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Miami – where the impossible is possible.
by Berenice Diaz
I must say I fell in love with everything in Miami. The sun, the sand, the ocean, checking people out [even the women with tons of plastic surgery with planet of the apes noses]. Everyone in Miami is beautiful. It came to a point in that I did not know where to look. My eyes were coming out of my face. It brought the devil out of me and a large smirk that I could not get rid of until I left.
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Unfortunately our plane ride to Miami was a disaster but as I say, you have to go to hell to reach heaven. Our flight to our first destination did not happen. We were told that there was a storm in Dallas and we could not land. The captain let us know that we were going in circles trying to talk to the airport to see if we could land from another direction. Their answer was ‘no.’ The captain then gave us the news that “,We are running out of fuel. And
Im must say I fell in love with everything in Miami. The sun, the sand, the ocean, checking people out [even the women with tons of plastic surgery with planet of the apes noses]. Everyone in Miami is beautiful. It came to a point in that I did not know where to look. My eyes were coming out of my face. It brought the devil out of me and a large smirk that I could not get rid of until I left.
Unfortunately our plane ride to Miami was a disaster but as I say, you have to go to hell to reach heaven. Our flight to our first destination did not happen. We were told that there was a storm in Dallas and we could not land. The captain let us know that we were going in circles trying to talk to the airport to see if we could land from another direction. Their answer was ‘no.’ The captain then gave us the news that, “We are running out of fuel. And… it is not looking good.”
Now what? I buzzed the stewardess and ordered alcohol. Nervously she just gave me the beer for free. I personally rather die drunk than die sober. My friend then turns around and asks me, “Are we going to die?” I thought it was the funniest thing ever. Luckily our pilot wasn’t that big of a dumbass and we landed in Austin. Waiting impatiently nearly having a panic attack we made it to Dallas at last. After loosing a couple of flights due to the delay American Airlines customer service receptionist let us know that there was no way we were going to make the flight to Miami since it was boarding in 10ish minutes and we were still on the airplane. We were going to have to spend the night at the airport and get the first flight to Miami at 7 am. I got very sad since our first night would be spent in an airport and not in our Miami hotel. Luckily an American Airlines employee that was having a good day unlike the others let us know that there was one flight to Miami that was still boarding but about to leave. Fortunately I’m in shape to run and that is what I did. I ran my lungs out in heels and for those that have been to the Dallas airport, you know it is huge. I ran down the escalator in heels like a madwoman and made it to my plane. We became to panic about our luggage. After all the flight switches and delays I thought we were going to be stuck with the same clothes (hand-wash the undies or turn them inside out). Luckily the last 2 bags at the baggage claim were ours. My guardian angel is definitely amazing. We grabbed a cab at 2 a.m. starving because we had not had any food the entire day due to all the ruckus. The cab driver wanting to juice up the trip asked us If we were hungry. What a smart man. He said he was going to take us near our hotel for some drive thru fast food. We started to see that he was driving about 45mph on the freeway. We looked at each other worried. He then took us to some street with lots of fast food chains. I kid you not. He drove in each one. They were all obviously closed. He still drove by the drive thru saying “, I think there is somebody there.” We then had to tell the guy to drop us off at the hotel and we were going to get room service. I think he got a bit mad since he realized that we had found out about his tourist trip. We then started looking at the money go up from 30,40,50,80, then finally $120. He dropped us off and we did not leave him a tip. What an asshole. I’m a broke traveler and now this? We check in the hotel and they charge me a parking fee. I started to laugh because the front desk had just seen us getting dropped off by a cab. You have to have eyes behind your head with things like this. That night we ate the most expensive cup of noodles of our lives. 12 hours of no eating made the cup of noodles taste like heaven.
This trip was a nonstop adventure. I believe I can make a movie with 3 sequels from everything we went through. From almost missing the flight, catching a cab that charged us $120, accidently taking the toll road and not having exact change and having to ask the person behind to spot us, jumping on a jet ski and not knowing how to swim, meeting Italians that closed down their restaurant for an after party, renting a car and nearly getting a dui, not sleeping our last night and driving directly to the rental car then the airport. Carpe Diem!
As much as I loved Miami, I could not live there. I don’t think there are any monogamous people in Miami. All the sex appeal would kill me. I would probably cheat. There are way more sexy men than women. Yum. If you are single and want to have fun, Miami is for you. For those jealous women that want to go to Florida but not stay in Miami with all the sexy eye candy, I suggest you stay in Pompano Beach and rent a car. I checked that place out and I must say it is perfect for those 50 and over. There you wont be surrounded by half naked young people. We went and immediately felt the jealousy from all the older women. As soon as they laid an eye on us they wrapped their husbands like an octopus. Quite silly. I will definitely be back to Miami. It is worth the trip. Next time I will take bug spray and more condoms.
Last Stop
Moodring
Scared of Ferret
Silber Records
www.silbermedia.com
Review by Kent Manthie
On their Silber Records debut CD, Scared of Ferret, Moodring is set free to do anything (and everything) they want. And they certainly go to town on this disc. It’s so rich and bountiful in its layers of sounds – mostly “effects”, a “kaos pad” as well as “hand percussion”, some electronic drum machine workings and some kind of hybrid of both.
Moodring is the brainchild of Mae Starr and Monte Trent Allen, who used to play in Rollerball and was, at first, a “side project”, where the two could show off their own stuff, on their own. Moodring was the result of this split, which, of course, became permanent.
Between 2005 and 2007, Starr and Allen put out six limited run releases on the Nilla Cat label. In 2007 Jesse Stevens joined the band, at first helping out in live shows, playing the flute and drums, but he was retained, therefore added a new element or set of elements, since he plays the flute, drums and those ubiquitous “effects”, which abound on the disc, but they don’t dominate the songs, rather everything complements everything else.
On Scared of Ferret, the debut full-length CD for Silber Records, Stevens is around and also acted as recording engineer. Also, the band is now a quartet, with the addition of Michael Braun Hamilton to the band. Hamilton plays a bass clarinet plugged into an effects pedal and – wow! Hip, dude – the added dynamism of Hamilton’s jazzy horn mixed in there is a boon to their sound.
If one was comparing Moodring to another medium of art, I’d like to think that it would be to Abstract Expressionism and its predecessors. It’s not quite as outre as earlier art “schools” in the early 20th Century, like Dada or Surrealism, but the symbolism of Abstract Expressionism that was expressed in its seeming simplicity or its abstractness that, no doubt to some, appeared to be nonsensical or mocking, et cetera and not seeing or understanding how certain things represent other things and that these “symbols” can represent political overtones, social critiques, introverted ideas or paeans to loved ones or even nothing at all, which is the funniest of them all because those are the ones that art critics purport to give a “meaning to” when none exists.
The first few tunes on Scared of Ferret are slow and tres experimental. Songs like the opener, “Pole Cat Intro” and “Rintin Fire” are rather atonal and structured with chaos and “noise” a la Sonic Youth at their best, live but sans the urbane grittiness of the latter.
On cut three, “#9”, Mae’s vocalizing kicks in and only gets stronger and stronger as the album goes on. Song six, “Colin Wilson” is a slowed-down, haunting tune that reminds one a bit of the early dreaminess of the Jesus and Mary Chain.
The songs that really stand out are “Into the Doom”, which is really groovy and features Hamilton, who gets a chance to really shine here, on his bass clarinet, as well as a fiery vocalization from Starr. It’s probably the best tune on here. But that is a purely personal thing, subject to change at any time. Also good is the aforementioned “Colin Wilson”, “Bulbul Tarang”, a tangy jazzy-psych-out mix, whose eclectic sound makes it all the more inviting; “The Weasel” is pure gravy, while “Ricketts” has a bitchin’ drum solo in the middle and is a nice penultimate track, while we go out with “Horse” a dirge-like composition that mixes the “primitive ambience” of the first part of the CD with the jazzy, neo-psychedelia of songs 6-10. - KM
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New Music Reviews, from the Summer print issue
Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin Let it Sway
Polyvinyl Records, 2010
Still going strong and starting to wear a [musical] rut into the pathway of progress and still with the indie label that put ‘em out there, Polyvinyl Records, Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin have just released their third release for said label, entitled Let it Sway.
I like this CD best, so far. It’s got some edginess as well as coherence and an ideal that were missing on both their debut as well as their previous work, Pershing and their debut, Broom. While the aforementioned CDs were both quite unique and had their own good points as well as a talented pool of bandmates, Let it Sway has a sense of cohering to a style that is coming into their own as well as the experience as well as the passage of time to perfect those songs they keep cranking out: way to go!
This ‘cemented’ sound – a groove that really works for these guys, can be heard on songs such as “Banned (By the Man)”, “All Hail Dracula” and “Made to Last”, which, like most of the rest of the album, have a groove to them: the kind that is produced spontaneously and just can’t be a mathematical equation.
The only time I found them reverting back to the post-everything-ness of their previous works was on the track “Stuart Gets Lost Dans le Metro”. While it is a cool name and is actually something that happened to me once as well – a long time ago (I got lost trying to find a certain place, traveling via the Metro in Paris, but that’s another story), it just, in the end, left me a little cold. But, in general, the rest of the CD from there on really rocks, it doesn’t slow down or get all goofballed up (like downing a bunch of reds with a couple drinks and then trying to function) and experimental on you.
Also good are the last few songs, “Critical Drain”, “Animalkind” and “Phantomwise” (as well as the already mentioned closer, “Made to Last”). All in all, this shows that SSLYBY is prepped to be around for a while with the sound of things getting better all the time. I’d still love to see them in concert, so, publicist, please send me a comp when they come to San Diego! Thanks! ~KM.
Miss Autopsy Caterpillar
Lens Records lensrecords.com
Another great band that hails from Chicago – what a surprise – think of all the great stuff that’s come out the former Second City (now it’s the “third city” – in size, behind NYC and LA): The Wax Trax! bands that included KMFDM, Legendary Pink Dots and since Ministry signed a contract with Sire – a once really hip label that got sucked up by Warner Brothers, not exactly the epitome of independence – Al Jourgensen and his Ministry partner/bass player, Paul Barker played in a few side projects under bands with different names but featuring the same line up that was in Ministry, basically. This was what 1000 Homo DJs, Revolting Cocks, LARD and other little experiments and jams were all about – trying not to get sued for breach of contract by Warner Bros.
Besides that crowd, however, there was the whole TAANG! thing, Touch ‘N’ Go, etc as far as hip labels. Big Black, Steve Albini’s intense, nihilistic, post-post-punk that has now evolved into Shellac; one of the best things to come out of Chicago, though, has to be Joan of Arc (led by Tim Kinsella) and Tim’s brother Mike’s solo stuff, released under the pseudonym Owen. And, of course, who can forget The Smashing Pumpkins – isn’t Billy just so dreamy? (j/k) Enough about the past, though. It’s dead and gone. It is the “NOW” that matters most. It’s too bad, but most people spend too much of their lives dwelling on the past – what might have been, what went wrong, what if you’d done this instead of that, etc. Or else people are so worried about what tomorrow will bring that all they can do is prepare, practice and think about that future thing, which may, indeed, be something that must be done, but only up to a point. You come first and your pleasure is paramount to someone else’s wants. It may sound selfish, but you know it’s true.
Miss Autopsy is a totally un-Chicago sounding band – no loud guitars or kick-in-the-balls drum machine works. They are a regular “rock” band, in the sense that they don’t have any kind of gimmick or whatever that put them in a subgenre of rock. Each song on Caterpillar is an articulate glimmer into the band’s (mostly Steve Beyerlink, the main man and the songwriter) head. They’re slick but unpretentious. They have talent – whether or not they always use it to the best of their abilities is debatable. But if you’re a fan of new indie stuff; if you like to take a chance on a new band you’ve not heard of, Miss Autopsy would be one to start with. ~KM
Jeff Cochell Between The Lines
Old-school singer-songwriter shooting for the stylings of Gordon Lightfoot and James Taylor. Between The Lines is ten tracks about love and there’s a lot of sadness and melancholy in here. You really feel like you’re listening to someone describe how their heart was stomped on over and over again. There’s an honesty here that will strike the listener as boldness. In “Baby” Jeff’s acoustic guitar strumming is smoothly impressive, and his deep voice resonates the instructive lyrics about the certain way he wants to see a girl. His vocal transitions to higher notes can be a bit rocky, not quite Bob Dylan rough but folksy enough to merit another beer or two around the campfire, and keep the alt-blues vibe really close. Especially nice was the female accompaniment of Donna Davis’ harmony vocals here and there throughout. It’s seasons the tracks and complements Jeffs vocals well. On “When You’re On Your Feet” other harmony is Eugene Lewis, with backing vocals provided by Rob Wessels. John Lindahl is credited as bass and drums in several tracks, and Anne Sweeney plays piano on two. This CD’s strong suit is really Jeff’s guitar playing. The acoustics meanderings are truly a thing of beauty. Track 9, “Somewhere,” is a phenomenal piece that will inspire thoughts of clear babbling streams in a pristine mountain forest. (jeffcochell.com, myspace.com/jeffcochell) ~BY
review writers:
BY: Bob Yunger
KM: Kent Manthie
Pixies to Howl the Ferocious Language of Doolittle in 11 U.S. Cities
Band’s First-Ever Official WebSite Launches
After nearly 40 sold out shows on three continents since Fall, 2009, The Pixies are bringing The Doolittle Tour back to the U.S.A. The 11-city trek kicks off on September 7 at the Tower Theatre in Philadelphia and will extend the 20th anniversary celebration of the release of the band’s classic 1989 album, Doolittle. All of the shows will be recorded and the CDs will be made available immediately after every show at the band’s merch table; all live CDs can also be ordered at www.doolittlelive.com. Fuck Buttons, the two-piece electronic pop group from Bristol, England, will open all shows.
A special pre-sale begins on Monday, June 7 at 9AM ET/6AM PT at pixiesmusic.com… But this is more than a pre-sale – this special offer also marks the soft-launch of the first-ever official Pixies website. After disbanding in 1993 and essentially taking the “web years” off, the Pixies have quietly begun using the Internet to communicate directly with fans. This week, the band is playing the two sold-out shows in London for which the band is the sole promoter and ticketing company, offering tickets only to those on the band’s email list, and soliciting set list ideas via email. The fan-centric approach continues on Monday as pre-sale tickets provide access to the best seats at each show, and each purchase comes with a complete live recording of the show, delivered via email the day after the show. Once again, these pre-sale tickets will be made available first to members of the band’s email list, in advance of even this press announcement. The cost of these presale tickets and live recordings is less than the all-in price for tickets at public outlets.
For most dates, the public on-sale begins Monday, June 14; Nashville goes on sale Saturday, June 19. On sale times, ticket prices and where to buy tickets will vary city to city so please see itinerary below.
On this tour, the Pixies – Black Francis, Kim Deal, Joey Santiago and David Lovering – will perform all of the songs from Doolittle and its related B-sides, “Weird at My School,” “Dancing the Manta Ray,” and “Bailey’s Walk” among them. Doolittle, the band’s third album and the first to chart on Billboard’s album charts, includes classics such as “Debaser,” “Wave of Mutilation,” “Here Comes Your Man,” “Hey,” and “Gouge Away.”
An imaginative cinematic production has been created for The Doolittle Tour. Designed by long-time Pixies lighting designer Myles Mangino and designer Paul Normandale, the set features four huge, undulating, eyeball-like spheres flown just below the lighting rig and are part of the concert’s light show. Filmmakers Judy Jacobs, Tom Winkler, Brent Felix and Melinda Tupling were brought on board to create 11 films especially for the production. The films are projected onto a massive backdrop video screen to accompany 12 of the 21 songs that comprise the show.
As an example, visuals accompanying the song “Debaser” are from a compilation titled “Forbidden Images.” The hauntingly beautiful black and white footage from the 1920s depicts the beginning of the women’s rights movement, showing women’s exuberant playfulness, femininity and sensuality. The footage, a little too progressive for its time period, was originally banned from theaters.
For “Here Comes Your Man,” a four-way split screen displays close up images of the band members dancing along to the song; “I Bleed” sees blood dripping down the screen in time to the music; “Hey” features hand-drawn animation of the song’s lyrics by Hollywood animator Tom Winkler; clouds, black holes, and Mankind’s arrogance destroying the Earth are the focus for “Monkey Gone to Heaven,” while “La La Love You” is a humorous animated piece starring hearts with legs.
The Doolittle Tour launched on September 30, 2009 in Dublin, Ireland, and played sold-out shows everywhere – Scotland, Frankfurt, Amsterdam, Brussels, Paris, and to 20,000 fans over four nights in London. It then came to America last November, playing multiple-night sell-outs from Los Angeles to Chicago to New York, and then in March, 2010 sold-out shows were performed in five Australian cities. The tour received five-star reviews in the [London] Times, the Guardian and the Independent, and, according to one U.S. alt/weekly, “The Pixies continue to WOW.”
The Boston-formed Pixies have been acclaimed as the most influential pioneering band of the late ‘80s alt/rock movement. Their five studio releases and six years together effectively blazed the path for groups like Nirvana, Radiohead, and Pearl Jam to rise to superstardom. They disbanded in 1993 and launched their reunion tour in April 2004 when virtually every, single date sold out within minutes and fans traveled hundreds of miles to attend a show. In post-Pixies years, Black Francis has enjoyed a successful solo career as Frank Black, Kim Deal went on to form the Platinum-selling band the Breeders, Joey Santiago started the band The Martinis and has carved a career as a music composer for film and TV, and David Lovering performs as a magician and continues to drum.
The concert opens with the showing of the 1929 silent surrealist short film, “Un Chien Andalou,” which was produced in France by Spanish director Luis Bunuel and artist Salvador Dali, and provided the impetus for Black Francis in writing “Debaser.”
Confirmed dates for the Pixies’ 2010 U.S. Doolittle Tour are as follows:
SEPTEMBER
7 Tower Theatre, Philadelphia, PA*
10 Ryman Auditorium, Nashville, TN*
13 Fox Theatre, Atlanta, GA*
17 Uptown Theatre, Kansas City, MO
18 Brady Theatre, Tulsa, OK**
19 Verizon Theatre, Dallas, TX*
20 Verizon Wireless Theatre, Houston, TX
22 Austin Music Hall, Austin, TX***
24 Mesa Amphitheatre, Mesa, AZ (tickets sold through the venue)
25 The Joint, Las Vegas, NV*
26 RIMAC Arena, San Diego, CA*
* Tickets sold through Ticketmaster
** Tickets sold through Protix
*** Tickets sold through Frontgate
From myspace.com/pixies
I Love Cemeteries!
story and photos by Jessica Delfino
New York City
Signs posted on splintery wooden poles and rusty metal stated “No Loitering” and I knew they were speaking to me. It almost seemed like the teens of my town were hated, like dirty mistakes, and that adults hoped that we would just disappear. So we did.
If you were to wander along the coastlines or hike into the woods, that is where you would find us. There we would be, clinging to rocks and blades of grass, palling around with the trees and the water, elements that didn’t mind if we hung around, listened to the music too loudly or smoked cigarettes.
It wasn’t unusual for our meetings to be held in someone’s mom’s Subaru, in an old construction site that had lost its’ funding. We played demented house in attics and basements, with pot, booze, kissing and just a few other basics of the understandings of how it all worked. In the summers, we’d skinny dip in the dark pools of the mill, jumping off the bridge into the protective night. In the winter, we’d park at the lighthouse and explore the misty evening, dangerously scaling slippery rocks. One false move could have sent us to a quick death in a watery grave, a teen forever. But it never happened, and I can only thank mother luck and the magic of youth for that.
One place we often found ourselves loitering was the town cemetery. It was a sprawling and glorious piece of hill that served as a staircase from Church Street up to the back lane. Large, exotic stones littered the land, and made for excellent hiding places for my friends and I to do all those things that those bad troubled teens you hear about do.
The cemetery was a beautiful lot with a plush green grass carpeting so thick and soft I may have fallen asleep there once or twice. I would ride my bike down the windy slide of asphalt that divided the cemetery into two, turn off into the reeds once I arrived at the bottom, dump my bike and high speed roam around the stony acreage just to get rid of extra crazy amounts of energy that kids have, where they have to do things like run or throw temper tantrums to bring themselves to normal adrenaline levels.
Sometimes I’d lie back on the blanket of grass and stare up at the clouds; they had places to be, I wondered where they were going, and I guess I wondered where I was going, too.
When I left Damariscotta, I was 19. I drove across the country to LA to find my dad and be a star. Then I drove back. I enrolled in art school and studied animation, the most tedious and difficult subject I could have possibly chosen. I moved to New York City, watched the towers fall, dated a slew of unsuitable and barely scrupulous men, pursued a post-college career in my degree, floundered, fell into performing, succeeded in some elements and failed in others, found a home with a nice Jewish man who treats me respectably and got a cat.
All the while, my love for cemeteries has held my interest and fascination. Even to this day, driving by them is thrilling. Near my mother’s home is a large ancient cemetery with moss and southern trees draping their willowy arms down around the place in a shady canopy. Sometimes when I visit her, we will go together, paying respects to people we never knew. One particularly craggy dead lady has a stone which says, “Do not pity me, one day you too shall come this way” or something equally ominous and spiteful. But I walk past the stone anyway, knowing she is right.
There is a shortage of grass in Manhattan, but I’ve found a private, hidden acre behind a black wrought iron gate where I can relive my tween and teen closeness with the cemetery. In the historic burial site, tombstones line the decaying brick wall, providing an unfettered rich green wall-to-wall carpet of grass to lie on and stare up. The square seems to provide it’s own never-ending breeze, and a large Mulberry tree provides a vast patch of shade and a bounty of fruit. Here, merchant marines and ships captains have found their final resting places. Entire families sleep eternally underneath, while above, the living find peace and solstice, and enjoy the days they have left.
The NY Marble Cemetery is rarely open, but I managed to convince its caretaker to allow me to have a yearly picnic there on the summer solstice. On that day, there is food, music and celebration in the cemetery. The field fills up with strangers who are also fascinated by this solid square of grass in a city otherwise known for it’s concrete and asphalt. They peruse the walls, reading names of families who lived here before them, or sit on blankets and talk over sandwiches and tea.
You can often find me walking from one side to the other, interacting with people in a patient manner, calmly surveying the scene, wearing all white to honor the dead accessorized with a face of delight, as I brush shoulders for a few hours with my childhood again.
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book review: Neil Young, Long May You Run
Neil Young, Long May You Run:
An Illustrated History
By Daniel Durchholz and Gary Graff
Voyageur Press Minneapolis, 2010,
hardcover
book review by Kent Manthie
Into his fifth decade as an uncompromising, unpredictable and awe-inspiring songwriter Neil Young has touched the hearts and minds of many types of people: in other words, there’s no particular demographic for who listens to Neil. Punkers like his irreverent style and noisy charms, “classic rockers” still dig the old stuff (even though Neil’s always been about forging ahead and not staying stuck in the past) – like “Southern Man”, “Old Man”, “Cinnamon Girl” and that particular oeuvre. Few realize, I’m sure, the way most Americans are blissfully unaware of most things, Neil was one fourth of Buffalo Springfield (he wrote “Broken Arrow”, “Mr. Soul”, “I Am A Child” and others even though, sadly, the only song that most people are aware of is the Steven Stills song “For What It’s Worth” (Stop! Children, what’s that sound/Everybody look what’s going on). Young’s time in Springfield with Steven Stills probably is why Young shows up on Crosby Stills & Nash’s Déjà Vu album in ‘71. Still, the Neil Young-penned songs on that record are distinctly Young’s music and the other three are merely backup singers on songs like “Helpless” and “Ohio”, songs that have become part of Neil’s concert catalog over the years. Personally, I think CSN’s best album was their eponymous debut (on which Young, un-credited, plays pump organ on a couple tracks). I still LOVE “Guinevere” and “Suite Judy Blue Eyes” has always been a guilty pleasure of mine.
Anyway, this brand new coffee-table sized book from Minneapolis’s Voyageur Press, just out, chronicles Neil Young’s career and personal life in both excellent photographs and much text too. It not only contains many photos, some of which are new to the public in this book, but on certain pages you can see pictures of memorabilia like concert tickets, showbills, and pictures of 45 rpm singles as well as other stuff. But, in between all those cool pix and stuff, there is a lot to read about the man, the myth and the long and winding road he’s traveled, with no signs of stopping. He’s even done film – he played a “bad guy” in some b-flick, the name of which escapes me and has done some work with auteur extraordinaire, Jim Jarmusch. So, between the interesting anecdotes, histories, interviews, narratives and whatnot in the textual material combined with the great pictures that capture many phases of Neil in his chameleonic career.
Anyone who is a huge fan of Neil’s (and that group encompasses a wide, wide spectrum of people – even the dude from the Bay Area’s agitprop collective, Consolidated (American cousin to Meat Beat Manifesto but much more agitating in their lyrics), in stating his favorite music, on one line wrote “Anything by Neil Young”.
In fact, Young’s music, if it wasn’t already, was handed down to a new generation, who, no doubt, hear all his “hits” – you know, the same 10 or 12 songs they play on “classic rock” radio stations, on the radio, etc, when Young started doing something the Rolling Stones used to do all the time in the 1970s and on their Tattoo You tour in 1981 – have newer, up-and-coming bands/artists open for them – Prince got booed off the stage opening for the Stones in Los Angeles in 1981. George Thoroghgood has also opened for the Stones, back when he was still a relative newcomer. As for Neil, in 1991, coincidentally, just two or three days after the Gulf War started, I saw Neil Young play in Minneapolis and the coolest thing about the show was that the two opening bands were: first Social Distortion and then Sonic Youth put on as good a show as they could, though I felt kind of bad for them because they weren’t in their element, I mean, the audience was obviously there to see Neil Young and I suppose that 90 % of the people in attendance came to see Neil play, not the opening bands (although I was just as psyched to see Sonic Youth).
Anyone who lives in the Bay Area is no doubt aware of the annual Bridge School Benefit – started by Neil Young and continuously performed at by him as well as an ever-changing roster of “friends”. The Bridge School was established by Young’s wife Pegi, after their son, Ben, was diagnosed with a severe form of Cerebral Palsy. The couple looked and looked but were ultimately dismayed by the quality of care and education possibilities. In 1986 Neil hosted the first of what would become the annual Bridge School Benefit, becoming an awaited affair, with a who’s who of rock & rollers playing the benefits: in the past, Bruce Springsteen, REM, Tom Petty, Don Henley and especially Pearl Jam have played the annual event at the Shoreline Amphitheater in Mountain View, CA. One ticket stub photo in the book shows one year’s line-up: Headlining, of course, is Neil himself and then it was Pearl Jam, Dave Matthews Band, Brian Wilson, Foo Fighters, Trent Reznor, Death Cab for Cutie, Gillian Welch and Devendra Banhart and in parentheses it read “with special guests”.
The book is full of little bits of info like that and stories of things that went on between him and all sorts of people in here, it’s a great read and just looking at the photos alone is worth it. You get to see Neil in all the different phases of his career, with his mildly varying looks and whatnot. Definitely a must-have for any Neil Young fan. – KM