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New Neil Young video: Hitchhiker

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Video: Neil Young – “Hitchhiker”

From Hitchhiker, out now on Reprise Records.

This is the second animated video Neil has released to promote Hitchhiker. We already covered the first one, but this album is really holding up as one of the greatest gems from the Neil Young Archives. It’s such an immediate, intimate, intense collection.

The song itself, Neil’s “drug chronicles,” has been fairly legendary among Rusties. He played it live during his 1992 solo acoustic shows, causing fans to speculate about which came first, “Hitchhiker” or 1982’s “Like an Inca,” since they share some lyrics. Neil finally recorded it with Daniel Lanois on the 2010 solo electric album, Le Noise, but not before adding a couple of extra verses.

How many years have come and gone
Like friends and enemies
I tried to leave my past behind
But it’s catching up with me

I don’t know how I’m standing here
Living my life
Thankful for my children
And my faithful wife

“Finishing was important,” Young told American Songwriter in 2010. “The song never could have been done without those verses.” I guess that explains why it sat unreleased for so long despite the fact that it’s awesome.

In that same interview he said, “So I have recordings of ‘Hitchhiker’ from the ’70s but there was never any reason to put it out. I felt like, ‘Whoa, that’s not really a good idea.'” Glad he changed his mind! Finally releasing the Hitchhiker album is one of the best ideas he’s had in decades.

Neil Young: web, twitter, amazon, apple, spotify, wiki.

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Glorious Noise Interview with Owsley “Bear” Stanley

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DeadBack in July 2006, I read somewhere that Owsley Stanley was still alive and selling jewelry in Australia. I found his website, read a bunch of his essays, and got in touch. I’m not sure what I was hoping for, but he wasn’t very interested in talking to me.

A year later, he did a couple of huge interviews with Rolling Stone (not online [Update: finally online! -ed.]) and the San Francisco Chronicle. Here are some choice bits:

• “By conservative estimates, Bear Research Group made more than 1.25 million doses of LSD between 1965 and 1967, essentially seeding the entire modern psychedelic movement.”

• “As the original sound mixer for the Grateful Dead, he was responsible for fundamental advances in audio technology, things as basic now as monitor speakers that allow vocalists to hear themselves onstage.”

• “Any time the music on the radio starts to sound like rubbish, it’s time to take some LSD,” he says.

Digging through the GLONO archives as we approach our tenth anniversary, I figured we might as well run what we got out of him…

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Death of a Junky: the Rolling Stones

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Sympathy for the DevilDigging through the archives, we recently realized that we had lost track of one of the finest items posted to GLONO. Back in the day, this was the first post that we pulled aside and showcased as a feature, but it somehow got lost in the shuffle of redesigns and content management system switches. We’re happy to bring it back. —Jake

Death of a Junky: The Rolling Stones

by

Derek Phillips

Drugs are evil. Make no mistake. Queen of Darkness Marilyn Manson takes the stage in front of a huge 12-foot tall neon sign that reads D-R-U-G-S. Drugs turn people crazy, especially the people trying to outlaw them. Drugs are the evil Lord and the Stones worshipped at its altar for 20 years and reaped the benefits before they fell from grace and lost their souls to Billy Blanks.

“Sympathy for the Devil” may be the most evil song in the world. The Stones forced anyone who dared to listen beyond the jungle rhythms to face facts–you shit in your bed, now sleep in it. Everything about that song is great. It is rock and roll. It is everything parents were afraid of. I’ve seen clips of the recording sessions where Keith couldn’t get up off the studio floor to listen to playbacks. They stood on the precipice of depravity and spit over the edge.

The Stones were bar-none the Greatest Rock Band in the World. They proved it time and again and were untouchable throughout the seventies and even into the early eighties. Some Girls was one of the best of their career, and though Tattoo You didn’t reach the highs (and lows), of earlier records, it still had gems.

Then something happened.

Something wrong… Something ugly… Something vile…

They got healthy.

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The 100 Greatest Drug Songs Ever

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MOJO #109Back in December 2002, MOJO magazine compiled a list of the 100 Greatest Drug Songs Ever. Six years ago today, GLONO published an Open Letter to the Music Director of Mojo Magazine’s Mix CDs, essentially thanking them for the CD included with that issue, Feed Your Head: 16 Mind-Blowing Classics, which contained tracks by the Small Faces, Funkadelic, Chris Bell, Sebadoh, et al.

After the jump, you’ll find the complete list as well as the tracklist of the CD. The question for you is: What are the best drug songs released since 2002? I nominate MGMT‘s “Time to Pretend.”

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Amy Winehouse Busted

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Five months later, Amy Winehouse has been arrested in connection with a video that allegedly shows her “doing drugs” at a party in her London home. Metro police said Winehouse was arrested Wednesday evening and released on bail following several hours of questioning.

“Amy Winehouse voluntarily attended a London police station today by appointment. She was arrested in order to be interviewed and is cooperating fully with inquiries,” Winehouse’s spokesman, Chris Goodman said in a statement.

“The interview relates to a video handed to police earlier this year,” he said.

The video in question was posted by The Sun on January 22. Winehouse checked into rehab shortly thereafter.

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Albert Hofmann, inventor of LSD, Dead at 102

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SunshineJeez, who knew he was still alive? Well, he’s not anymore. It’s safe to say the world would be a much different place without the pioneering work of Dr. Hoffman. We certainly wouldn’t have as much good music, that’s for sure…

He then took LSD hundreds of times, but regarded it as a powerful and potentially dangerous psychotropic drug that demanded respect. More important to him than the pleasures of the psychedelic experience was the drug’s value as a revelatory aid for contemplating and understanding what he saw as humanity’s oneness with nature. That perception, of union, which came to Dr. Hofmann as almost a religious epiphany while still a child, directed much of his personal and professional life.

Check out Hoffman’s book, LSD: My Problem Child: Reflections on Sacred Drugs, Mysticism, and Science.

Via DeRo.

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Pete Doherty Back in Jail

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Pete Doherty is going back to the slammer. Judge Davinder Lachar handed him a 14 week sentence at a court hearing in west London for violating his parole and using drugs. Doherty had been given a suspended sentence last October for possession of illegal drugs and driving illegally. It appears he was unable to meet the terms of that suspension and is now going back to the joint.

This means Pete will have to postpone his solo Royal Albert Hall appearance this month, which would have been his biggest solo show to date. The sentence could also conflict with a scheduled appearance by Babyshambles at the Glastonbury Festival, but according to the BBC, under current rules, Doherty is likely to serve around a month of his time.

Speaking to BBC 6 Music, Babyshambles drummer Adam Ficek said: “As far as I see it I hope we can really look positively on this and when he comes out he can learn from the mistakes he’s made and we can persevere with the path that Babyshambles was treading before.”

I don’t know how much Pete learns from his mistakes. He’s been in and out of rehab and court for years now, the most serious case being when in 2003 he busted into former Libertines bandmate Carl Barat’s flat and stole a bunch of his shit. Pete was sentenced to six months in the pokey for that, but it was reduced to two months on appeal.

Let the onslaught of puritanical haters begin!

Coincidentally, Babyshambles has a new video online today.

Video: Babyshambles – I’ll Kill Him

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Jeff Tweedy Talks to the AP

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A trip through Jeff Tweedy’s world:

“Well, you know Spencer is 11, and awhile back, he said ‘I just read on Wikipedia that you started smoking pot when you quit drinking in nineteen-whatever. That makes me so mad. Wikipedia is always so wrong. It’s just like, so stupid.’ And I had to take him aside and say ‘Spencer, I didn’t think I was going to have to have this discussion with you at this age, because it is not something that has really entered your world, but I don’t want to lie to you. That Wikipedia thing, there are probably a lot of wrong things on there, but that is not one of them. That happened.'”

Kids say the darnedest things!

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The Brutal Story of Amy Winehouse

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Amy WinehouseShe put out the best soul record in decades, got screwed up on more drugs than most humans have even heard of, and became a tabloid lightening rod. Join the circus that has swept up Britain and is running wild across the United States: The Amy Winehouse Show.

Her first album Frank was released in 2003 to the usual round of British hype and American indifference. It was nominated for a Mercury Prize but fell on deaf ears in the colonies and was written off as another bland Joss Stone rip-off. Sure, the mounting stories of its creator’s drug and alcohol problems garnered the occasional mention in Rolling Stone and Winehouse’s unusual fashion sense that leans so heavily on the beehive and pedal pusher look piqued our interest and made us lusty for Mary Tyler Moore reruns. But for a couple years she was nothing more than an interesting picture in gossip mags. So why does anyone care now?

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Pete Pleads Guilty

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Please, sir... May I have some more?Pete Doherty pleads guilty to drugs charge:

The singer pleaded guilty to possessing quantities of crack, heroin, cannabis and ketamine as well as to two driving offences.

The judge however deferred sentencing Doherty until August 7, on the condition he enters a drug rehabilitation programme – probably a five-day course at a clinic in Harrogate – and that he does not commit any more offences.

Remember kids, crack is whack. It may help you to release a good single here and there, but it will ruin your album. Oh Paddy, put the pipe down.

(AP Photo / Ian West/PA Wire)