Favorite Album of the 1960's

Without doubt, my favorite album of the 1960's is Neil Young's Everybody Knows This is Nowhere.  While there maybe a song or two that I may not be crazy about, the parts that I am crazy for define the basic elements of rock music that I love.  I have been a late comer to the Neil Young lovefest but I have staked a significant claim.  Everybody Knows This is Nowhere boasts four songs that I could listen to on an endless loop for the rest of my life and I would never complain.

The opening track is "Cinnamon Girl," a rough sounding song that is very primal, unpolished.  You can thank Crazy Horse for this.  The band adds so much to Neil Young's songs that probably went unappreciated at the time.  This really brought garage music to the forefront, at least for me."Cinnamon Girl" is so simple, which might be what makes it so enjoyable.  The same refrain gets played over frequently, some that happens in a lot of songs that I love.  The title track I discovered thanks to the great movie Almost Famous.  My favorite part of the song is the song "La la la" at the end of the choruses.  I also really like the name of the song and may use it from time to time to make a point in something I am saying or writing.  The lead guitar again sound very unpolished and direct.  It is by no means flashy.

The first epic of the album is Down by the River.  I remember discovering this song on the radio when I was in high school.  It is not often you hear a song this long on the radio.  I noticed it because the song played almost my entire 15 minute drive across town.  It has a guitar solo that I tend to get lost in.  Whenever Neil sings, he always sings the same line.  Again, I really enjoy the background vocals supplied by the band.  They add a touch that makes it distinctive to me.

The second epic is "Cowgirl in the Sand."  This is my favorite song on the album.  It has a soft intro before turning into mid tempo rocker.  I remember discovering this song sometime in college and sing it with a girl at a party two weeks later.  The lyrics to this song have a bit more meaning, I think, than "Down by the River."  I think the woman in the song is just out of the narrators reach.  This has happened to every guy, I am sure.  The guitar playing in this song is certainly not meant to sound pretty.  It rarely sounds linear.  This song reaches me at a level that I cannot explain.


There are three other songs on this album which sound quite a bit different from the above mentioned songs.  They are more of country ballads which sound pretty but not revolutionary to the mind the rest of the album.  Everybody Knows This is Nowhere is one of the reason I love music.  It is over 40 years old but could not really sound any better today as it did then.