Neil Young's Trite Fight has Rolling Clone Lead to a GooTube Fail

What? What happened, HIPSTERS?

We couldn't be HIPPED by Rolling Stone or the cleverly named website STEREOGUM (ahhhh chew!)

They told us about a GOOTUBE video that was PULLED:

Two different GooTube videos and BOTH pulled? Major websites telling their readers to go see NOTHING?

That's... so...uh...."AWKWARD."

Fortunately it's always easy to find a bootleg on GOOTUBE, which fits nicely with Neil's chorus: "I wish somebody would spread the news."

Great, Neil, the news is being "spread." And nothing's gonna happen. But you did get good publicity and everybody knows, "Neil CARES."

OK, it's nice that there IS a protest song, but why is it always Neil Young? And lousy?

Maybe like rock itself, the "protest song" is a dead genre. It's predictable and it's trite. Especially as done by Neil Young. You might remember his monotonously thumping protest song about the Kent State killings: "Four Dead in OH-HIGH-O..." over and over. It opened with the terrible line, "Tin soldiers and Nixon coming."

No, Nixon sat in the White House. The "tin soldiers" were hardly that, since they were armed members of the National Guard. "Tin soldiers" are toys. But why expect anything much from a whiny Canadian who is better off singing self-entitled mopes about having a woman be his maid?

For the record (such as this blog is), "Indian Givers" is, officially, EMBARRASSING. And BORING.

Start with the title. What is clumsier than using an offensive term like that? An "Indian Giver" in slang, implies that Indians can't be trusted. That's an irony, considering the awful-awful White Man broke all the treaties and shoved the Indians (aka Native Americans) onto reservations.

But American slang, especially among kids, is that if you give somebody something, and take it away, you're an "INDIAN GIVER." You give the way an Indian does. It does NOT imply you are like the White Man who gives Indians things and takes them away. Not at all.

So what's going on here? The Indians are protesting that a pipeline is going through some desolate land they're on. So? Environmentalists agree that oil pipelines are dangerous, and we have a long history of oil leaks on land and sea. Big Oil and the politicians don't care.

To their credit the Indians in this case are getting in the way of the pipeline, getting themselves arrested...and it's actually made the news WITHOUT Neil Young's help.

"I wish somebody would spread the news," he sings. He might as well put it in the first person and be fucking Sinatra about it: "Start spreadin' the news...I'm leavin' today. I want to be a part of it: Indian Protests!"

Nope. Neil, in the video, is doing what Neil does best...whining while driving aimlessly around his ranch. Neil's face continues to get more and more blubbery, by the way. Have you noticed? His face looks like a pillow case drying on a clothesline. Maybe Darryl Hannah should sit on it more often.

You know her, the one-shot wonder who starred in "Splash" and has a reputation for fucking up relationships. She sure helped break up Neil's marriage, but that's their problem. Ours is being told to listen to a horribly trite protest song.

Remember when protest songs were good? Bob Dylan. Phil Ochs. John Lennon. They wrote fast AND they wrote good.

Neil doesn't seem to EVER re-write a line. Any rhyme is good enough.

Now it’s been about 500 years
We keep taking what we gave away
Just like what we call Indian givers
It makes you sick and gives you shivers

No, Neil, the White Man didn't come to America 500 years ago. When did Custer die at the Little Bighorn? That was 1876, pal. PS, if you want some truth, not all Indians were hospitable to immigrants AT ALL. They scalped the settlers. They were xenophobic. They were not singing "This land is your land, this land is my land."

After the shitty and muddled rhyming of "Indian givers" with "gives you shivers," the next stanza doesn't even bother with much of a rhyme. Truth and groove? You a Nigga, Neil?

Big money going backwards and ripping the soil
Where graves are scattered and blood was boiled
When all who look can see the truth
But they just move on and keep their groove

What a lovely idea, Neil, let's preserve a fairly barren reservation where "blood was boiled." Who did THAT? Savages with cauldrons? Or was that the White Man?

And who is keeping that groovy GROOVE?

Next, Neil decides to toss in an obscure reference to one of the Indians, a guy named Happy. We're supposed to listen to this song and know that Happy is not a state of mind? In this messy bit of imagery we don't know if The White Man locked the Indian literally, cut him literally, or what. It all ends up with the trite rhyme of jail and FAILs.

Saw Happy locked to the big machine
They had to cut him loose and you know what that means
That’s when Happy went to jail
Behind big money justice always fails

I wish somebody would share the news

Thanks for sharing, Neil.

All of this drags over five fucking minutes, with Neil's usual hideous hinge of a voice creaking in the wind, and the music trying to imitate the stereotype of an Indian tom-tom beat and a chant with no melody.

Since there's no meaningful radio anymore, all that can happen is what Rolling Clone and the stupidly named STEREOGUM did, which was to say, "Hey, check out a GOOTUBE video."

And then what? Download the latest movie off Pirate Bay (still in existence) and have some drinks or some dope? In another week the Indians will be thoroughly dispersed and the story old. Or does anyone remember the brats of "Occupy Wall Street?"

Too bad, protest songs don't work anymore, and mostly, neither does protest. Millennials are way too busy taking selfies and listening to Bieber and Kuntye. Most people Neil Young's old age are worried if they can afford heat for the winter and don't care where it comes from.