Last night, Jimmy Fallon dusted off his Stetson hat and flannel shirt to reprise his Neil Young impersonation — this time the Late Night host’s target was the freshly inked summer tour hottie Miley Cyrus’ “Party In The U.S.A.”. The comedian was joined by real life Young collaborators (and Rock ‘N Roll Hall Of Famers) Graham Nash and David Crosby for this hilarious pop reinterpretation. Jump below to watch the clip — we promise you’ll be LOLing as soon as this trio starts singing, “Nodding my head like yeah, moving my hips like yeah”.

Do you think Graham or David even know who Jay-Z is?

Teach your children well, indeed.

How do you think Jimmy’s take on “Party In The U.S.A.” compared to his version of “Whip My Hair” last fall?

What pop song would you like to hear Jimmy reinterpret next?

Ok, just one more. We know, we know, we OD’d on remixes already. But really, can you blame us for posting the day’s most stirring cover of General Larry Platt’s call to action? Of course not. Especially since it was performed by counter-cultural (Canadian) idol Neil Young… er, yeah. Call yourself a cool cat and check below for the clearest sign yet that American Idol Season 9 is going to heal the world.

Honestly, we couldn’t think of a more appropriate artist to perform a song so important. Well, maybe these people. We’re just lucky that Late Night With Jimmy Fallon exists to call attention to deserving artists like Platt. (P.S. We love you Jimmy.)

This year’s installment of Farm Aid, the annual concert benefiting family farmers that was initially organized by Willie Nelson, John Mellencamp, and Neil Young in 1985, will take place at the Verizon Wireless Amphitheater outside of St. Louis on Oct. 4. Nelson, Mellencamp, and Young are all on the initial bill alongside the Dave Matthews Band; the four aforementioned men are all on the event’s board of directors.


Farm Aid has raised some $35 million for family farms over the 24 years of its existence, and the whole process of bringing the show to St. Louis took some eight years, according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. I’d say something mean about hoping that the St. Louis fans are more appreciative than they were during the Home Run Derby on Monday night, but this is for a good cause, so.


Farm Aid [Official site]
Farm Aid Comes To Verizon Wireless Amphitheater Oct. 4 [The Blender]

Apparently reeling from lousy ticket sales for last year’s Glastonbury Festival—which had Jay-Z and Kings Of Leon as headliners—the organizers of the muddy British weekend have reportedly snagged Blur, Neil Young, and Bruce Springsteen for the top of the 2009 fest’s lineup. You have to wonder if the people in charge of booking the festival wanted to get Blur & Oasis to share a bill, if not a steel cage, for a big blowout battle of the bands that would set the nostalgia phasers of most of the Brits in the crowd to total effing freakout, but then had to “settle” for Neil and Bruce instead. [The Sun]

Neil Young’s licensing agreements may extend to items like rolling papers and belt buckles, but the latest item to bear his name isn’t for sale through his official Web site yet: It’s a new species of trapdoor spider, the Myrmekiaphila neilyoungi. East Carolina University biologist Jason Bond, who discovered and named the new species, is clearly a guitar aficionado, although it wasn’t just Young’s axework that inspired the nomenclature.

“There are rather strict rules about how you name new species,” Bond said. “As long as these rules are followed you can give a new species just about any name you please. With regards to Neil Young, I really enjoy his music and have had a great appreciation of him as an activist for peace and justice.”

The ECU statement also says that spiders in the trapdoor genre are based on “differences in genitalia,” about which you can insert your own guitar solo joke here.

ECU biologist names “Young” spider [ecu.edu]

Live albums from the halcyon days of Danny Whitten are great and all, but its a look at those aborted studio sessions that Neil heads like myself have been waiting for. So while, as with most of Neil’s Archives projects, there’s no release date and no real promise that we’ll see one, it’s great that his people are even bothering to mention the possibility of hearing Toast, an album of outtakes from a “depressing” 2000 session with Crazy Horse in a run down San Francisco studio of the same name.

Now, years later, John Hanlon, the original co-producer with Neil, is at work mixing all of the Toast material. Many songs share a bluesy, jazz-tinged vibe as a common thread. Three solid rockers are interspersed in the mix. Other songs are long with extensive explorations between verses, a Crazy Horse trademark, kind of like a down-played Tonight’s the Night, except these songs deal directly with love and loss, not drugs. The ambient atmosphere, foggy, blue and desolate, pervades many of the tracks, if not all, with Tommy Brea’s muted trumpet and dusky male and female counter-part BGs occasionally surfacing from Poncho and Ralph on one side, Nancy Hall and Pegi Young on the other. A cool and sleepy lounge piano rises in the fog occasionally.

Toast is coming, a dark Crazy Horse classic for the ages. This first NYA “Special Edition” is the beginning of a new series of unreleased albums.

Want.

CRAZY HORSE “TOAST” [Neil Young Times, via The Guardian/Photo: AP]

“Canadian folk rock legend Neil Young said he has lost all hope that music can change the world.” Perhaps this means “Canadian incredibly-loud-guitar rock legend Neil Young” will get back to his “Down By The River” steez, even though he is quite aged. (P.S. Even though I know I have only my obsession with conservative comment-box car-crashes to blame, the comments on this story kinda want to make me do mean things to my eyes even more than most Internets comments. Forewarned.) [Breitbart]

MTV has a history of banning would-be popular videos, but it was 19 years ago this week that one of the network’s most peculiar censorship decisions took place. Neil Young’s “This Note’s for You” was denied play on the network due to a fear of offending valuable advertisers. No nudity, no blood, no graphic drug use–just ad parodies. Did 1988 mark the end of our innocence?

Neil Young and The Bluetones – This Note’s For You [YouTube]

Yesterday, Billboard announced that Neil Young’s multi-disc Archives box set–which was supposed to finally come out later this year–has been moved to 2008. This thing been in the works for years now: A quick look through the archives unearths a Rolling Stone news piece by David Fricke, who notes that the project “has been a decade in preparation,” and that it will be out “in the third quarter of this year.” Said article was published in April of 2000. What work could Young possibly have left to do? It only takes a few weeks to digitally airbrush David Crosby’s more druggy background vocals.

Anyway, with nearly twenty years of production time to its credit, Young’s Archives beats Chinese Democracy as the music industry’s go-to long-delayed punchline (though, for joke-making purposes, “Chinese Democracy” rolls off the tongue much easier*). We’ll see who can hold out longest, but we’re guessing that by the time Young finishes with this thing, there will be no free world left within which to rock. In the meantime, we’ll all have to make to do with the live albums he’s been putting out in the past year, which include such stunning moments as this:

Neil Young – On The Way Home (Live At Massey Hall 1971) [MP3, link expired]

* For example, saying “Alice Sebold’s new novel has taken so long, it’s like the Neil Young’s multi-disc archive box set of publishing” doesn’t quite work.

Universal has just announced a new Neil Young tribute CD, to be titled Borrowed Tunes II. And just who is paying tribute, you ask?

Collaborating artists include Barenaked Ladies, Emily Haines, Finger Eleven, Chantal Kreviazuk, Dallas Green, Hawksley Workman, Raine Maida of Our Lady Peace, Ron Sexsmith, Goldendogs, Quebec-based Dobacaracol, Jorane and many others.

We’ll take Haines and Sexsmith, but the rest of the line-up is less appealing than an a cappella version of Landing On Water. So is this is the worst tribute album of all time? Not even close.

Possibly not. A quick scan of Amazon turns up these following gems:

Shout at the Remix: Tribute to Motley Crue (2000)
Offending entries: “Too Young To Fall In Love (Synical Remix)” by Gilby Clarke; “Piece Of Your Action (Sigue Sigue Sputnik Remix,” by Marq Torien

Stone Free: A Tribute To Jimi Hendrix (1993)
Offending entries: “Manic Depression” by Seal & Jeff Beck; “Spanish Castle Magic,” by the Spin Doctors

The Eastern Tribute To Helloween (1999)
Offending entries: “I Can.” by Sonorous Reluctance; “How Many Tears” by Cruel Barbarian

Working Class Hero: A Tribute To John Lennon (1995)
Offending entries: “Imagine” by Blues Traveler; “Instant Karma” by Toad the Wet Sprocket

Dees’ Mutha—in’ Nuts: A Tribute To Rick Dees (2007)
Offending entries: All of them

We can only guess what material will be included when Neil Young finally releases his long-promised Archives box set this year–we still think it may be a big joke, and Neil’s just going to put out eight discs of Landing On Water outtakes–but we’re hoping this 1974 live set will make the final cut. Recorded at an impromptu gig at New York’s Bottom Line, it features a handful of songs from On The Beach, Young’s initially maligned masterpiece, and an album that rarely got played live. The entire set makes for perfect Tuesday-morning listening–that is, if you like to spend your Tuesday mornings listening to songs about the soul-sucking nature of fame and the Manson killings.

Neil Young – Helpless (Live at the Bottom Line 1974) [MP3, link expired]
Neil Young – Revolution Blues (Live at the Bottom Line 1974)) [MP3, link expired]
Neil Young – On The Beach (Live at the Bottom Line 1974)) [MP3, link expired]
Citizen Kane Junior Blues [BigO]

- Usher has been convicted of a traffic violation–a sexy traffic violation. [NME]
- Once again, Neil Young is promising that his long-in-the-works, career-spanning Archives box-set–likely to include 147 different takes of “Powderfinger”–will be out this year. [Undercover]
- Every single artist ever in the history of the world will be appearing at the Grammys. [Billboard]

It may look like the opening-credits sequence of The Muppet Show, but this dizzy footage from the recent Bridge School Benefit is actually Neil Young performing “Rockin’ In The Free World” with a bunch of guests, including Death Cab, Pearl Jam, Gillian Welch, Foo Fighters, Taco, SWV, El DeBarge, etc. The good news about this year’s festivities is that it was one of the most widely documented shows of all time; the bad news is that just about every piece of footage seems to have been shot with a camera phone. Anyone have any good MP3s? How about some Dramamine?

Neil Young and Friends “Rockin’ In The Free World”