjoyed. No mean feat!
Of course, I’m just going by the various tapes that have emerged so far. Tapers, I thank you — especially Joel, who flew out to the Bay Area to record the Oakland show. The whole thing sparkles, capturing the communal spirit of the evening in high quality.
In keeping with the Dead approach, these are long, two-set affairs; and also in keeping with the Dead, it all just seems to get more and more spellbinding as the night progresses. Gil and Dave certainly lean heavily towards the Garcia/Hunter side of things, but one of my favorite moments comes in the “Cassidy > Uncle John’s Band > Cassidy” encore section, which embraces some jammier, free-form elements. You can almost see the twinkle in Bob Weir’s eyes from here.
I’ve never spoken with Neil Young himself. Maybe that’s for the best — for both of us! (Though, Neil, if you want to talk, just get in touch.) However, over on Aquarium Drunkard, you can check out my interviews with several of Neil’s associates: Guitarist Frank “Poncho” Sampedro; bassist Billy Talbot; and multi-instrumentalist Nils Lofgren. Chatting with these musicians who have spent a good portion of their lives onstage or in the studio with Neil is endlessly fascinating for me … and hopefully it’s endlessly fascinating for fellow obsessives, too. Getting a few peaks behind the curtain into Shakey’s creative process is a total treat, deepening my appreciation and understanding of the man’s art.
That’s why it’s my absolute pleasure to welcome Micah Nelson as today’s All One Song special guest. Since 2014, Micah has served as one of Neil’s closest collaborators, playing guitar first in the Promise of the Real, then in Crazy Horse, and now in the Chrome Hearts. He’s toured all over the globe with Young, delivering epic, deep-cut heavy sets. During that time, he’s appeared on such records as The Monsanto Years, Earth, The Visitor, Fuckin’ Up and last year’s Talkin to the Trees. And oh yeah, he also happens to be Willie Nelson’s kid.
Micah’s work with Neil stretches beyond music; as we get into in our conversation, he was the creative force behind the recent Trans animated film, which brought Young’s misunderstood 1982 LP to life. Micah also makes music on his own under the Particle Kid moniker, and he’s currently working on a new, artists-first streaming and social media platform called The Flow. Check that out at TheFlow.com for more — it’s looking like an extremely cool and extremely timely project.
For his All One Song appearance, Micah selected “Change Your Mind.” This 14-plus-minute tune from 1994’s Sleeps With Angels is one that Micah feels a strong personal connection to, as you’ll hear. It was a blast to dig into it with him, as well as get tons of firsthand insight into working and playing with the man, the myth, the legend, Neil Young. Thanks a million to Micah for taking the time, and thanks to ORG Music’s Andrew Rossiter for making the connection.
PS - Slight technical difficulties on my voice this time around! Thanks to Andrew Horton for working his sonic magic yet again.
Bonus Track: Micah talks about that Amsterdam show in 2016 when the Promise of the Real first played “Change Your Mind.” And indeed, it is a monstrous, 3+-hour gig with all kinds of wild setlist choices and performances. You can hear the whole thing via the Timeline Concert series on the Neil Young Archives. Here’s that “Change Your Mind” for a taste.
Incoming! Denver’s Ghost Canyon festival recently shared their first wave of 2026 acts — and it is looking good. Better than good, actually! Phenomenal! As you can see from the names on the poster above, this is going to be a wild late-summer weekend in the Mile High City, packed with a diverse array of sights and sounds. And hey, this is just the first wave … I’ve got it on good authority that there are more incredible names to be added in the weeks to come.
Ghost Canyon has been going since 2022, and if you read about the festival, you’ll probably see the words “noise,” “experimental,” “left field,” “art punk,” etc. used to describe the vibe. But what we’ve really got here is Human Music in all its weird beauty. See you in the pit, humans!
What are those Elkhorn boys up to these days? I’m sure there’s something awesome in the works — but in the meantime, Drew Gardner and Jesse Sheppard have some other irons in the fire.
First up, is Gardner’s latest solo LP Wave Field, which sees him returning to the sweet full-band jams of Flowers in Space from a few years back. Indeed, the same ace rhythm section of bassist Andy Cush and drummer Ryan Jewell returns here, along with the inspired addition of Cush’s fellow Garcia People, guitarist Tom Malach. The five instrumental tracks here are free-flowing and groove-heavy, all four players getting plenty of space to lock in and zone out. There’s a slinky, Ege Bamyasi-esque feel that rises to the top at several moments … always a good thing! And the relentless motorik pulse that Jewell supplies on “Space Ray” has to be heard to be believed.
Meanwhile, Elkhorn 12-stringer Sheppard is one-third of the new Universal Light group, joining Pelt / Black Twig Picker fiddler Mike Gangloff and cellist / harmonium-ist / vocalist Kaily Schenker for an extremely satisfying LP of mystic mountain acoustic drone. The four pieces on their self-titled debut unspool at a patient, meditative pace, various strings resonating and keening into the open air. This stuff feels as old as the hills, but somehow also as fresh as an Appalachian spring breeze. It all culminates in the traditional “The Squirrel is a Pretty Thing,” the trio finding a wondrous one-ness over the course of 12 deep minutes.
Since the latest episode of All One Song dealt with the early 2000s, this week’s bootleg bonus is drawn from that era. Poncho and the M.G.’s! Is this Neil’s shortest-lived band? Maybe! They only played four shows in the wake of Are You Passionate?’s release in early 2002. Of course, it’s not like this was a totally new group — Neil and the M.G.’s go back to 1992 and Poncho goes back to the mid-70s. And earlier in ‘02, Booker T, Duck Dunn and drummer Steve Potts had served as the backing band for a lengthy CSNY tour. These were no spring chickens when it came to the Shakeyverse.
But still, the Passionate-heavy setlists make these gigs fairly unique. So here’s the warmup hometown show in Redwood City at one of those old theaters Neil loves so much. (Instead of touring, Neil should just buy one of these theaters and do long residencies, right? Everyone wins!) A great audience tape with two long sets. We do have to endure the awful 9/11-themed “Let’s Roll”; “Here’s a song I wish I never wrote,” Neil says by way of an intro — you and me both! It’s sandwiched in between “Cortez” and “Powderfinger,” two songs that tell us so much about the violence and tragedy that shape American history even to this day. “Let’s Roll” … not so much.
But the rest of the new material sounds solid! In our All One Song episode, Scott Bunn and I kind of dismiss Neil in R&B mode, but hey you have to remember that Neil was in fact briefly signed to Motown. In 1965! He’s got R&B bona fides! And “She’s A Healer” gets a long ride, even spacier than the album version, with Neil’s haunted harmonica taking the place of the trumpet solo. The old stuff shines brighter, though. I’m especially fond of the 15-minute “Down By The River” here, which features some serious fireworks between Neil, Booker T and Poncho, all three of them really getting into it, sparks flying everywhere, beautiful madness.
Poncho Says: Meeting Booker and Duck Dunn was just a blast, you know. We were having dinner one night and I’ll never forget it. I said, “Hey, maybe I shouldn’t do this, but thanks for letting me in the M.G.’s. It’s really an honor to be in the band.” And Booker just calmly looked over and said, “Did anyone tell him about the band dues?”
My heroic attempt to get #Mistrial40 going last week has yet to deliver any meaningful results. Don’t worry, I’ll keep fighting the good fight — but I worry that not enough people care about what Lou Reed was up to in 1986. But do even less people care about what Lou Reed was up to in 2006?! Maybe! But that’s not going to stop me. Obviously.
Twenty years ago, Lou was actually still playing Mistrial’s “Tell It To Your Heart” — and we can hear a nice version on a late-spring tape of a show on the coast of northern Italy. In fact, the setlist during this era is packed with latter-day deep cuts; the 60s and 70s are only glanced at, really: “Perfect Day,” an oddly rocked-up “Jesus,” “Coney Island Baby” and a perfunctory encore of “Sweet Jane.” Lou and co. are more interested in playing tunes from Magic & Loss, Set The Twilight Reeling, The Blue Mask and beyond.
And The Raven, too! That strange Poe project was a few years old at this point, but nevertheless (neverthemore?), the title track gets a truly megalithic 17-minute workout. On the album, it’s a spooky atmospheric thing (with Willem Dafoe no less). Here, it’s a harrowing “Sister Ray” / Metal Machine Music hybrid, pure maelstrom from start to finish, a one-chord feedback-fueled grind with Lou bellowing lines from Poe’s poem over the top (and tossing in some James Brown for good measure, too). It’s awesome.
The band in Spezia is made up of the usual dudes — drummer Tony “Thunder” Smith, guitarist Mike Rathke, bassist Fernando Saunders, and bassist Rob Wasserman. That’s right, two bassists! Not sure exactly why Lou felt like that was necessary, but the added bottom end means that we get a little more upper-register fretless Fernandizing. Hell yeah. Lou sounds like he’s in a great mood throughout; he clearly loved playing with this collection of musicians. A star (still) newly emerging!
Lou Says: Lines mean different things at different times. Sometimes I think the listener knows better. If I went and defined it, there are listeners out there who would be very disturbed. “It means so and so, what are you talking about? You mean it didn’t mean … ?” I think people ought to be left alone to have fun with records.
The concept behind All One Song couldn’t be simpler: I’m spending the spring of 2026 talking to some great musicians, writers and artists about their favorite Neil Young song. Or at least one of them. But even if the concept is simple, one thing is for sure: these conversations go all over the place, kind of like a long Old Black solo on “Like Hurricane.” And that’s how it should be, right?
Now, I’ve been contributing to Aquarium Drunkard since 2012 (!) and I’d like to think that I’m the site’s resident Neil Young aficionado. But I’ve got competition! Scott Bunn is one of AD’s excellent writers, and his Shakey knowledge is extensive.
For his All One Song appearance, Scott picked a truly deep cut: “Boom Boom Boom.” This is a song that you might know better … though not much better … as “She’s A Healer,” which closed out Neil’s 2002 LP Are You Passionate?, recorded with Booker T and the M.G.’s. But “Boom Boom Boom” is the original Crazy Horse version of the song, which was cut in the year 2000. It collected dust (or rust?) in the vaults for more than two decades, but eventually showed up as a highlight of Toast, the legendary lost Crazy Horse album that was finally released in 2022. It’s all a little confusing … and hopefully our conversation doesn’t muddy the waters even further.
But “Boom Boom Boom” is a good reminder that there are so many different and diverse eras of Neil’s career; some may be more fruitful and enjoyable than others, but the journey itself is the point. As we look back over 60-plus years of output, it’s a blast to put the pieces of the puzzle together, to see what weird pictures emerge.
Listen wherever you get your podcasts.
Bonus Track: Neil only played “She’s A Healer” a handful of times on the abbreviated Poncho & the M.G.’s tour in 2002. This video from the Rock Am Ring festival in Germany captures one of those performances. Stretching out to 11 minutes, it’s a curious thing, full of spacey zones and haunted moments — as Scott and I discuss in the AOS episode, a unique chapter in the Neil saga.
We dealt with some vintage 1976 Television situations last week. So how about some slightly less vintage Television situations this week? Sixteen years later, the band was back on the boards, reuniting to record their sweet self-titled third LP and touring the world to wildly impassioned delight from the devoted.
There are plenty of tapes from this era — but what we’re debuting here today is in the toppermost of tiers, thanks to the sterling work of scottythered. Scotty has taken a rare-but-strangely-mixed SBD and expertly matrixed it with two AUD sources. The results are nothing short of spectacular, to be placed among the most enjoyable 1990s Television recordings out there. You can really luxuriate in that singular Verlaine/Lloyd guitar tangle, the intricate/elemental Ficca/Smith rhythm section, the way all four players bounce off one another, creating sparks from moment to moment.
Sound quality aside, Television is on fire throughout this 80-minute set at the Theatre of Living Arts in Philly, serving up a hefty portion of the third LP alongside old chestnuts from the bygone Bowery days, all culminating in a magnificent one-two encore punch of “Marquee Moon” and “Glory.” Spend some time today listening to the rain …
Billy Ficca: Total chemistry all the way. (laughter) Sometimes it is, and sometimes it isn’t. There’s a chemical bond and a mechanical bond. The molecules don’t really combine to form a new chemical. You throw them in, you shake them up, and they’re together for a bit, and then you wait a little while and then they separate again.
A gorgeous piece of upstate ambient, Ben Seretan and John Thayer’s Sunbeam of No Illusion is the aural equivalent of a long, restorative walk through a Catskills forest as spring turns to summer. The gentle buzz of a Fender Rhodes, the calming whoosh of the wind in the trees, the distant ripple of an electric guitar — it all converges into a downright transcendental listening experience. Underneath, there’s a subtle pulse, a heartbeat that connects inner consciousness with the natural world. “Keep your face always toward the sunshine — and shadows will fall behind you.”
