Horsing Around

I've got to admit, we didn't really watch Year of the Horse, Jim Jarmusch's documentary on Neil Young and Crazy Horse. We just put it on for the music.

What we have here is Jim Jarmusch (Stranger than Paradise, Down by Law, Ghost Dog, other weird stuff) filming Neil Young and Crazy Horse's 1997 tour in glorious 16mm. He includes some bare-bones interviews and lots of old footage. I'm sure the interviews were fascinating. One I tuned in for had Neil discussing the band name: he always talks about Crazy Horse. The band always says "Neil Young and Crazy Horse", but Neil thinks of the band as a single organism. Um, Neil, if the rest of the band doesn't think that, you may be mistaken.

In fact, a lot of the interviews and other footage shows Neil or the other members (Ralph Molina, Billy Talbot, Pancho Sanpedro) being jerks and assholes. But the music!

Crazy Horse is loud, simple, distorted rock. If you like that, you'll like the musical segments of YotH. Songs include Sedan Delivery, Stupid Girl, Tonight's the Night, and the anthemic Fuckin' Up. That's what we came for. I didn't mind the rest of the stuff, the interviews and the home video. I just didn't watch it. I came for the show.