A true Neil Young fan, Michael Thomas sends a review of last night’s Dolby Show in LA.
Neil plays again tonight, and Tuesday, April 1, and Wednesday April, 2.
Wow. Just came back from seeing Neil Young do “Thrasher” for the first time in 36 years. His greatest song in my opinion. (though I’m awfully fond of ‘Will to Love’, which he’s never performed!)
I was at the first public performance of that song at the Boarding House, as well as the last, during the final “Rust Never Sleeps” show at the LA Forum.
A master class in the poetics of song lyrics it tells me more about friendship, about death, and the commitment to life that we must make in the wake of loss than any work of art I know. And it reminded me of so many friends gone that Neil & I both shared…Larry Johnson, Jack Nitzsche, Bruce Palmer…
And the rest of the concert was damn powerful too, “Here’s a song I wrote while I was living two blocks from here,” he prefaced a gorgeous rendition of the Buffalo Springfield ballad, “Flying on the Ground is Wrong.” And an evocative performance of his Oscar nominated title song for “Philadelphia” brought the house down as did a surprisingly effective cover of Gordon Lightfoot’s “If You Could Read My Mind.”
But it was “Thrasher” that reduced me to tears, I recall it was the day we buried my grandfather when I flew to San Francisco to hear it performed for the first time. It was first time I ever met Neil, he came out and sat in the audience after the second show. “I liked that song about Elvis,” I told him, referring to the debut of “Out of the Blue.”
It would take me awhile to absorb the vast sprawling canvas of “Thrasher,” a far more complex song. It reminded me of Terrence Malick’s “Days of Heaven,” which would have made a great alternative title. I performed once in public with my late pal, Steve Esmedina, at the Spirit Club in San Diego. The poetry of the lyrics, and the life-lesson it teaches, is truly sublime.
Nowhere else I’d rather be than at the Dolby Theater in Hollywood last night. It was a religious experience, balm for the soul.
While we wait for the reviews to come in fans on social networks are saying Neil Young’s first show at the Dolby Theater in Los Angeles was emotional. Young sand “Thrasher” for the first time in 36 years.
Some say there is a new fragility to his voice that brings a “a haunting, whispery quality to his voice.”
The LA Weekly Blog has a write-up about the 25th anniversary of Neil Young’s once banned video: “This Note’s for You.”
Those were the days…..
The city is preparing for Young’s upcoming Dolby Shows.
Chaz Kangas writes: “This Saturday night, Neil Young plays the first of four shows at the Dolby Theatre. Over a half-century into his career, Young still packs ’em in. But while his contemporaries have mellowed with age, Young’s never lost his grit. He even had a video banned by MTV at the height of the channel’s popularity.
“It’s been 25 years since Young’s This Note’s For You album reintroduced him to an entire generation. While the album’s known for its bluesy horns section, it’s Young’s potent shot at corporate-sponsored pop music that landed him in MTV’s crosshairs.”
Here’s the video:
The article continues: “Opening with a send-up of Eric Clapton’s then-current Michelob commercial, the song begins by blatantly name-dropping “Ain’t singing for Pepsi / Ain’t singing for Coke,” while the Julien Temple-directed clip mocks spokemusicians Michael Jackson and Whitney Houston as well as Budweiser and Calvin Klein Obsession commercials. It holds up as a funny satire, except back at MTV, nobody was laughing.
“According to a Los Angeles Times article from when the ban first happened, MTV had two major objections with the clip. First, the video’s “use of likenesses of Michael Jackson and Spuds MacKenzie could leave [MTV] open to trademark infringement charges”; second, “the channel refuses to air clips that depict – or contain lyrics – that refer to specific commercial products.” This is why mid-’90s rap videos blurred Fubu and Karl Kani logos just as much as they blurred sex and violence.”
Posted at CounterPunch, the Palestinian Students’ Campaign for the Academic Boycott of Israel and University Teachers’ Association post an open letter to Neil Young, asking him not to perform his scheduled concert in Israel Hayarkon Park, Tel Aviv on July 17.
Dear Neil,
We are Palestinian students and youth from the besieged Gaza Strip; we write to you now on a night engulfed by huge explosions ripping through our houses and neighborhoods again, more common than the thunder and hard rain also filling the night air.
And now we hear you plan on playing your inspiring music to a packed house in Hayarkon Park, Tel Aviv, a park built on the ruins of the Palestinian village Al Mirr, a land and people, destroyed and buried amidst unspeakable violence, but not forgotten. The residents of that Palestinian village and hundreds of other villages forcibly emptied by the nascent Israeli army, were either killed or denied return, denied the chance to even visit or commemorate the lives they once had. (1)
While the world turns its back, we hope that you don’t turn yours, that you heed the call of over 170 Palestinian civil society organizations, for boycott, divestment and sanctions against the Israeli regime until it abides by international law and stops denying us the right to live as any other human beings would expect. Just as you didn’t perform in Apartheid South Africa, just as you stood up against racism in the US South, just as you have so admirably supported indigenous rights in Canada against the drilling for Tar Sands, we ask you to support indigenous, displaced people wherever they may be, including we Palestinians. The words of the Native American and Indigenous Studies Association in their recent move to boycott the Israeli regime echo the struggle for indigenous rights in America.
Tom Hambleton provides BNB with setlists, thankfully. His website is the most comprehensive searchable archives on the Internets about anything Neil Young related setlists. Goto Sugar Mountain.
A true Neil Young fan, Michael Thomas sends a review of last night’s Dolby Show in LA.
memphish on 
Albert Stromann on 
liza on 
Baz on 
