Neil Young + Promise of the Real will be performing tonight, June 15 - France, Lyon, Halle Tony Garnier.
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 2016 Concert Tour Dates for reviews, photos, videos and more.
Here We Are in the Years?
ReplyDeletePlus Like an Inca
ReplyDeleteCourtesy of the Under the Rusted Moon blog:
ReplyDelete1. After the Gold Rush
2. Heart Of Gold
3. Comes a Time
4. The Needle and the Damage Done
5. Mother Earth (Natural Anthem)
6. Out On the Weekend
7. From Hank to Hendrix
8. Western Hero
9. Here We Are In the Years
10. Someday
11. Alabama
12. Winterlong
13. Like an Inca
14. Words
15. Love To Burn
16. Revolution Blues
17. Mansion On the Hill
18. Country Home
19. Seed Justice
20. Monsanto Years
21. After the Garden
22. Wolf Moon
23. Love and Only Love
24. Cortez the Killer
Thanks Babbo for updates.
ReplyDeleteLike An Inca?! Whoa.
Didn't someone request that here the other day? Now that was a real long shot.
Can't wait to check out.
Now that's a set-list!
ReplyDeleteI've always loved "Here We Are In the Years" and adding in "Like an Inca" and encoring with "Cortez" is about as good as it gets.
Of course I'm still waiting for "Like a Hurricane" with a helping of "Barstool Blues" but I think Neil may be saving those for his Desert Trip...
Take my advice
don't listen to me
Like An Inca, are you kidding?? Plus a Here We Are In The Years, a Revolution Blues, and a Cortez closer.
ReplyDeleteThese setlists are just too much these last couple of tours, so much fun finding out which nuggets get pulled out each show.
That's it, I'm officially calling Lookout Joe......or Southern Pacific.
Don't be denied and White line in Rome, pleeez
ReplyDeleteGreat set list. Like an Inca was played by Insects vs Robots (Micahs band) so clearly NY & POTR had rehearsed it. Cortez as encore, I'd take that every day of the week over FU.
ReplyDeleteI said I thought Cortez would be a great encore; two days late, but can't complain too much I suppose. Looking forward to hearing a recording of this one.
ReplyDeleteScotsman.
Here We Are In The Years will suit this band very well.
ReplyDeleteOne reviewer noted that the strength of the set is that he's only picking songs that fit together thematically, and I agree. His concerts have always been very much like that, built around a theme, but perhaps even more so recently.
These songs aren't just being pulled out of a hat. This isn't some pointless "rarities" set where anything goes.
He's continuing with the Earth concept, demonstrating his assertion to interviewers that "I've always done this". To say "wow, this song was last sung in 1902!" Is understandable, but misses the point. He's not giving us a history lesson; he's choosing songs that are still relevant right now, songs that fit together.
Scotsman.
Just woke up and still buzzing from yesterday's show. The opening act was a young, disheveled and insanely talented French harp player, Charles Pasi. Neil came onstage around 8:30 and left us on our knees just past midnight. He and the band were in excellent mood all through the set (in stark contrast with his last stop in Lyon in 2008). The energy was unbelievable. Like An Inca was an pleasant surprise, although it was in a very groovy, percussion-heavy style which I am glad they didn't use on other songs. Micah screwed up the piano intro to Someday, and then struggled to remember the key - pretty embarrassing, but Neil was not mad at all and everything went very smoothly. Obviously the last part of the show was (to my delight) a relentless Ragged Glory / Weld attack, and the two cuts from Monsanto Years fit perfectly. '91 all over again - how the hell does he do that?
ReplyDeleteRe: Desert Trip, Neil commented to the BBC about it over the weekend:
ReplyDelete"I know nothing about it really. It's a great honour to play with all of them....But aside from that it's just another gig."
My own suggestion remains to see this band indoors, if possible. As with Crazy Horse, this music suits an echo-laden arena. A lot of the recordings on this tour are being made from close to the stage, which gives an unobstructed sound but unfortunately cuts out a lot of that beautiful echo where the "spook" lives.
Of course, no panic at all if you are seeing him outdoors. That will sound fine too.
Scotsman.
I would love him playing an electric version of 'Last trip to Tulsa' like in Paris in 1976...
ReplyDeleteLike An Inca im sure is on the list.......the not so cryptic photo by Micah last early Oct of a Praying Mantis and subsequent questions confirmed that Yes they had rehearsed it midway in the Oct west coast tour 2015. Hence the Insects played it themselves later
ReplyDeleteJust more pieces in the jigsaw
was the Lyons version on White Falcon then?....now that is a fine sounding phenomenon
Could be The Last Dance for Neil in Europe?
ReplyDelete@adrianfish yes Like An Inca was on the White Falcon. He switched to Old Black for Love To Burn.
ReplyDeleteAndy Walter, no way!
ReplyDeleteHe's just getting started … and the collaboration w POTR is just in its infancy … they're just starting to fine tune it
The NY and POTR arrangement has a couple of really great features. First, Neil feels like their uncle, he's known Lukas and Michah their whole lives … somehow cranky Neil is now jovial Neil but in large part to his role here as uncle / mentor / elder statesman … the chemistry with POTR is something totally different than with his other arrangements over the past 20 years …. also, Neil seems to love their breadth … he commented once on the electric band (maybe its a blurb on Trunk Show?) about how their wide range allowed him to play almost anything and he was super jazzed about it … not only does it mean varied set-lists and new surprises for fans but it seems to invigorate Neil and the band … seems to enhance the whole vibe … as a fan necessitates seeing multiple shows ...
ReplyDelete3.5hr show ViP? Is that an accurate time? If so, ole' Neil's really leaving it all out there (which we already knew).
ReplyDelete___________________________________________________________________
Regarding Neil's "choosing" thematic set-lists, I'll have to think a little more about that. To an extent, it's logical, but then again, virtually all of his songs are linked together thematically either directly or indirectly. Though his overall work has been wildly inconsistent, he's been incredibly consistent with his lyrically philosophical themes. He's been saying the same things over and over, sometimes with slightly more political leanings, other times with more personal leanings and other times with more global leanings, but they're all the same (as he's often said). Historically his lyrical brilliance revolved around his ability to add a line or two to a song which could always stand on it's own as a "statement" about politics, or love, or nature...
Be it one of his "political love songs" or "mountain funk" or "pastoral yearning" songs, the overarching concepts and feelings always find Neil's central point of view searching for that mythical garden of eden.
Take my advice
don't listen to me
Just like his studio albums, for years his setlists have generally been built heavily around specific concepts. Some are more obvious that others.
ReplyDeleteFor instance, it's surely no coincidence that Love To Burn, Seperate Ways, Goin' Home (first written/recorded when his marriage was going through a bad patch back in 2001), Only Love Can Break Your Heart, Don't Cry No Tears, Down By The River etc all made a sudden and unexpected return to the setlist in the 2014 tour, just as Neil's marriage finally collapsed. This wasn't Neil thinking "what random obscurities can I play to shake up the setlist?". This was a very specific and incisive choice of songs that best represented his personal life at the time.
Again, it was no coincidence that From Hank To Hendrix ("now we're headed for the big divorce") opened the acoustic shows around the same time, after a five year break.
And it's no coincidence (for instance) that the one song chosen from Living With War this time around is After The Garden, which slots in perfectly amongst the environmental theme of the Monsanto songs (as well as taking a shot at Donald Trump). It's a continuation of the same thing, the same story.
The live set now is essentially an "extended Director's Cut" of Earth, a concept show bringing together songs from the past that mainly fit these overarching themes. And so a lot of songs that don't fit have been left on the cutting room floor. He is picking songs with care.
When questioned about the environmental activism in his recent works, Neil's explanation is essentially "Well, I've been singing about these themes for a long time". Indeed he has; it's nothing new. And these setlists self-consciously set out to confidently demonstrate that.
Scotsman.
Scots quoted Neil re: Desert Trip:
ReplyDelete"I know nothing about it really. It's a great honour to play with all of them....But aside from that it's just another gig."
___________________________________________________________________
And in an AP article, re: set-lists and Desert Trip, Neil says:
It also eliminates the need for set lists. They go with the flow.
“Everything’s in real time. The people are there. We’re there. … It’ll be all of us together creating the moment,” he said.
He’ll take the same approach at California’s Desert Trip concert festival in the fall, where Young shares the bill with the Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, Paul McCartney, Roger Waters and the Who.
“The audience is going to be really stoked,” Young said. “They’re going to feel real special about being able to see all this at once. … It’s a celebration of music and history.”
Still, he said, “I’m going to play whatever I feel like playing that day.”
___________________________________________________________________
I'm fairly certain that Neil will treat Desert Trip as something very special as he's well aware he's on a bill with the all-time greats. He knows he belongs, but he'll want to solidify his standing and make his case that he belongs on the rock & roll Mt. Rushmore.
To me, Neil is a living contradiction--at the same time, he cares less and more about his standing and musical legacy than most of his peers.
Take my advice
don't listen to me
Great points Scots.
ReplyDeleteI think Neil has a few key songs every tour that he feels strongly about. They may be about what he's going through at the time, or they may be a message he wants to share, sometimes cryptically and other times directly.
As you say, some are more obvious than others, but I think it's why he's never fully done a true greatest hits tour (though acoustic 2014 came close), and why he remains relevant to us.
Take my advice
don't listen to me
Thank you Topanga and Scotsman for your contributions, you make it even better to be a Neil Young fan, with your insights and reflections along the Road.
ReplyDeleteScotsman said - "He's continuing with the Earth concept, demonstrating his assertion to interviewers that "I've always done this". To say "wow, this song was last sung in 1902!" Is understandable, but misses the point. He's not giving us a history lesson; he's choosing songs that are still relevant right now, songs that fit together."
ReplyDeleteVery perceptive comment and it makes much sense to me - a similar thought occurred to me first time I heard that small change in the lyric of After The Goldrush ("Look at mother nature on the run in the twenty-first century") - and again more recently hearing Someday again, the relevance of that fourth verse is amazingly prescient:
"Workin' on that great Alaska pipeline
Many men were lost in the pipe
They went to fuelin' cars
How smog might turn to stars..."
Thanks for expressing it so well, Scotsman!
Helen
@ TopangaDaze : I checked the timestamp of my pictures and it was exactly 3h20' lights out /lights on
ReplyDeleteSaid in slightly different words, Neil plays the songs that best express how he's feeling at the time of the show / tour … whether its his internal life (marriage, kids, aging, ect…) or his external life (protesting war, environmental issues, ect…) … maybe those two categories are basically love and war … He's incredibly good at condensing his massive cannon into 20 or 25 songs that he can sing with such emotional integrity that its hard to not be blown away … that's a good part of the argument why its better to go with his set list rather than scream out a favorite song … as Scotz said he's not picking his set list by accident … Neil's ability to breath life into his songs is (no pun intended) breathtaking … I remember his '07 tour when he was playing Chrome Dreams II songs and I hadn't though much about the new songs but was completely blown away hearing them live, even to the point of thinking they were highlights of the show … it taught me that it was better to hear what he was into than what I though I was into … regarding the 2014 solo shows I remember being incredibly moved by those shows and later we discovered he had separated from Pegi, indeed look at the set lists in retrospect they tell quite a story …
ReplyDeleteTo be honest, I think we're trying a little too hard to read Neil's mind. Yes, many of the songs, and setlists, have an overall theme to them, but I also think that sometimes Neil just wants to play a song that pops up in his head.
ReplyDeleteI'm sure many of these breakout songs that we've seen POTR play go side by side with Neil's concerns with Mother Earth, and/or his personal life.....but then again, maybe in some cases it's just the POTR boys asking Neil to do a rare chestnut that they want to do, and Neil goes along with it. Who knows, really?
I love Neil to death, but I would never claim to know exactly what's going on in that head of his. I'm just thankful he's still here, and is willing to play all kinds of songs from his career, and not just playing the same set as so many others of his age seem to do.
I don't think there's any "mind reading" going on, it's just looking at the setlist and seeing the obvious links between the songs.
ReplyDeleteThe clincher in this case is that Neil himself has commented that he specifically picked songs of a certain theme for his latest live album.
In fact, he's often done this, throughout his career. Listen to just how often the theme of "freedom" crops up on Freedom, for instance. The answer is: a lot! Over and over and over again. So it's not such a stretch to see the same principle applied to the majority of a whole live show.
When Neil played Ohio after the Tiananmen Square protests in 1989, was that coincidence? Followed nearly every night by Free World, and a final encore of Powderfinger (another "rebel stands up to opression but gets killed" song, just like Ohio). He's singing from the perspective of the guy standing defiantly in front of the tank!
He's using a sequence of songs to tell a story.
Like any model train fanatic, he pays very close attention to the little details, details that are very easy to miss if you don't know they are there.
And then two years later, when the Gulf War was raging. Was it coincidence he played Cortez, Powderfinger and LAOL all in a row (all songs where war and conflict feature predominantly)? Followed immediately by an explosive Free World. And that's without mentioning the electric Blowin' In The Wind. You didn't hear Old Man or Heart Of Gold at any of those shows; they just didn't fit the concept.
Yes, I'm sure some songs just get picked for no reason in particular. It's an intuitive thing, and often there's more than one theme going on in Neil's mind, adding variation and complexity. But there's a clear pattern to most of the songs this year. It's not a just a random "pick 'n' mix" rarities/greatest hits set. There's method to the madness. There's a concept at work.
...Thanks all!
Scotsman.
The threads under all these tour posts have been fantastic lately. Seems like we've all moved away from "He didn't play such and such, he's past it!" and "You're not a true fan..." crap that has accompanied his last few tours. Great insights and critique, nice to see people being able to hold a less than glowing opinion of a song/setlist and not being crucified for it. Plus it feels like Neil has been following the conversations because some of the criticisms and requests seem to have been taken on board!
ReplyDelete@John - thanks for this. You kow, we feel the exact same way and were thinking about making just such an observation but didn't want to jinx it.
ReplyDeleteMaybe, just maybe, we're reaching a critical mass of maturity here.
We certainly never intend to be divisive about something so subjective but that always seems to be the end result of critiquing subjective personal opinions.
But as been pointed out many times here and elsewhere in Rust-dale, Neil concerts are not about you (us the audience). it's about Neil and how he feels at that exact moment. You have to be into his trip or it just doesn't work.
We've all been to acoustic shows sitting around someone expecting Crazy Horse or vice versa where you're @ CH show and someone wants the acoustic stuff. We always thought it was pretty cool to have both acoustic & electric sets to cover the bases. Frankly mystified that folks could still complain.
oh well, "Someday" might be almost here?!
peace