Written by bnbrainer on 26 April 2011
25 April, Live Report: Neil Young At Lincoln Center
In Section: PRESS Play » Posted By: Carter Maness
Over the weekend, the theme was sports versus music. On two occasions, my beloved Knicks were dismantled, embarrassed and slapped around at Madison Square Garden, providing a substantial dose of deflated expectations and competition-induced depression. Yet in both scenarios, music saved the night.
Yesterday, after the Boston Celtics completed their brutal sweep, we headed to Lincoln Center’s Avery Fischer Hall for a solo performance by Neil Young. His stunning set provided yet another reminder (like we needed one) that Young is a titan with a songbook that beats nearly every remaining songwriter from the 20th Century.
..more on nypress.com/blog.
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Written by bnbrainer on 26 April 2011
April 25, 2011
Strumming Solo, With the Reverb of a Full Band
By BEN RATLIFF
“I feel a rumblin’ in her ground,” Neil Young sang, alone onstage at Avery Fisher Hall, playing his Gretsch White Falcon, sounding the low notes of a strummed chord, muting them a little with the heel of his hand. The song was generally about planet earth but could have been specifically about where he stood. As he struck those low notes, the metal fixtures in the room talked back: the exit signs, the lighting plates and possibly the balcony railings all rattled like rivets in a cymbal.
Mr. Young has done solo tours before. They usually involve acoustic guitars, beat-up pianos and contemplative looks at his instruments between songs. They’re fine. But his current tour connects to a recent record, “Le Noise,” which makes songwriting secondary to sound.
He played new and old songs on Sunday, including several from his work with Crazy Horse, his electric band. He got into it by degrees. First, a few plain acoustic-guitar songs, straight into the microphone: “Hey Hey My My (Into the Black),” “Tell Me Why.” Then a few on an acoustic with pickup, using amplifiers: “You Never Call” — new and unreleased, a minor-key complaint to someone in heaven — and “Love and War.”
And then the full effect. It wasn’t much to look at. He switched off between his usual instruments, the White Falcon and a black Gibson Les Paul, through two Fender deluxe amplifiers. Playing “Down by the River,” he flipped his guitar’s selector switch up and down between verses and choruses. Occasionally he hit a pedal to engage a slow and subtle phase effect. That was all, or at least all you could see.
The reverb — in the amplifiers, not in the room — took on an extraordinary quality, as if the implied space in the music became a little more real. The sound seemed giant-size but not painful: it didn’t fire at you, it enveloped you. Mr. Young’s shows generally suggest sophisticated thinking about frequencies and pain thresholds, but this was something else again.
There were keyboard instruments onstage, too: worn spinet and baby-grand pianos, and a pump organ. Presumably, he’s carrying them around the country; he played them for one song each. (At the spinet, he performed a plinky new song, “Leia,” about adults watching a child playing: “Captured falling leaves from the branches of the music tree/She’s a baby with a drum making music that the soul can see.”) These were pauses between deep draughts of guitar, where the concert’s action lay.
Mr. Young is 65 now, and his newer songs reference loss and age and the endurance of love. But they also reference war and natural disaster. He’s not a wistful old man; he’s tense and obdurate even in the presence of pleasant or affirming words. Singing the first lines of “Sign of Love,” presumably written for his wife — “When we go for a
little walk/out on the land/When we’re just walkin’ and holdin’ hands/You can take it as a sign of love” — he bared his teeth and looked ready to bite.
The Les Paul’s dark, fat, mattelike sound felt doomed out and righteous, to be admired from afar, but the Gretsch’s was something you’d want to take home and live with: brighter, more expressive, more fluent with its feedback. (He shook the Gretsch, holding it by the headstock and swinging it near the amplifier, toward the end of “Walk With Me,” his encore.) Even alone, Mr. Young played all his songs at their regular, unnervingly slouchy tempos, with his bizarre articulation of picking and strumming. And even for the Crazy Horse songs, no Crazy Horse was needed. It has often been said that Neil Young’s work boils down to a guy alone with his guitar. Usually in that formulation the guitar is acoustic. I think that formulation may
be wrong.
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Written by bnbrainer on 26 April 2011
2011-04-25, Avery Fisher Hall, New York City, New York, USA
01. My My, Hey Hey (Out Of The Blue) (acoustic guitar)
02. Tell Me Why (acoustic guitar)
03. Helpless (acoustic guitar)
04. You Never Call (acoustic guitar w/ pickup)
05. Peaceful Valley (acoustic guitar w/ pickup)
06. Love And War (acoustic guitar w/ pickup)
07. Down By The River (electric guitar – Old Black)
08. Hitchhiker (electric guitar – Old Black)
09. Ohio (electric guitar – White Falcon)
10. Sign Of Love (electric guitar – White Falcon)
11. Leia (piano)
12. After The Gold Rush (pump organ)
13. I Believe In You (piano)
14. Rumblin’ (electric guitar – Old Black)
15. Cortez The Killer (electric guitar – Old Black)
16. Cinnamon Girl (electric guitar – Old Black)
—
17. Walk With Me (electric guitar – White Falcon)
Tour: Twisted Road Tour – 4th Leg
Band: Solo
Neil Young – acoustic guitar, electric guitar, piano, pump organ, harmonica,
vocals
Thx to kbs, kh & pi
Posted in Setlists | 2 Comments »
Written by bnbrainer on 25 April 2011
beware of human people – Björk. It might get funny, if you dare… and it might have something to do with Eastern-eggs
thank you, Michael. Go see his Anti-War page. Moar barn to come.
No moar Nukes:
and more Easter-eggs to come.
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Written by bnbrainer on 25 April 2011
2011-04-24, Avery Fisher Hall, New York City, New York, USA
Solo
01. My My, Hey Hey (Out Of The Blue) (acoustic guitar)
02. Tell Me Why (acoustic guitar)
03. Helpless (acoustic guitar)
04. You Never Call (acoustic guitar w/ pickup)
05. Peaceful Valley (acoustic guitar w/ pickup)
06. Love And War (acoustic guitar w/ pickup)
07. Down By The River (electric guitar – Old Black)
08. Hitchhiker (electric guitar – Old Black)
09. Ohio (electric guitar – White Falcon)
10. Sign Of Love (electric guitar – White Falcon)
11. Leia (piano)
12. After The Gold Rush (pump organ)
13. I Believe In You (piano)
14. Rumblin’ (electric guitar – Old Black)
15. Cortez The Killer (electric guitar – Old Black)
16. Cinnamon Girl (electric guitar – Old Black)
—
17. Walk With Me (electric guitar – White Falcon)
Tour: Twisted Road Tour – 4th Leg
Band: Solo
Neil Young – acoustic guitar, electric guitar, piano, pump organ, harmonica,
vocals
Thx to kbs
Posted in Setlists | Comments Off on Set List: 2011-04-24, Avery Fisher Hall, New York City, New York, USA
memphish on 
Albert Stromann on 
liza on 
Baz on 
