Camden, NJ Concert Reports - Neil Young + Promise of the Real, July 16, 2015
Philadelphia/Camden a heartfelt thank you
Posted by Neil Young on Friday, July 17, 2015
Neil Young + Promise of the Real will be performing tonight, July 16, 2015, on the Rebel Content Tour at [insert Big Corporation venue name], Camden, NJ.
Got a report? Drop us a comment below.
Check Sugar Mountain for setlist updates and Chronological Grid, Recording Summary, Statistics and Extras.
Also, see Neil Young + Promise of the Real 2015 Concert Tour Dates for reviews, photos, videos and more.
Labels: concert, neil young, reviews, tour
by thrasher@PermaLink: 7/16/2015 10:53:00 PM
8 comments
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8 Comments:
WOW ... a trip back in time...
to the days of the original CRAZY HORSE with Danny Whitten.
So much energy.
First encore of Cortez The Killer only begins to tell the tale of an insane show!
Unreal. A good old fashined rock and roll show. Still hear Cortez ringing in my head. Three and a half hours of great music. The guitar wirk by Neil and the Nelson boys was fantastic. Great fun, we will never firget it.
*Contains spoilers* Wow. Camden was a real treat last night. Neil was very much in retrospective mode...lots of nods to Pegi, from where I was stood. I went in managing to avoid all set lists, but I was a little jealous of the young kid next to me with his parents, in his Crazy Horse t-shirt. He (rightly so) got about as great a Neil performance as he probably could have hoped for his first show. Band of Horses were good, their closer, The Funeral, is a classic. We were stood 2nd row, stage right, and Neil appeared behind the piano to open with ATGR, while the audience was distracted by two young 'famers' seeding the stage (and audience). The band was loud and loose, very much in a pseudo Crazy Horse way. Everyone knew their place, and Neil had fun driving the bus. The two Nelson boys rocked, especially Lukas, who played the Poncho role, although I have never seen Poncho play the guitar accurately with his teeth. The three younger guys ended up playing up on the drum kit towards the end of the set. The songs themselves, for the most part, sounded great. 6 of the 9 songs from Monsanto were aired, (I wonder how Ron Santo feels about these songs? His name fits very easily into it!) and honestly they sounded very good. The three weaker tracks were left off the set, but it must be said that 'A New Day For Love' is a dead ringer for 'When You Dance, I Can Really Love', while 'Working Man' is a (successful) re-work of 'Get Back To The Country'. There were plenty of highlights in the 28 song strong set, but interspersed with the longer songs (Words, DBTR, LAOL), a few rarities appeared with my personal highlights being Hold Back The Tears, Walk On and Out On The Weekend. I would have preferred some of the other show's closers (more rarities), but Cortez sounded great, and then, at 11.51pm, Neil mouthed 'Cinnamon Girl' and they rocked that until the lights came on. I complained about ticket prices beforehand, but, as usual, worth every penny. Neil even remembered to thank both Philadelphia and Camden! The feeling was mutual. Long may he run.
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@Simon - FWIW, 8 of the 9 Monsanto Years songs were played, as usual - he's only been skipping Rules of Change
A good chunk of this show is on youtube. Down by the River just smokes. Hope it doesn't get pulled for poor audio quality. Would be a damn shame.
The Philadelphia Inquirer review was positive and that's good. But a curious thing from critics, professional and otherwise: They say, as this man does, that Neil Young is a force of nature in concert; that Promise of the Real is the real deal and in some ways like a young Crazy Horse, and in other ways maybe better; that the new songs rock in concert; that young audiences like them and get them. BUT the new record, The Monsanto Years, is tiresome and mediocre. Think about that logic.
Is it not possible that the critics are wrong in their assumption that political songs cannot be good music? And that there is a line from Mother Nature being on the run in the 1970s, to "Mother Earth," to "Working Man" ? And a line from old fans to young? And the musician and the citizen are one guy? The poet and the angry prophet are one guy? It's clear he cares deeply about these new songs. Look at how he sings them. Monsanto Years is about saving the earth, wrapped in jaunty tunes. it's a damn good record. A brave one. And, folks, it's all one song.
Philly review:
What would it take for Neil Young to not be great?
For his show Thursday night at the Susquehanna Bank Center, the 69-year-old rock legend stacked the odds against himself. His new album, The Monsanto Years, is an unrelenting salvo against factory farming, genetically modified organisms, and corporate greed, one of those full-length rants the cranky Canadian can get away with without completely alienating his fan base, because - well, because he's Neil Young.
Even loyalists in Young's aging fan base are justifiably skeptical: Will he come out and play the mediocre-at-best new album in its entirety, punctuated by angry diatribes? Will he even reward us, in the end, with "Cortez the Killer" or "Cinnamon Girl"?
At the Susq, the mystery was compounded as the lights dimmed and the show began with trademark Young theatrical weirdness. Straw-hatted crew members dressed as farmers moved about, pretending to plant seeds on the stage.
Eventually, Young emerged and sat stage left at the piano, fedora down over his brow as he opened with the timeless 1970 eco-anthem "After the Gold Rush." Maybe everything was going to be OK after all. That was part of a mini-acoustic set that found him in fine, keening voice, reedy harmonica notes hanging in the air on an idyllic summer night. It went "Heart of Gold," "Long May You Run," "Old Man," and "Mother Earth (Natural Anthem)," the latter at the pump organ, as Young pleaded: "Respect Mother Earth and her giving ways/ Don't trade away our children's days."
In the next bit of kooky stagecraft - before the entrance of Young's backing band, Promise of the Real, featuring Willie Nelson's sons Lucas and Micah - a team of hazmat-suited roadies came on, acting as if they were poisoning all those precious seedlings by spraying them with pesticides. It seemed like the hectoring was about to begin. But no. Instead, it was the next stage of a shambling show that would stretch over three hours, eventually finding time for most of the bluntly artless Monsanto songs, but also taking a winning tour through Young's vast catalog.
Starting out with "Hold Back the Tears" (from 1977's American Stars 'n Bars) and "Out on the Weekend" (from 1972's Harvest), the show started out folkie and familial and grew in electric intensity and volume as the evening proceeded.
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