The first compact disc that I ever purchased was Rust Never Sleeps. I was never the world’s greatest Neil Young fan, but I knew that his 1979 release, with its crisp acoustic notes and hard driving rock n’ roll album Side 2 (or as those songs are known on a CD, “the last couple songs”) would sound amazing when played by this revolutionary new sound machine, the compact disc player. You see, the compact disc player had lasers that read the songs from miniature reflective rear view mirror decorations, and if it’s laser, it has to be good.
The use of lasers prior to the development of the compact disc was limited to mind-altering light shows for mind-altered kids and of course, James Bond movie villains. Who could forget Auric Goldfinger strapping 007 to a table and threatening to slice our hero in half, starting from the groin area and working upwards, slowly and painfully?
“No Mr. Bond, I expect you to die!”
But this is not about laser guided torture…or is it?
I’m listening to Keith Carradine read Neil Young’s autobiography, Waging Heavy Peace, while I drive to and from work each weekday. I am on disc 10 of 11. I haven’t listened to a book in many years, and I would not recommend this one. Neil is a mechanical engineer trapped in a musician’s body, and his style is somewhat…how should I put this…boring. But after committing to 10 discs of his stories, I can harvest the strength for one more.
I have learned some things through Neil’s stories. One tidbit is that he hates today’s music. More accurately, he doesn’t hate the music, he hates the sound quality of the music. Did you know that digital recordings through iTunes and other online sources only captures 5% of the real sound? Young knows that online music and CDs have brought music to the masses, and that is good. But he talks incessantly about bringing higher quality sound alternatives to the true audiophiles out there.
I have always known that if you wanted to really understand The Rolling Stones (is it THE Rolling Stones or just Rolling Stones?) that you had to listen to their music on vinyl. Lasers burn away the real soul of their sound. I did not know until Keith Carradine (Neil Young) explained the degradation of the noise to me how dramatic that difference was.
But this is not about sound degradation in the modern musical entertainment industry either (although that is what Neil Young would like this to be about).
This is about Rust Never Sleeps.
On disc 6 or 8 or somewhere within the autobiography, I learned the story behind the album title, Rust Never Sleeps. Brace yourselves, Spuds – it came from Devo.
Devo. My musical muse from Akron, Ohio, who taught me and millions (OK, thousands) of other fans about the theory of devolution of mankind. Devo. The band with the radiation suits, the energy domes, and the Reagan-era plastic pompadors. Devo. The authors of Whip It, Girl U Want, Uncontrollable Urge and Shrivel Up. Devo was behind Rust Never Sleeps.
Neil Young, the force behind Harvest, Comes a Time, and the Y of CSN&Y, was a big Devo fan, and worked on a movie with the Spudboys back in the late 70s, early 80s called Human Highway. If you need proof, and I surely did, here it is. This is a video of Devo performing My My Hey Hey with Neil Young.
Full disclosure: Don’t let the children watch. They may de-volve right before your eyes.
Devo and Neil Young. Two acts I loved in the late 1970s and early 1980s, together. It must have been Synchronicity.
A sleep trance, a dream dance
A shared romance
Synchronicity
A connecting principle
Linked to the invisible
Almost imperceptible
Something inexpressible
Science insusceptible
Logic so inflexible
Causally connectible
Yet nothing is invincible
Yeah, that’s what it was.
Related Stories:
http://monstermoviemusic.blogspot.com/2011/04/human-highway-neil-young-devo-jack-it.html
http://www.thrasherswheat.org/jammin/devo.htm
http://kidshealth.org/parent/positive/talk/talk_about_drugs.html
TheMSRP 