Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere (1 Viewer)

Thanks to Pip's Invitation and El Floppo  -- because he wanted to know (okay, not really) what I was grooving on tonight -- I'm sitting here jamming out to the title track of Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere by Neil Young.

Why is it notable? Because it's from 1969, yet it's short, it's digestible, its licks aren't striving for some utopian stuff, and there's guitar shredding but without the wankery that would come to mark so much of the next era's grandiose ambitions.

Love the intro and the melody line of the vocals, as well as the subject matter.

I think I'd like to go -- back home
And take it easy
There's a woman that I'd like to get -- to know
Living there

Everybody seems to wonder what it's like down here
I got to get away from this day-to-day running around

Everybody knows this is nowhere
La la la la la la la

All clocking in at under 2:30 and after the outro to "Cinnamon Girl," which is fantastically copped by Mudhoney to intro into their own song "Broken Hands." Dig it

My favorite song on that album. My favorite song should be “Cowgirl in the Sand” but it goes on just a little too long. I love it anyhow, and “Down By the River”, but “Everybody Knows” is perfection. 

Everybody knows that the dice are loaded

Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed

Everybody knows the war is over

Everybody knows the good guys lost

Everybody knows the fight was fixed

The poor stay poor, the rich stay rich

that's how it goes

Everybody knows

rockaction said:

All clocking in at under 2:30

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And thus I put it on the 150 Seconds with Matt Pinfield playlist. 

rockaction said:

its licks aren't striving for some utopian stuff

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Neil never went for anything like that.

The song is very down-to-Earth. It's about his frustration with LA and its music scene. 

timschochet said:

My favorite song should be “Cowgirl in the Sand” but it goes on just a little too long.

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Hard disagree.

In any case, Cowgirl's flaw is that some of its lyrics have dated badly. 

Listen while you read and talk.

fatness said:

Listen while you read and talk.

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The closing guitar part of that, as you may have gleaned because I mentioned it upthread, is the beginning to Mudhoney's "Broken Hands," one of the more meaningfully soulful and plaintive songs to come out of the Seattle Grunge Era. It's an abstract song, but heartfelt.

I loved your fragile fingers - so thin, so smooth, so long

Why did you have to go? Why did they crush your hands?
Why do I always have to know these things that I can't stand?

Aw yeah. Morning cup of coffee and rockin to this album. Marquee Moon then this one this week.

Why?

Why not?

Sick guitar work and songwriting.