{"id":23758,"date":"2014-01-07T02:08:35","date_gmt":"2014-01-07T07:08:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wendybrandes.com\/blog\/?p=23758"},"modified":"2019-06-13T10:30:18","modified_gmt":"2019-06-13T14:30:18","slug":"musical-interlude-neil-young-at-carnegie-hall","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wendybrandes.com\/blog\/2014\/01\/musical-interlude-neil-young-at-carnegie-hall\/","title":{"rendered":"Musical Interlude: Neil Young at Carnegie Hall"},"content":{"rendered":"

Don’t you love it when things that are disappointing at first ultimately work out for the best? I was bummed out when the Neil Young and Crazy Horse concert I was supposed to go to over Labor Day weekend was canceled<\/a>. But if it hadn’t been, I might not have gotten tickets to see Neil Young perform solo at Carnegie Hall last night. Crazy Horse is a great band but Neil on stage alone — except for his eight or so guitars, banjo, multiple harmonicas, two pianos, electric keyboard and organ — in that particular venue was one of the best shows I’ve ever been to.<\/p>\n

\"neilyoung1\"

Neil Young at Carnegie Hall.<\/p><\/div>\n

It’s not often these days that I go to a concert and find I’m one of the younger attendees. I wish I could bottle that feeling to take with me when I go see Miley Cyrus<\/a> in April. Not that advanced age stopped the audience from acting immaturely. I was amused to smell pot outside Carnegie Hall, but I was amazed to smell it inside. That’s never happened during one of the classical music performances I’ve been to there. And what about that guy in the front row who kept yelling song requests at Neil? Why do people do that? This guy kept doing it even after Neil, reminiscing about his 1970 Carnegie Hall performances<\/a>, told us how those audiences kept yelling songs at him while he thought, “I know exactly what I’m going to play and nothing you say is going to change that.” Oh, and some other dude yelled, “Freebird.” Neil dealt with the minor annoyances with slightly mocking good humor. When some audience members kept calling out to him while he was telling a story, he said, “You paid real good money to be here so you should<\/em> get to listen to each other.”<\/p>\n

I loved the way Neil took his time and, twice, interrupted a song to say, “I don’t like that key!” and change things up. But his own sound wasn’t the reason he started and then stopped “Ohio.” That time he was teasing the audience for clapping out of time. This video I took begins as he chats with us about that, before starting the song from the beginning.<\/p>\n