‘Concert Reviews’ Articles
Written by bnbrainer on 08 January 2014
Neil Young was just a few bars into an indignant old song at Carnegie Hall on Monday night, chugging a terse intro on an acoustic guitar, when he abruptly threw the emergency brake.
“Wrong!” he barked, waving one hand, as if to cut off a rehearsal band. Part of the audience had started clapping to the beat — but not quite on the beat, as Mr. Young complained. His tone was even, his exasperation clear.
“It’s something that you probably don’t know,” he said, peering into the house from the stage, “but there’s a hell of a distance between you and me.”
read more:
www.nytimes.com/…/arts/music/temperamental-neil-young-starts-run-at-carnegie-hall
Tags: Carnegie Hall
Posted in Concert Reviews, News / Article | Comments Off on NYT Review: Familiar Yet Distant, With Songs and an Edge
Written by bnbrainer on 28 October 2013
Tom Waits Triumphs at Bridge School Benefit
Other highlights include My Morning Jacket’s all-star tribute to Lou Reed
By Andy Greene
October 28, 2013 12:10 PM ET
The crowd was a little restless by the time Tom Waitstook the stage at the second night of the Bridge School Benefit. Temperatures were frigid throughout the entire day, but the winds picked up after the sun went down, leaving many folks shivering under their blankets. (They should really think about having this thing about a month earlier.) The Shoreline Ampitheater wasn’t equipped for a crowd of this size, and the food lines seemed like scenes straight out of the Soviet Union circa 1985. Making matters worse, the wait times between sets seemed to grow as the night went on, taking upwards of twenty-five minutes.
But all these issues seemed to vanish the second the lights dimmed and Tom Waits walked onstage. Despite releasing the stellar LP Bad as Me in 2011, he hasn’t played a single concert in over five years. His fans were hungry for a show and he wasn’t going to disappoint. Backed by a killer band featuring Les Claypool on standup bass and David Hidalgo on guitar and accordion, Waits ran through ten songs over a fifty minute set, touching on most every era of his long career.
At first it sounded like Waits has been gargling from same battery acid Bob Dylan has been using recently, but he quickly cleared up and demonstrated surprising range, from his signature growl on the Rain Dogs classic “Singapore” to a gentle rasp on “Lucky Day” to the aching plea of “Tom Traubert’s Blues.” The latter song was particularly devastating, bringing the entire crowd to a hushed silence.
Waits also showed why nobody tops him when it comes to stage banter. “I volunteered to come here,” he said midway through his set. “Long story. Back in the 1970s I borrowed a lot of money from Neil. For me, it was the days of long hair and short money. He loaned it to me so I could start a restaurant. I lost a lot of money on that restaurant. Let me rephrase that, I lost a lot of Neil’s money. And you don’t wanna see Neil mad. Anyway, it was a small, little restaurant, sort of a specialized place. We were gonna have eel and donuts and fish scales, just fish scales, sauteed and all gluten free. But it went under, so Neil said, ‘Listen, you owe me a lot of money, so I have three ideas for you: Jail time or you can come work in my yard, or you can do the Bridge School.'”
He wrapped up with powerful renditions of “Cemetery Polka” from Rain Dogs and “Come On Up to the House” from Mule Variations. The fifty minutes seemed to vanish in an instant, leaving Queens of the Stone Age with an almost impossible act to follow. It’s a tragedy that Tom Waits doesn’t tour more often. Nobody does what he does, and he’s doing it almost better than ever. Why assemble a band this great and rehearse a show this magnificent, only to do it once?
The Tom Waits set was the clear highlight of the night, but My Morning Jacket gave him a good fight. They revived their note-perfect duet with Neil Young on “Harvest Moon” from night one, and followed it up with the Velvet Underground’s “Oh! Sweet Nuthin”” as a tribute to Lou Reed. Neil Young, Elvis Costello, Jenny Lewis and other performers from the night came onstage for this, leading to a massive campfire-like sing along on the Loaded classic. Surprisingly, they were the only act the entire night to acknowledge Reed’s passing.
Most of the other performers made slight changes to their set from night one. Jenny Lewis ended with a gorgeous solo asouctic rendition of Rilo Kiley’s “Silver Lining,” and Heart brought out Neil Young for a raucous duet on the Harvest Moon deep cut “War of Man.” Fun. had the entire crowd singing along to Queen’s “Somebody to Love,” while Diana Krall returned to the Bob Dylan catalog for a tender take on “Simple Twist of Fate.”
Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young played the exact same set from the first night, but this time they seemed more on their game. Nash sang his ass off on “Just a Song Before I Go” and “Suite: Judy Blue Eyes” hadn’t sounded so fresh and alive in years. The brand new Stills track “Don’t Want Lies” is actually light years better than Young’s maudlin “Singer Without a Song,” though Crosby and Nash did everything they could to save that one with pristine back-up vocals.
They once again closed out the night by bringing everybody out for “Teach Your Children.” It’s sad to think that could be the last song that CSNY ever sing together, but it’s an unlikely bet. People have been thinking that every since they broke up in 1971, but against all odds this foursome seems to persevere, even as they begin to enter their 70s. Besides, even if Neil never agrees to another tour, there are always more Bridge School Benefits in then future.
Read more: rollingstone.com/music/news/tom-waits-triumphs-at-bridge-school-benefit-20131028
Tags: CSN&Y, Lou Reed, Tom Waits
Posted in Bridge School Benefit, Concert Reviews, News / Article, Performances | Comments Off on BSB Review: Rolling Stone
Written by bnbrainer on 24 July 2013
During the show of Neil Young and Crazy Horse, 23 July 2013 at Nyon Paleo Festival, West-Switzerland, again a thunderstorm broke loose with windgusts up to 70 km/h and pouring rain on stage, exactly during Neil’s set. Neil immediately let lower the pump organ from the ceiling. After playing extended versions of “Like A Hurricane” and “Rocking In The Free World“, the show had to be aborted…
Preliminary setlist:
1. Love and Only Love
2. Powderfinger
3. Psychedelic pill
4. Walk Like A Giant
5. Hole in the Sky
6. Heart of Gold
7. Blowin in the wind
8. Comes a Time
9. Singer without a song (w/o the girl and her suitcase)
– the sky opens up and a real thunderstorm comes up…
10. Like a hurricane
11. Rockin in the freeworld
then thr show was aborted due to management decision (too much water, Neil and The Horse could have gone for ever and the audience with them) . A legendary show. Epic.
One live reporting review : human-highway.org/2013hurricane-in-nyon-switzerland
Tags: alchemy, European Tour 2013, Hurricane, Nyon
Posted in Concert Reviews, Crazy Horse, News / Article | 3 Comments »
Written by Shar on 20 July 2013
Neil Young & Crazy Horse performed ‘Human Highway’ at Stade Aguilera in Biarritz, France on Thursday, July 18 night as part of the 2013 European Alchemy tour.
Young has only performed the song live 13 times in the past 30 years plus another three times with Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, twice in 2003 and once in 1989, according to www.noise11.com.
The setlist from the evening includes:
Love and Only Love (from Ragged Glory, 1990)
Powderfinger (from Rust Never Sleeps, 1979)
Psychedelic Pill (from Psychedelic Pill, 2012)
Walk Like A Giant (from Psychedelic Pill, 2012)
Hole In The Sky (new, unreleased)
Heart Of Gold (from Harvest, 1972)
Human Highway (from Comes A Time, 1978)
Blowing In The Wind (from Weld, 1991)
Singer Without A Song (new, unreleased)
Ramada Inn (from Psychedelic Pill, 2012)
Surfer Joe and Moe The Sleaze (from Re*ac*tor, 1981)
Sedan Delivery (from Rust never Sleeps, 1979)
Rocking In The Free World (from Freedom, 1989)
Mr Soul (from Buffalo Springfield Again, 1967)
My My Hey Hey (from Rust Never Sleeps, 1979)
Read more at: http://www.noise11.com/news/neil-young-resurrects-human-highway-in-france-20130720
Tags: alchemy, Biarritz, European Tour 2013, France, Human Highway, setlists
Posted in Concert Reviews, News / Article, Setlists | Comments Off on Young resurrects “Human Highway”
Written by bnbrainer on 18 June 2013
Uncut writes a long and nice review of the London show where RED SUN was played:
Neil Young & Crazy Horse: London O2 Arena, June 17, 2013
by John Mulvey
If, at this late date, you still need proof Neil Young is not a man to be trusted, something akin to that arrives about two and a quarter hours into his show at London’s O2 Arena.
By this point, Young has managed a grand total of 15 songs, mostly in the resilient company of Crazy Horse, and is making his first extended address to the crowd. “Frankly, a lot of times tonight we kinda sucked,” he says. “But, with what we do, that happens.”
One can understand the second part of Young’s statement: controlling such wild and capricious electric music is a necessarily tricky business. But what, bewilderingly, constitutes a non-sucking show for Neil Young? It is hard to recall, from my limited experience, one of his shows that has been simultaneously so ominous, joyful, ambitious and – a real shock, this, considering the unsteady reputation of Crazy Horse – tight. Perhaps a good night for Young resembles the prickly evening he spent in Newcastle last week, enjoying a faintly adversarial relationship with some sections of the crowd? Or the reception accorded “Walk Like A Giant” on Saturday, when substantial portions of the Dublin audience reportedly fed their boos into the song’s cacophonous end section?
…read more:
>> uncut.co.uk/blog/wild-mercury-sound/neil-young-crazy-horse-london-o2-arena-june-17-2013
Tags: crazy horse, London, Red Sun
Posted in Concert Reviews, Crazy Horse, News / Article | Comments Off on Uncut review: Neil & CH at London
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