32 Comments on “Who I Want to Write Like”

1. Wow, Neil Finn? Cool!

2. I knew I liked you for a reason.

3. i remember growing up with split enz, neil and tim finn’s first band, here in aus. loved them then. adored crowded house. wept when hessie died.

   have you heard neil & tim’s last album (from a year or two ago?) they both are frighteningly good singers, and they both write, and its overall amazing.

4. I liked those songs.
   Care to provide a link to that artist’s homepage or something?

5. Best concert I ever saw? Neil Finn giving a FREE concert on Toronto’s waterfront in ’98 (99?) (when Try Whistling This was released).

   You expect a free concert to be short and perfunctory. Not this one. He gave a THREE-HOUR show, with three encores, playing new stuff, Split Enz stuff, Crowded House stuff… it was amazing. And his son played guitar with the band. Great show.

6. Cool, a song from Woodface, my fav Crowded House album! I actually saw them in Chicago during the Woodface tour way back in the early 90s(I think), and it still ranks as the most enjoyable concert I have ever attended.
   Aren’t they touring again, or something? I think I remember hearing about it on WXRT (Chi-town radio station).

7. They’re regrouping (minus the drummer Paul Hester, who is dead) and recording a new album.

8. Scott: you can probably find most of this on Amazon, maybe iTunes. Look for the following stuff:

   Crowded House (not counting the Greatest hits I can think of 5 CDs)
   Finn Brothers (2 of these)
   Neil Finn (2 of these)
   Split Enz (probably not easy to locate in US)
   There’s a live CD called 7 World’s Collide with Neil Finn and a bunch of guests, like Eddie Vedder and Johnny Marr.
   I recommend all of these. However, my list is probably not up to date. Does anyone know, am I missing any?

9. Oh how I love the Finns. With all my heart. I agree with Julie: I knew there was a reason I liked you.

10. mmmmmm good stuff

11. Ever since I left Australia for the UK, almost ten years ago, I’ve been trying to find a couple of Aussie albums on CD – Split Enz’s ‘Time & Tide’ is one. Neil Finn is a bona fide genius. Good taste, Mr Scalzi!

12. Call it Scalzi’s Week of Love for Aussies!

    I listened to Woodface approximately 1,684,489 times during my last year of college.

13. Sween: saw them play a live show in Golden Gate Park in 89 or 90, and they were *brilliant* – as much passion as the 4 times I saw them in “regular” shows (including Wolfgang’s in SF in 87 – that show was, frankly, orgasmic.)

    Thanks for posting these videos, John. What great memories.

14. Personally, I hate you, John, but I was let it subside slightly for this. “Don’t Dream It’s Over” is kryptonite to my heart. Hearing it always puts me over the edge into tears. So lovely, so heart-wrenching, so sad.

    I own none of their albums, but I respect their work and was saddened to hear of their drummer’s suicide.

15. I also was there in Golden Gate Park in 89. I had just returned from a 6 year living spree from NYC. Uber good memories! It was a grand welcome home to the Bay Area.
    But John, you say you wish you could write like that. Who is to say you don’t? The parallels between the lines of art are very blured. And at some place it all merges. Where stories are music, music is a painting, painting is poetry…yada yada..;)

16. Don’t get me wrong, Ray. I think I write pretty well. However, I have yet to write amazingly catchy yet not stupid perfect pop, as Neil Finn does.

17. The Woodface tour was truly lovely. The Cincinnati show even featured a rubber chicken, at one point. Perfect love songs and a rubber chicken–it was a tough show to top!

18. Neil Finn is one of my (artistic) heroes – Crowded House were, if not my first favourite band (I may have been too young to think in that way), the makers of my first favourite album (Temple of Low Men!).

    The Crowded House best-of, Recurring Dream, is near-perfect (if we could somehow add “Love This Life”…), and a great introduction. The only solo stuff I’ve gotten my hands on is Try Whistling This, and it’s fantastic too.

19. I am a big crowded house fan (to date, one of only two songs I’ve ever sung Karoke was Don’t Dream It’s Over)….

    I like you more and more with ever posting, John, and I’m already a dues-paying memeber of the John Scalzi Fan Club!

20. If people are looking for hard-to-find crowded house stuff, http://www.smokecds.com is an NZ-based online CD store that ships worldwide (I’m not affiliated with them, just trying to facilitate the purchase of albums by one of our greatest bands!). It has split enz, and also a lot of other NZ stuff like Flying nun, which I understand is quite hard to get overseas, for those of you that are that way inclined (Go the Clean!).

21. Four Seasons in One Day, Fall at Your Feet and Into Temptation are my favorite songs from Crowded House. I used to have the super special import of Recurring Dream, but it was a total loss in a car fire.

    /Weep.

    Mmmm. Thanks for making me go back to that collection.

22. So does this mean that someday we can expect a special limited edition chapbook paean to the bacon cat a la the song Lester?

23. Not be nitpicky or anything, but in the entry above, “The answer: Yeah, I wish I could write this guy.” I assume you mean, “Yeah, I wish I could write like this guy” as opposed to literally writing Neil Finn. Although one could do worse than to write into existence one of the best songwriters of all time, I suppose.

    Oh, and Woodface is astounding. That version of Fall At Your Feet was terrific. Thanks.

24. Writing like Neil Finn would be nice but there’s still this 17-year-old inside me that wants to be a guitar-slinging badass like Jimmy Page.

25. There’s a sixties-kid in me who wants to write like Phil Ochs wrote.

    Alas, there may be a reason the only song of his to hit the charts (There But for Fortune) was taken to the charts by Joan Baez.

    Maybe if I could have Phil Ochs mastery over lyrics, and the voice of Neil Finn.

    Is that asking for too much?

    If I can’t write like Phil Ochs, Tom Lehrer is another songwriter I’d like to write like. And if I can’t sing like Neil Finn, I’ll settle(?) for Jim Morrison!

26. I love Neil, but I also I love the song that Tim Finn wrote the lyrics and Richard Thompson wrote the music for, “Persuasion”

    It’s really beautiful when Richard sings it with his son, Teddy Thompson.

    Of course I am a rabid Thompson fan, so I might be biased!

27. Darren – You can get a decent remaster of Time & Tide locally here. If you want to drop me a line, I’m happy to help get it to you.

28. Darren,

    It’s a few years ago now, but I managed to score both Split Enz box sets from Tower Records Picadilly Circus. Might be worth checking there.

    Best piece of clothing I own? My Split Enz reunion tour T-Shirt from 1993. Still in good nick. Make a good shirt down in the antipodes, we do.

29. I remember seeing Crowded House in Cambridge. If I say they weren’t bad you have to understand I thought I’d bought tickets for Little Village – Ry Cooder, et al. before he went all Buena Vista.

30. Great Stuff! For those who haven’t tried it yet, I highly recommend http://pandora.com Create a Neil Finn station and sit back, close your eyes…and enjoy!

31. Great song. Crowded House the soundtrack of my life during some interesting years. Funny, never owned the recordings but the songs beg to be played on the guitar. Up until now that was how the songs stayed with me ( Much Music played them on a heavy rotation during the ’80’s as well ). Evaluation: John Hiatt and Neil Finn same strong power as songwriters. A new found connection for me thanks to this thread.

32. Just starting to read Redshirts and it didn’t take me long to wonder if you were a Crowded House fan.