Neil Young in Spokane

I’ve been a huge Neil Young fan forever, but only once managed to see him live, sometime in the early 80’s at the National Exhibition Centre in Birmingham. That was a pretty big show in a huge barn-like structure, and we had typical ‘all a student could afford’ dodgy seats, which hardly enhanced the experience. When we were lucky enough to score some tickets to see Neil Young on the second gig of his latest tour, I was as excited as a snow ho on a 2 foot powder day. So off to Spokane we went on a cold and damp autumn night.

I’d read reviews of the first show in Boise, so knew pretty much what to expect. Basically a solo set with lots of old favorites and some obscure-ish songs from way back, and a full on rock-n-roll set featuring new songs as well as classics like "The Loner", "Cinnamon Girl" and "Tonight’s the Night". And well, that’s what we got, minus one song – "The Campaigner" (one I love) dropped from the acoustic set.

The sound in the IMB Theatre was crisp, and we had a decent elevated view from the balcony. The first set, full of old classics, flew by, and was certainly a crowd pleaser. Getting a beer in the interval turned out to be a fruitless task for most – can someone tell the operators that at rock shows the crowd likes a drink, and more than one server per bar is required! Doh …

We got back to our seats, just missing the first few lines of "The Loner", and from then on,  the band played loud and with plenty of energy for a bunch of 60-ish year olds. Some of the new material stood up very well to live renditions, with the long "No Hidden Path" bringing the set to a roaring, epic end. But it was certainly a night for the true hard core Neil Young fan – no lip service to a ‘greatest hits’ show here.

I’d have appreciated a couple of more famous tracks – like "Cortez the Killer", or "Like a Hurricane" which he apparently played in the next show in Portland. But I left smiling, and strangely calm and content, just happy to have seen one of the legends of rock put on a fine performance.

Some clips here – Heart of Gold, Winterlong, Tonight’s the Night, Cinnamon Girl, No Hidden Path

Rush at White River, Seattle

In the mid-70’s, Rush were playing at the Apollo Theatre in Manchester. I was a fan and had a ticket. Unfortunately, illness struck me down and I had to sell my ticket to a school mate. I was not happy.

When I went to Sheffield after school, my mate Steve Duke was a big Rush fan, and he kept me in touch with their music. But for the last two decades, they dropped off my musical radar and I really hadn’t followed them much. Steve Duke did however introduce me in Sydney in the late 90s to Stuart, who is a Rush tragic. And that’s the short version of how Jan and myself went to White River Amphitheater with Stuart and Jale to see Rush.

An atypical Seattle summer rain storm made getting to Auburn a bit of an ordeal, but once there, the shuttle bus worked well and we were at the venue in plenty of time to get some food and beer. Unfortunately the basic food selections bordered on the inedible – sogginess being the defining style of everything we ordered. The beer was no better – $11 for a 750ml hefeweizen is a rip-off by any standard. Jan bravely sampled the wine, but quickly discovered it was a wine for laying down and avoiding. Which she did.

The show was rather good though. I only knew maybe 8 songs from a set of 2.5 hours, but the performance captured my interest throughout. These guys obviously enjoying playing together, and are very impressive musicians to watch. They played a good chunk of the new album, and the material came over very strong. And the light and video show was impressive throughout.

I must admit I enjoyed this performance much more than I had expected. I might even find myself buying a new Rush album for the first time in three decades.

Review: Lucinda Williams, Portland

Despite several failed attempts in Sydney, I’ve never seen Lucinda Williams live. When she released her new album, West, and announced dates at Portland and Seattle, the opportunity was too good to miss. So with our friend Julie from Sydney, we headed down to Portland for the Sunday night gig.

The crowd was growing restless about 9.40pm when the four-piece band came on stage. The concert started promisingly, rolling through renditions of some of the best songs from the last few albums. Drunken Angel and Right in Time all stood out in my memory for raw and powerful renditions.

It was an hour or so before any songs off West emerged. And as the band’s tempo and energy picked up, it was becoming increasingly apparent that they weren’t in the mood for performing the sorrowful, haunting songs from that album. Come On, Unsuffer Me and Wrap Your Head Around That followed in quick succession. But that was it for the album.

Then an odd moment happened. It seems some of the reviews about the somewhat dark (but to me quite brilliant) material on West might have taken their toll. Lucinda described how she was happy now, newly engaged and, reading between the lines a little, didn’t seem to like her labeling as a writer of sorrowful and confessional songs. So with the volume on the amps turned up to 11, she blasted out a new song, Honey Bee, about the new man in her life. To be honest, I thought it was awful. A simple little rock ditty that I could hear played by a local band of 21 year olds in my local bar.

In total the band played for 2 hours. Especially in the numerous encore’s, they played some excellent rock and blues, although it did occasionally have a self-indulgent feel to it. A couple of songs simply fizzled out, as if no one in the band could quite figure out how to coordinate an ending.

I wandered out with mixed feelings into the cool Portland evening. It had been a good show, some classic songs and skilled musicianship to admire. But it wasn’t the show I’d expected or wanted to see. If I want to see a rock or blues band, I’ll go and see a really good one somewhere.

I go to see Lucinda Williams to hear her rasping voice interpret the beautiful lyrics she writes, and be taken on journey through the songs of one of the finest songwriters around. A journey of light and shade, subtlety and power, sorrow and joy. But this was a rollercoaster ride that left little time for contrasts.

There’s lots of good rock and blues bands out there, but there’s only one Lucinda Williams. We came out west to see the latter, but I doubt it was the best that it can be. I’ll keep trying though.

Indigo Girls in Seattle

The Indigo Girls must be one of the few gigs that you can ever go to where the male bathrooms are absolutely empty 10 minutes before the show starts. The fine beers and cider from the local McMenamins pub in Queen Anne necessitated a quick visit before we went in to the concert hall at McCaw Hall, a venue more likely frequented by the Seattle Opera or the Pacific Northwest Ballet company. And about 200m from McMenamins ;-}

It’s a modern and elegant hall, not dissimilar in size to the Concert hall in Sydney Opera House. We had good seats, elevated and about 15 rows from the stage. it wasn’t a sell-out, but I’d guess the seats were 80% full, and the Indigo Girls certainly attract a vocal and loyal following.

After falling in love with their early music, I’d not been over-impressed with their more recent efforts. But I really like their new album, Despite Our Differences, it has some lovely songs. In the two hour show, they played much of the new release, interspersed with classic songs from their past.

It was all classic Indigo Girls. Haunting harmonies, gentle folks songs and the odd Amy-driven piece of rock n’roll. Emily and Amy don’t talk much. They just play a song, swap guitars, and get one with the next one in their tag-team style. But the two hours flew by, and when they closed the show with a perfect rendition of Galileo, the audience rose as one to applaud an excellent, if unsurprising performance.

The great gig in Seattle

Good old eBay was kind enough to deliver me a last minute Roger Waters ticket for his Seattle gig, the last one of a major North American tour. The show had been sold out for months, so I was somewhat delighted to be there, soaking up the atmosphere of the huge crowd in the Key Arena bar.

I knew from internet reviews that 8.20pm was the time the band would come out. I’d wandered in to the arena earlier to see the huge back projection of a 1950s style radio, an increasingly full ash tray, a slowly diminishing bottle of whiskey and occasional bellowing smoke from a mysterious smoker/drinker, whose arm was all that was glimsingly seen.

Kept company by a fine Pyramid Snow Cap Ale, I spied a TV screen advertising Al Gore as the next big event at the Arena. I must confess I struggled with reconciling the likely performance of a formerly incredibly dull politician’s with the show I was anticipating by the major influence behind Pink Floyd. Politically, Waters makes Gore look like Bill O’Reilly, and fortunately, the differences didn’t end there.

In a nutshell, the first hour was a mix of Floyd and Waters songs taken from the whole catalog of their material. The second half was "Dark Side of The Moon’ in its entirety, enhanced by booming quadrophonic speakers distributed throughout the arena. The encores were basically side three of The Wall, for those of you who remember the vinyl, ending with "Comfortably Numb".

The highlights were too numerous for me to recall. But some that remain are:

• The saxophone solo on ‘Shine on You Crazy Diamond’. After poignant images of a young Sid Barrett, the sax player was projected against an image resembling a brain cortex, that slowly decayed to a simple universe of shooting stars in the sky. It sent chills down my spine.
• The ‘Great Gig in the Sky’, reproduced faithfully by P.P. Arnold’s amazing voice.
• The propeller controlled, grafitti-ized, large pink pig that floated around the arena during a magnificent rendition of "Sheep". ‘Vote Nov 7th’ was one of its slogans, and I don’t think anyone there wondered who they were being implored to vote for.
• The video projection of a nuclear submarine attack during "Perfect Sense". The footage zooms in from above on to a huge sports stadium, with a water tank in the middle. A submarine lurks at one end, and oil rig at the other. The sub fires two missiles, and as they hit the target, a huge fireball ignites on the stage, as the band pound out ‘Can’t you see, it all makes perfect sense …". It was an incredibly powerful and visually spectacular moment.

There were flames and explosions all the way thru the show, a veritable internal firework display. Many savvy locals exploited the resulting smokiness to take the opportunity to share second hand spliff smoke with the passive smokers around them. You can’t take beer into the arena, but spliffs were rampant. All very amusing.

It’s Saturday morning now, and the songs and images from the gig are still floating around my head. It was that sort of show.

Captain Fantastic revisited

About 3 years I took Jan to a Bjork gig in Seattle. I thought it was quite amazing, all silly outfits, geeks on laptops and Bjork’s haunting, mis-pronounced atonal sounds, but I’m not sure Jan was quite so enthusiastic. So I think going to see Elton John this weekend was a kind of revenge. However, little did she know that I’d spent a memorable summer holiday in the south of France in 1975 listening continuously to Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy on a old shoe box-like crackly cassette player. And by sheer coincidence, the album released the day before the concert here, The Captain and the Kid, promised to evoke strong memories of the album I loved so many years ago. Revenge thwarted.

The gig was at Key Arena in the Seattle Centre. A venue we’d not been to before, but even though our seats were at the side of the stage, the view and sound were pretty darn good. They even had good microbrews on tap inside, so it gets a thumbs up from me.

Elton and his band played for the best part of three hours non-stop, pounding out most of his famous material, along with six songs off the new album, which stood up pretty well. Ok – so 75% of this show could’ve been performed thirty years ago. But maybe that’s just a testament to the quality of the music John and Taupin wrote in the early 70s. Elton’s voice isn’t quite what it used to be, but few were worried about that. This was a crowd-pleasing performance from an enduring, engaging and ever-enthusiastic superstar.