This morning I woke up and just felt like things needed to calm down. It’s pre-finals week, and everyone looks a little haggard, so the song of the day this week is chosen with the intention of bringing those stress levels down, and those groove levels up. “Down by the River”, the melancholy fourth track off of Neil Young’s 1969 record “Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere”, is the type of song that makes you want to lay back in a field of daisies and pretend you are a flower child of the late sixties. Or, if all local daisy fields are frozen over, put on some wool socks and dance around your house. Either way, this song conjures up a great range of emotions, from the lugubrious crooning of Young’s voice during the verse, to the gritty guitar solo taken midway through the song. The guitar solo comes as a bit of a surprise in the midst of the complacent acoustic strumming, and has an effect similar to sticking your feet in wet mud, then feeling the hard, silty bottom of the river.

Peace and love,

Erez

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j6PsBm4VeJQ