This Note’s For You? (if you can afford it)

Hammering the Blues

Neil Young & His Electric Band
Madison Square Garden  12-16-2008
featuring:
Ben Keith (pedal steel, electric guitar, piano)
Rick Rosas (Bass)
Chad Cromwell (drums)
Anthony Crawford (electric guitar, backing vocals)
Pegi Young (backing vocals)

Don’t get me wrong. I love “Uncle Neil” (as one enthusiastic, 50-something fan in front of me kept calling him).

In fact, I’ve loved Neil since I was old enough to hear.

I’ve worn out copies of the three Buffalo Springfield records, the CSNY records, and Neil’s numerous solo efforts.

I love After the Gold Rush, Harvest, Harvest Moon, Freedom, Tonight’s the Night, Rust Never Sleeps, Ragged Glory, Comes a Time, Arc/Weld and too many others to mention in this short missive.

Hell, I even like 1981’s Re*ac*tor (on which, one song, “T-Bone,”  is nine minutes of Neil singing “got mashed potatoes/ain’t got no T-bone” again and again and again).

And, for what it’s worth (no Buffalo Springfield pun intended), I’ve also seen Neil in concert many times, in both the U.S. and abroad.

On Tuesday night at MSG, the septuagenerian was in decent form (video here), rocking the rafters with songs that are decades old and, as usual, plying his trade on “Big Black”– Young’s omnipresent, 1953 Gibson Les Paul (and #1 weapon of choice in his prototypical, wrecking-ball sonic approach).

Interestingly, however, the rafters were not full at Madison Square Garden.  No, the famed “blue seats” were 360 degrees vacant, perhaps owing to the ticket prices, which were 100 bucks apiece for the worst seats in the house.

It seems rather hypocritical, no?

I mean, seriously. Is Neil, a supposed “man of the people,” – full of self-righteous, rhyme-by-numbers new songs that glorify green cars, skewer the current administration’s greed and excoriate those who need to fix the financial mess by “coughing up the bucks”–really charging his loyal fans several hundreds of dollars for the best seats while delivering, at best, a middling-quality set of music?

Could it be Neil that’s actually beholden to the almighty buck as much as those he’s ripping in these sub-par new songs?

Look. Neil is one of the top 5 rockers of all time. He’s often a first-class topical songwriter who has never (to his credit) shied away from performing new material in concert, some of which he’s obviously composed on the fly.

But alas, at least for the moment, Neil may have run out of juice in his creativity cell, which is definitely not as “evergreen” as it once was.

No, the new songs he did Tuesday night about cruising in his alternative energy convertible–fossil fuels be damned–just don’t have the musical urgency or terse lyrical panache of, say, the one that goes (you’ll remember it) “Four dead in O-Hi-O,” or even (heaven help me for mentioning it in the same sentence) , “Let’s Roll.”

Neil himself seemed to recognize this fact, referring at one point to the new songs as “hidden tracks.”

I’ll go one step further, calling them “bowel-loosening tracks.” If memory serves, “You Don’t Need a Map” was a possible exception, with what I recall was an inspired lyric or two, but even that one, I suppose, I’m damning by faint praise.

Of course, there were some highlights in the set, notably the 1969 title track of his second solo album, “Everybody Knows this is Nowhere,” which Neil and his band handled with a rote efficiency typifying the evening; competent, occasionally inspired playing by professional musicians hired to seamlessly complement the craggy edges of Neil’s sound (in contrast to the roaring, 4/4 barroom stomp generated by his regular, on-again-off-again collaborators, Crazy Horse).

In this band, longtime collaborator Ben Keith is the star, adding beautiful texture and coloration to the music with spare, ever-tasteful pedal steel filagrees.  As if to underscore the point, Young introduced the multi-instrumentalist by saying “this was a song I played with Ben Keith the first time we met,”  before launching into (a rather perfunctory, I might add) “Heart of Gold.”

All in all, the songs from Rust Never Sleeps have aged very well.  “Hey Hey, My My,” “Powderfinger” and “Cortez the Killer” were all delivered with a cold-blooded urgency, courtesy of Neil’s impassioned, squalling-yet-melodic guitar attack.

“Oh, Lonesome Me” was also a treat; a little played acoustic number which, along with “Unknown Legend” was the only highlight of the middle, acoustic part of the set.

The rest of the show felt rather like it was on auto-pilot, with Neil and company delivering the predictably-spiky musical goods and his loyal fans “coughing up the bucks” for pricey seats and Budweisers (oh, AND did I mention they have Bud Light?) for $9 apiece.

Well, at least the beer was cold.

Wilco, who opened for Neil, is a band that would’ve benefitted mightily from some amplitude, though openers are rarely afforded this luxury.

Musically anchored by the versatile guitarist Nels Cline, Wilco is a dynamic ensemble, though perhaps better suited to a smaller venue at this point.

Cline is a terrific performer who is full of twitches and gyrations, not to mention an array of world-class, effects-laden guitar pyrotechnics. His approach gives the band’s essentially pop sound (in the John Lennon, Beatles-esque mode) more depth and intrigue than is indicated by principle songwriter Jeff Tweedy’s muted, often unpredictable chord changes and limited melodic vocal approach.

Tweedy is an exceptional crafter of songs which don’t go for the easy hook, but instead insinuate their power through less obvious musical ideas that reward repeat listenings.

Highlights of Wilco’s set included “Handshake Drugs” and  “Impossible Germany,” both of which demonstrated the finely wrought musical interplay of the sextet, and the punchy “Hate It Here,” a snippet of which can be seen and heard by following this link. Sorry about the shaky camerawork throughout, but it’s hard to hold that damn thing steady while zoomed all the way in.

More later.

Thanks for lending me your eyes.

Neil Young Set List:
Love and Only Love
Hey Hey, My My
Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere
Powderfinger
Spirit Road
Cortez The Killer
Cinnamon Girl
Oh, Lonesome Me
Mother Earth
The Needle And The Damage Done
Light A Candle
Cough Up The Bucks
Fuel Line
Hit The Road
You Don’t Need A Map
Unknown Legend
Heart Of Gold
Old Man
Get Back To The Country
Off The Road
When Worlds Collide
Just Singing A Song
Cowgirl In The Sand
Rockin’ In The Free World (w/ Wilco & Everest)
encores:
Get Behind The Wheel
A Day In The Life
Wilco Set List:
You Are My Face
I Am Trying To Break Your Heart
Handshake Drugs
A Shot In The Arm
Impossible Germany
Jesus, Etc.
The Late Greats
Hate It Here
Walken
I’m The Man Who Loves You