Comments on: Basement Songs: Neil Finn, “Last to Know”

By: Respect Due: Crowded House | Sonic Clash

Respect Due: Crowded House | Sonic Clash — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 14:03:25 +0000

[...] You also might want to read this article from my friends over at Popdose, a story that uses Neil Finn’s “Last to Kno… [...]

By: Malchus

Malchus — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 23:26:34 +0000

You HAD to bring up the leopard print bikinis…

By: Malchus

Malchus — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 22:26:34 +0000

You HAD to bring up the leopard print bikinis…

By: bvladika

bvladika — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 21:10:00 +0000

oh yes, the leopard print bikinis!

By: Karim Amir

Karim Amir — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 18:56:16 +0000

Neil Finn is one of my musical gods.
For me, it's Try Whistling This that brings me back to a certain seemingly hopeless time and place in my life. The CD got me through a really rough patch.

By: JonCummings

JonCummings — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 15:43:16 +0000

I've seen them three times over the last 14 months–most recently a couple of weeks ago, when they closed their tour at the Orpheum Theatre here in LA. Both that night and a year earlier, in a pre-Coachella gig when they had just started playing live again, they closed with “Better Be Home Soon.” At the Santa Barbara Bowl last summer they closed with “Don't Dream It's Over.”

That tour-closing gig was messy and glorious–with the bonus that they did “Throw Your Arms Around Me,” which they didn't do at either of the shows I saw last year.

By: Malchus

Malchus — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 01:18:19 +0000

Thanks for the kind words, Jon.

It doesn't surprise me that no one even found Finn's "Turn and Run", as most radio stations in our country have been indifferent to his music since, hmmm, the second Crowded House album.

I think that Mike (a couple comments below) best described Finn's work: "hopefulness and melancholy". Sadly, I don't think there's a real place for music like that on the radio dial. Maybe someday.

By: Dan

Dan — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 00:30:58 +0000

Scott, I've been reading and enjoying your entries for a while now, but only recently have I had the courage to comment. I wish I had a friend like Steve, but I guess I can only blame myself for not keeping in touch with the people that mattered to me during the past 20 years. Hopefully, it's not too late. Leave it to you to make me wake up, see what's around me, and be thankful for it. Then again, you were always able to do that. It's good to hear that you have someone like Steve who can help you the way you help others. Take care my friend.

By: kshane

kshane — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 23:49:28 +0000

That's one of the shows I was at Mike. It was a great evening.

By: JonCummings

JonCummings — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 22:01:07 +0000

Scott, your columns are some of the best stuff I read these days.

Funny that you have a "One Nil" song that means so much to you, and "Last to Know" is a great song. For me the special one is "Turn and Run." "One Nil" had been released overseas in the spring of 2001, and I had just bought an import copy over the summer--just a few weeks before 9/11.

I was working at the U.N. on 9/11, with an organization that facilitates multi-faith dialogue among religious leaders (and we were doing a bang-up job, obviously!), when the planes hit the towers. In all the raw emotion that surrounded that day and the ensuing weeks, as we all (but especially we New Yorkers) adjusted to our new and uncertain reality, with the twin aching desires for comfort and revenge, the lyrics of "Turn and Run" were so pertinent that they seemed prophetic:

"Everything's so out of control tonight/In a plane that's flying fast/At a speed that makes me cry/Have you left me now/To trouble that won't let me lie/I'm awake all the time/You know where I stand/Holding my plastic gun

"So turn and run/You cold killers of innocence/Against us there's no defense/Your flash and your wickedness/Can't break our love"

The song ran through my head constantly throughout that fall as the despair, hope and futility of my job became more important, as New Yorkers mourned and pulled together, and as our national unity held through the Afghanistan war (before collapsing under Bush's craven politicization of "Homeland Security" and Iraq the next year).

I've always been amazed that others didn't make similar connections between the "Turn and Run" and 9/11--I suppose that the song's general unavailability in the U.S. didn't help matters. Still, as close a connection as I'd always felt to Neil's music, that bond drew a lot closer during those days.