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Baker's Dozen

After The Flood: The 13 Favourite Albums Of Howe Gelb, Aged 12-16
Stewart Smith , June 11th, 2012 08:21

In a neat twist on our 13 favourite albums feature, Giant Sand's Howe Gelb talks Stewart Smith through his formative records from his teenage years in Pennsylvania

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Neil Young - Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere / CSNY – Four Way Street

Neil Young's Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere, that's gonna be at the top of the list. But then you have to put Four Way Street in there, cos that was the same thing. Y'see I'm starting to be stolen away from piano by guitar, because the guitar duelling in Four Way Street was similar to the keyboard duelling in Savoy Brown, but it had more expression for me, because Savoy Brown had a lot of actual licks, but the playing of guitars between Steven Stills and Neil Young weren't so much licks, they were like some kind of human discussion, filtered through guitar pickups, spurts and blurts and sparks. They just sounded phenomenal.

There was a comedian, David Steinberg, he had a daytime chat show, didn't last very long, but one of the guests he had was CSNY, and it is fucking incredible. You can see it, that noise that they made when they jammed, they only had a 4-5 minute slot and they just jumped into it. And I was like WOAH!

The thing about Four Way Street is definitely the long guitar jams. Neil Young's record is all about him being a guitar player and the sound of his guitar was so enticing it just blew me away.