I Have So Many Questions About This // Composer Reacts to Neil Young - Cortez the Killer

Comments · 35

• RO

  @robdaniel3211 · 1 year ago

  A circuit blew in the mixing console. That’s why it fades sharply out as some more instrumental and final verse were lost.

  22

• RH

  @RHODOAN · 1 year ago

  Amazing how much emotion can be squeezed out of instrumental music.

  4

• RU

  @rudymeixell3426 · 1 year ago (edited)

  Only up to the end of the initial reaction, and (1) wow, you really aren&apos;t very familiar with Neil Young, and (2) while he has long been well-established in classic rock, it&apos;s no accident that he always had a lot of fans among punk/post-punk/grunge musicians. He definitely is &quot;punk&quot; about not worrying about hitting every note just right, either as a guitarist or a vocalist.<br><br>Would love to hear you do more Neil Young reactions, because I think there are lots of things you will find enigmatic in his music.

  15

• MI

  @mikemcelroy3204 · 1 year ago

  Yes this was all improvised in one take. That&apos;s how Neil likes to record ususally - with as few takes as possible in order to fully catch the mood. As others have pointed out the console board blew so the last verse and ending was not captured. Per the Wikipedia article on this song Guitar World ranked this number 39 in the top 100 greatest guitar solos of all time for what it&apos;s worth. BTW Neil always does the lead guitar on all his songs (with only a few minor exceptions when he&apos;s playing piano and someone else plays the lead).

  8

• IA

  @ianhamilton2035 · 10 months ago

  All-time favorite, thank you!! 😃

  2

• KI

  @KingOfNebbishes · 1 year ago

  Neil is very much a &quot;vibes&quot; guitarist. I&apos;ve heard him say in interviews about when he moves from genre to genre that he just has a sound in his head he has to get out. If you see him play live, he looks like he&apos;s strangling his guitar at times, or actively fighting against it. It&apos;s incredibly engaging, unless you&apos;re a devoted technical player, and then it&apos;s incredibly enraging!

  5

• JA

  @jaylee5639 · 1 year ago

  I know you did the Slint cover, but Built to Spill&apos;s live cover is epic.

  4

• JA

  @jaybo2023 · 11 months ago

  I could be way off. It ends abruptly cuz it isn&apos;t over...it still goes on. My take sorry if I&apos;m way off

  2

• SN

  @snapintoaslimjimohyeah · 1 year ago

  <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GeZs8tRLFXI&amp;t=196">3:16</a> “intriguing note lengths” 🤣 nah bro, they were fucking up, but it works because the tones and vibes are just right. It’s got the feeling, the soul…Fantastic live take on display here

  11

• DI

  @dignan4 · 1 year ago

  Just pressed play and am looking forward to this. Stoked for the Slint cover! It’d have been amazing if you’d have went with the best ever cover of this song, Built To Spill’s 20-minute ripper! It’s ridiculous. And long. Sling’s cover is nice too but just wanted to mention BTS’ version here. Thanks for doing Cortez!

  3

• CA

  @carlomatthews6676 · 1 year ago

  Truly insightful... many thanks for the observations

• RU

  @rudymeixell3426 · 1 year ago (edited)

  But more than any sort of proto-punk, Neil Young is a latter day capital &quot;r&quot; Romantic, and his lyrical fantasies about the past and future tend to be pretty self-indulgently idealistic and out of touch with reality (reflecting at least a certain strain of Romanticism). It&apos;s not my favorite mode of his, but I do enjoy some of those songs. I tend to like him best as someone who takes your breath away with his directness about everyday feelings. Although I guess some of his songs combine both the fantasy and that more direct approach. &quot;After the Gold Rush&quot; works for me, and alternates between things like space future fantasies and lines like, &quot;I was thinking about what a friend had said./I was hoping it was a lie.&quot; (Actually, that&apos;s in reverse order of how they show up in the song, but the point remains.)<br><br>The sudden interpolation of the woman who is there waiting for me reminds me of Robert Plant singing &quot;but Gollum and the evil one crept up and slipped away with her&quot; in &quot;Ramble On.&quot; It seems like an odd 70&apos;s thing to mix crude fantasy references with references to romantic love. I am seeing some interpretations of &quot;Ramble On&quot; that claim &quot;her&quot; is really a way of referring to the ring (as in the Lord of the Rings), but that doesn&apos;t seem convincing to me.

  5