I'm listening to Neil Young's new album, Living With War. It's not my
first time; I was lucky enough to be at a private listening last week
in California. But now, along with millions of others connected to
the Internet, I'm hearing it live today through my computer speakers,
streaming for 24 hours, courtesy of Mr. Young and his absolutely
brilliant bunch of guerrilla marketers and movement builders. Peace groups like True Majority smartly have seized on the moment to
mobilize Young's listeners. Never before has any album moved so
quickly from concept to completion to pre-release controversy, to the
ears of millions of listeners. Mr. Young knows how to craft a
message, and how to market it in a way that no one has before. He's
done it like a martial arts expert, utilizing the venom and energy of
his attackers who don't like this Canadian citizen's urgent,
compelling, pro-peace vision of the American dream.
Living With War begins with Neil Young singing that we "won't need no
shadow men running the government, won't need no stinking war".
Angry, emotional words, but this is the most joyous and beautiful
angry album I've ever heard. Of course, I'm biased, so listen for
yourself - its' free. Neil Young is my favorite rock artist and has
been for decades. I love almost everything he's ever released, and I
listen to something from him daily. I'm one of those gray-haired 50-
somethings you see at the YMCA, rocking out on the cross-trainer
trying to stay in shape, slipping toward old age. Anything I write or
say about Living With War is personal and biased; I love this guy.
Two years ago I met Larry Johnson, Neil's webmaster, movie producer
and a producer on Living With War, when Larry was in Milwaukee with
Neil. Neil was touring his Greendale album and my friend Mark Dowie,
knowing what a Neil-nut I am, arranged for me to meet Larry. Larry in
turn welcomed me backstage to meet Neil and the large entourage of
family and the extended family of musicians and roadies. What struck
me first was that the entire tour had much more the feel of a small
town community theater production than a rock tour by a star of
Dylanesque dimensions. I gave Larry and Neil copies of my two recent
books with Sheldon Rampton, Weapons of Mass Deception and Banana
Republicans. Since then I've kept in touch with Larry and was very
pumped up when earlier this month he told me about Living With War.
This is truly an "Ohio" moment, and Living With War srikes a chord
that will resonate with the majority of Americans who've tossed off
the blinders and see that this administration hijacked 9/11 for its
own twisted political agenda. Now here we are mired in one disastrous
war, watching this administration apparently ramp up for another,
just in time for an election.
Living With War, streaming today for twenty-four hours free online,
is brilliant and inspiring on many levels: musically, politically,
but also as a case study in guerrilla marketing and public relations.
A couple of weeks ago word began to leak out that Neil Young, a proud
and patriotic Canadian American whom many identify as conservative,
was about to release a new song titled "Let's Impeach the President
for Lying." Faster than you could say 'right-wing blogosphere' Young
was in the media gun sights of pro-Bush, pro-war pundits rhetorically
blasting him. Of course, none of these critics had heard the song,
much less the entire Living With War album.
And what an album it is. It will come wrapped in a plain brown
wrapper, but it bleeds red, white and blue. "When the night falls, I
pray for peace.... I never bow to the thought police... I'm living
with war in my heart and my mind" sings Young. Neil and his PR
guerrillas played the attacks brilliantly, parlaying them into
perhaps the largest virtual stage and audience that any rocker has
ever had to blast out the release of what is Neil's most compelling
and timely album. Somebody in the Public Relations Society of America
should take notice, because this album release deserves one of those
Silver Anvils that PRSA awards for brilliant marketing of a new product.
Along with Neil's pro-war critics and millions of others, I'm
listening to Living With War as I type this blog. The seventh song on
the album is the one that brought the attacks that set the stage for
today's unprecedented web launch. Here is part of what Neil has to say: "Let's impeach the president for lying and misleading our
country
into war. Abusing all the power that we gave him... The White House
shills who hide behind closed doors that bend the facts to fit with
their news stories of why we had to send our men to war... Let's
impeach the president for spying on citizens inside their own
homes.... Tapping our computers and telephones.... What if Al Queda
blew up the levees? Would New Orleans been safer that way? ... Or was
someone just not home that day."
This rousing, upbeat song is backed by a hundred voice choir, as is
the entire album, and is filled with audio clips of President Bush's
'flip flops' and false and misleading claims, snipped from news
conferences and speeches. This song is a showtune anthem. The entire
album is a pro-American, pro-family, pro-troops challenge to citizens
in the United States, Neil's adopted homeland, to get it together and
make change happen.
On Restless Consumer Neil targets the American addiction to oil and
materialism, relating them to the war and to the greater failure to
attack problems of poverty: "How do you pay for war and leave us
dying? ... Don't need no Madison Avenue War. .... Don't need no more
lies."
Shock and Awe is one the best rock anthems Neil has ever penned or
played: "Back in the days of shock and awe.... history was a cruel
judge of overconfidence ... Back in the days of mission accomplished
our chief was landing on the deck. The sun was setting on the golden
photo op. Thousands of bodies in the ground brought home in boxes to
a trumpet sound. No one sees them coming home that way.... We had a
chance to change our mind, but somehow wisdom was hard to find..."
Looking for a Leader calls out for people to arise "to reunite the
red white and blue ... clean up the corruption and make the country
strong. Someone walks among us and I hope he hears the call; maybe
it's a woman, or a black man after all. Maybe its Obama, but he
thinks he's too young. Maybe its Colin Powell, to right what he's
done wrong. ... America is beautiful but she has an ugly side. We're
looking for a leader... ."
Living With War builds from beginning to end, proudly pro-American,
pro-troops, pro-freedom, while vehemently anti-war and anti-Bush. The
lyrics are inspired; the music is classic, and the 100-voice choir
warm and emotional. Some of the songs are about US soldiers, one dead
from the war on Vietnam and the other Iraq. The Iraq vet in Families
says: "there's a universe between us now, but I want to reach out and
tell you how much you mean to me. ... I'm going back to the USA, I
just got my ticket today."
In Roger and Out a living friend reflects on his long dead buddy from
the 1960s: "Tripping down that old hippie highway, got to thinking
about you again. Wondering how it really was for you, and how it
happened in the end. ... We were just a couple of kids then, living
each and every day, when we both went down to register, we were
laughing all the way. ... I feel you in the air today. I know you
gave for your country, roger and out good buddy."
Living With War closes appropriately with America the Beautiful, the
hundred-voice choir providing the perfect closure to one of the
strongest and certainly the most-brilliantly released calls for peace
and justice ever from a musician of Young's stature. In releasing
Living With War as he has, Young is clearly challenging his artistic
peers, fellow patriots, the American movement for peace and justice,
and all of us. The challenge is to ramp it up, amp it up and take the
movements for peace and justice to a new level, riding again the wave
of unity and love for America that went sour after the Bush/Cheney
hijacking flew America into the lies, damned lies and mess of Iraq.
John Stauber is the Executive Director for Center for Media and Democracy.
http://www.prwatch.org
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