Remembering The Warmth & Love of Bridge School Concerts

Welcome to the 2010 Annual Bridge School Benefit Concert by Bridge Kids
Yesterday, we posted the sad news that there will be No Bridge School Benefit Concert in 2017 .

In memory of all of the Bridge School Benefit Concerts we've attended over the years, here's a modified posting of our thoughts on the 2010 Annual Bridge School Benefit Concert.

Dedicated to Pegi, Neil, The Parents & all of the Bridge Kids.

But first, a comment by Dan1 that sums it all up so well on "It's Official: No Bridge School Benefit Concert in 2017":

As Joni said so eloquently, "don't know what you've got till its gone"

... a sudden change brings much perspective - some thoughts ...

1) Neil and Pegi are incredible people for doing this year after year for 30 years into their 70s
2) The kids were blessed as were all of us to be part of this incredible institution
3) Neil and Pegi's marriage was a pillar of strength, 30 years is forever in show biz, it was seemingly so solid we all probably took that for granted
4) Big reminder to appreciate that Neil is still creating cause that won't last forever either, I'm going to try to bitch less (even about this seemingly endless break from touring) and appreciate more
5) Looking back, what an incredible event they created a who's who of the best musicians donating their time and talents to play unplugged for us ... only a very, very determined and mission driven artist could twist so many famous arms to pull this off and for so long
6) The fans made it possible by supporting it and building such an incredible community around the event ...

for those who made it a pilgrimage and for the kids so so sad to see it all wind down ...

Neil and Pegi, thank you for your big hearts and for your unconditional giving for decades!!

Thanks Dan! Nice words ... and who said numbers add up to nothing? Or maybe numbers really do add up to SOMEthing?

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Over the years here at Thrasher's Wheat, we've spent a considerable amount of blogging on trying to convey what we experienced at a Bridge School Benefit Concert.

Probably nothing really captures the spirit of the Bridge Concerts than this tribute video to the late Larry "L.A." Johnson (1947 - 2010), Neil Young's long time film maker and producer.

While the above YouTube version is silent, during the concerts the video was accompanied by "Dancing in the Streets" during which Neil & Pegi Young danced about the stage. It was the Young's tribute and celebration of L.A.'s impact on the Bridge School legacy.

Neil and Pegi Dancing in the Streets for L.A.

And while there was a celebration of L.A. Johnson's passing, there was more of a somber tone of the late Ben Keith (1937 - 2010), Neil Young's long time band mate and dear friend. Ben is included in the tribute to the artists who have donated their time and talents to perform at the Bridge School Benefit Concerts for the past 24 years.

"One Of These Days" - Bridge School Benefit Concert 2010

Neil & Pegi - 2010
Photo by John Green - San Jose Mercury/Bay Area News Group

Buffalo Springfield - 10/23/10
Photo gallery by Nan Philpot | Facebook
Over the years, the Bridge School Benefit concerts have seen some of the most diverse and eclectic lineups of musicians ever assembled on an annual basis. For 25 years now, Neil and Pegi Young have hosted the concert series which marks the official end of the season for the benefits home venue -- The Shoreline Amphitheater just outside San Francisco, CA.

2010's Buffalo Springfield reunion for their first performance in 42 years certainly was one of the most satisfying concert going experiences we've ever had the pleasure of attending.


Paul McCartney and Neil Young
"Only Love Can Break Your Heart"
Bridge School Benefit Concert - October 23, 2004
Shoreline Amphitheater, Mountain View, CA
Photo by Kim Komenich of San Francisco Chronicle

While there have been some pretty amazing acts and collaborations since the first benefit in 1986, the year 2004 probably ranks right up there at the top of the scale of concert memories. The 2004 Bridge School Benefit Concert featured Paul McCartney, Tony Bennett, Eddie Vedder, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Tegan & Sara, Los Lonely Boys, Sonic Youth, and Ben Harper along with Neil Young.

The concert's finale with Paul McCartney, Tony Bennett and other musicians left many with literally tears in their eyes.

"Only Love Can Break Your Heart" - Paul McCartney and Neil Young - October 23, 2004

Neil Young
2009 Bridge School Benefit Concert
Photo by John Shearer/WireImage


"Powderfinger" - Adam Sandler and Neil Young
2009 Bridge School Benefit Concert
Photo by Christopher Victorio


"Comes A Time" - All Bridge Performers Finale:
Neil Young, No Doubt, Jimmy Buffett, Chris Martin, Sheryl Crow, Fleet Foxes, Monsters of Folk, Wolfmother, Gavin Rossdale
2009 Bridge School Benefit Concert


Pegi & Neil Young
Photo by Steve Jennings/WireImage
Cat Power and Neil Young on "Fortunate Son"
2008 Bridge School Benefit Concert


Wilco
2008 Bridge School Benefit Concert


Neil Young - Photos by Inside Bay Area
2008 Bridge School Benefit Concert


Neil & Pegi Say "Goodnight"
Bridge School Benefit Concert 2007
Photo by Roel van Dijk - Rust Radio


Dave Matthews Band & Neil Young
Bridge 2006 Concert
photo by Craig Abaya
Gillian Welch, David Rawlins & Neil Young
Bridge 2006 Concert
photo by Craig Abaya
Eddie Vedder & Neil Young
Bridge 2006 Concert
photo by Craig Abaya
2004 International Rust Fest
Miron's Photo GallerySan Francisco Chronicle: Young sings to family of 20,000 at 20th Bridge School concert:

"The Bridge concerts, among many others things, have served to humanize Young and bring out the family side of his life into the public eye. With their son at the bottom of all this and his wife's tireless dedication to creating and building this pioneering school, Young has drawn back the curtain at these Bridge shows on a private life he has otherwise not been disposed to reveal."

Pegi & Neil Young at Bridge 2006 Concert
photo by Craig Abaya

Neil, Pegi & Ben say "Good Night. Thanks for coming. We love you all."

(Click images to enlarge)

For those of you who have made the annual pilgrimage to the Bridge School Benefit Concerts, you know that it can be a life altering and transcendental experience.

And 2015's 29th Annual Bridge School Benefit Concerts, was -- once again - a "life altering and transcendental experience" to be savoured and shared with old and new friends from around the world.

So here are just a few of our memories and rusted reflections on the 2015 Bridge Concerts Weekend - our last Bridge that we attended.  And we're thankful and blessed for the opportunity.  enjoy

Rusties Descend Upon The Shoreline

The Great Bridge Pumpkin

Neil Young w/ Wisdom Dancers

"After The Gold Rush"

"Human Highway"

Nils Lofgren

Nils Lofgren w/ Neil Young - "Believe"

Ben Harper w/ Pegi Young

Sheryl Crow w/ Gary Clark Jr.

Dixie Chicks w/ St. Vincent & Sheryl Crow

Stage Plot: Getting Ready to Get REAL

Neil Young + Promise of the Real w/ Nils Lofgren

"Mother Earth" w/ Nils Lofgren

Finale Day #2: Who's Gonna Stand Up?

Neil, Ben & Pegi Young

So many fond memories and dear rustie friends. Someday, we're gonna sit down and write a long letter...

Rusties @ The Healing Pole & Medicine Teepee

Rusties
19th Annual International RustFest - October 23, 2015
Saratoga Springs, CA
(Click image to enlarge)

Rusties After The Show

Rusties Jammin'

w/ Jay Blakesberg, Rolling Stone Photographer

"Deju Blue"
w/ James Mazzeo, ZUMA & Greendale Album Cover Artist

w/ King of Rust, Hounds That Howell & The Holy Grail "More Barn" Mirror

w/ Micah Nelson

w/ Zeke Young

w/ Bridge Kid Colin

And -- as always -- it's all about the Bridge Kids. Really. The Bridge Kids ... the real, true children of the wheat. (when we say "children of the wheat" we make no claims other than that they represent the best of human nature and symbolize that which each of us can only aspire to. The Kids are the teachers, as Eddie says. We are but mere students.)

We recall the year when Eddie Vedder said at the Bridge concert: "The kids are the teachers. We are the students."

Great to see everyone over the years at Bridge and hope to see you again down the road ... wherever the road leads...

peace & love,
thrasher



PHOTO BY Misha Vladimirskiy | SPIN.comAlso, see:

- Bridge School Benefit Concert Reviews, Photos, Videos, etc.
- The Charitable Mr. Neil Young Keeps On Giving & Giving & Giving

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It's Official: No Bridge School Benefit Concert in 2017

It's now official -- there will be no Bridge School Benefit Concert this year, per a statement on the Bridge School website.

Letter from Pegi Young

Dear Friends of Bridge School:

The Bridge School Benefit Concert, traditionally held at Shoreline Amphitheatre, will not be held in 2017. We want to express our sincere and profound thanks to all of you for your love and support, demonstrated by way of your attendance at 30 years of Bridge School Benefit Concerts. They have been truly memorable events and we have great appreciation for everyone who has been involved beginning, of course, with Neil Young and including all the many artists who have been so generous with their time and talent; the production people who have made it all possible; Elliot Roberts and the team at Lookout Management as well as Marsha Vlasic, who have been so instrumental in booking the shows all these years; the Bridge School staff and families and last, but certainly not least, the audience to whom the show has brought such enjoyment over these many years.

Because our mission is of such great importance to so many, we proceed onward with optimism into the future. Stay tuned for updates as we begin to shape what the next steps will be in reaching our endowment goals.

On behalf of the Bridge School family, I wish to thank you again from the bottom of my heart for your love and support as we work to bring opportunities and "participation through communication" to our student population here at home and around the world.

With peace, love, and sincere gratitude.

Pegi Young

Co-Founder and President of the Board of Directors, Bridge School

Message from Neil Young

After thirty years of hosting the Bridge School Concerts, I would like to say thanks to everyone involved. Of course, I love the students most of all because the light in their eyes tells me we have been doing the right thing for the last thirty years. We have earned millions of dollars and the school is stable financially, able to go forward although we still need an endowment and would welcome one.

Thanks to Pegi Young for coming up with the idea and pursuing it with such great dedication, working for the kids like our child Ben, young children with disabilities who needed more than our education system offered. Our heartfelt thanks and appreciation go to the artists who have been so generous with their time and great performances. Certainly, my love and appreciation go to Executive Director Vicki Casella, who has given 100% to skillfully support and guide the school over the years. Thank you to our wonderful staff, made up of the finest educators I have ever known. I would also like to thank the Board of Directors for their dedicated efforts on behalf of our students and Bridge School mission.

My long-time friends, manager Elliot Roberts and agent Marsha Vlasic have been putting these concerts together and gathering the incredible artist line ups year after year. Thanks to you both and to Frank Gironda for all the work you've put into the event. I would also like to thank Tim Foster and the crews he has ably led while handling production of the concerts and making everything so easy for us. Great job Tim.

The Bridge School Concerts would never have been possible without Bill Graham and BGP, as well as Another Planet Productions. Thanks to Jerry Pompili and all the people who worked for these production organizations and made our wonderful concerts so easy for everyone.

To the Bridge School Community, the folks who attend the concerts year after year bringing their wonderful enthusiasm and love, I say thanks and lots of love to every one of you. You are the soul that kept everything happening for all these years. I know the concerts have become part of the Bay Area Landscape and we were all there together. I appreciate being part of it.

Although I will continue in fund raising efforts, for personal reasons beginning this year I will no longer be hosting The Bridge School Concert. I wish everyone the best as the school heads into the future. My heart is with each and every child we have had the honor to serve and those we will continue to serve, and your parents, siblings, and extended families. Thanks to you all for the honor of serving such a great mission. Thanks to my incredible son Ben Young for being there at my side throughout these many Bridge School years. I love you buddy. The Bridge School would not have been possible without you.

Neil Young

A sad day indeed for so many, but much to cherish from the memories of past and all that has been accomplished these past 30 years.

More on last year's 2016 Bridge School Benefit Concert (reviews, photos, videos, etc.).

Also, see The Essence of Bridge School Benefit Concerts. (Incidentally, FWIW, this is why we do what we do here @ TW.)

Also, see our Memories & Reflections on Our 2015 Bridge School Benefit Concerts Weekend.

Neil, Pegi & Ben say "Good Night. Thanks for coming. We love you all."
(Click images to enlarge)

Because -- as everyone knows -- the annual pilgrimage to the Bridge School Benefit Concerts was a life altering and transcendental experience.

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Farm Aid 2017 Scheduled for Burgettstown, PA on Sep 16

The 2017 Farm Aid concert will be held in Burgettstown, PA.

The concert lineup will feature performances by Farm Aid board members Willie Nelson, John Mellencamp, Neil Young and Dave Matthews with Tim Reynolds, as well as Jack Johnson, The Avett Brothers, Sheryl Crow, Jamey Johnson, Blackberry Smoke, Valerie June, Lukas Nelson & Promise of the Real and Insects vs Robots. Additional artists will be announced later this summer.

The Farm Aid presale starts tomorrow, Wednesday, June 14, at noon EDT. Details @ farmaid.org/. General public tickets for Farm Aid go on sale June 23.

More on last year's Farm Aid 2016 - Bristow, Virginia.

Neil Young + Promise of the REAL

Also, see Neil Young @ Farm Aid 2016 Press Conference - COMPLETE and About That Time That We Went To A Farm Aid Concert...

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Neil Young Research and Artificial Intelligence (A.I.)

ANALYSIS: Neil Young Fan Demographics
Male, Married, Middle Aged
A few years back, we posted some research findings on the demographics of Neil Young fans.

The research was unsurprising in many ways, yet still yielded a few unique insights. However, what was most interesting to us was the availability of raw data on Neil Young fans, their interests and behaviors. And -- more importantly -- what this trend in social media meant for the future.

Well, the future is here (and has been for sometime now) and it continues to get more and more troublesome as the reality of data driven decision making becomes ever more pervasive.

Which brings us to the topic of Neil Young Research and Artificial Intelligence (A.I.).

We're not going to attempt to make any sweeping pronouncements about trends in technology, music, data and A.I. Not because we don't have an opinion here but because we've already made our future forecasts and they still seem to be right on track as predicted and even maybe a bit ahead of schedule.

So what does this mean: "Neil Young Research and Artificial Intelligence (A.I.)?" Probably the best way to explain is to show by example. Below you will see a number of Neil Young "facts" generated by A.I. via the site Tropes Wiki | Neil Young. Take a look:

• Age Progression Song: "Sugar Mountain".
• Answer Song:
  • Joni Mitchell's "Circle Game" was written to complement "Sugar Mountain".
  • Lynyrd Skynyrd's "Sweet Home Alabama" is a Take That! to "Alabama" and "Southern Man". Despite this, the band members were friends with Young and were even planning to collaborate before the band's unfortunate plane crash. Young has performed the song on occasion, including the night after the aforementioned plane crash.
• Author Avatar: Grandpa and Sun Green both have elements of this in parts of Greendale.
• Bookends: Several of his albums open and close with the same song. Examples include Tonight's the Night, Rust Never Sleeps, and Freedom. In the latter two cases, the opening rendition is acoustic and the closing one is electric.
• Braids, Beads and Buckskins: Neil wore them while he was in the Buffalo Springfield, but insists he has no Native American ancestry that he knows of. He has written many songs about Native Americans and is an official member of the Muckleshoot tribe in Washington state. In September 2014 he and Willie Nelson were invested with sacred buffalo robes by elders of the Lakotah, Ponca and Omaha nations for, among other things, their help in stopping the Keystone Pipeline.
• Car Song:
  • "Long May You Run", performed in collaboration with Stephen Stills, an elegy for his first car, a 1948 Buick Roadmaster that broke down in 1956 in Blind River, Ontario. He performed it again during the last episode of The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien on January 22, 2010, and a few days later, at the closing ceremony of the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Winter Games, as the Olympic Flame was being extinguished.
  • Fork in the Road, released in 2009, is a whole album of Car Songs.
• CIA Evil, FBI Good: Averted in Greendale, where the FBI harass Sun, kill her cat, and (it's implied) set her up on drug charges. The CIA are not mentioned at any point in the story.
• Cluster F-Bomb: "Fuckin' Up". Neil says he wrote it as an attempt to get a Parental Advisory sticker, but the attempt failed.
  • Censored Title: The official title is "F*!#in' Up".
• Drugs Are Bad / Ode To Sobriety: "The Needle and the Damage Done", about heroin.
  • Neil wasn't against all drugs, but he had a particularly strong loathing for heroin because two of his close friends died due to overdoses. On the other hand, most of Tonight's the Night was recorded in various states of intoxication on marijuana and alcohol.
• Epic Rocking: Half the reason he gives concerts at all. Pretty much any song can go beyond 10 minutes if he feels like it. Frequent examples include "Cowgirl in the Sand", "Like a Hurricane", "Down by the River", "Spirit Road", "Cortez the Killer"...
  • Special credit to The Movie Year of the Horse, where thanks to some creative editing by Jim Jarmusch, "Like a Hurricane" stretches out over 20 years.
  • Also lampshaded on the 1997 Live Album Year of the Horse (not quite the same):
  Neil: Okay, here's another one, just like the last one.
  Audience: It all sounds the same!
  Neil: It's all one song!
  

  • "It's all one song" was a running gag on the Rust mailing list, which Neil was known to read.
  • Several tracks on his studio albums invoke this trope as well, especially when Crazy Horse is his backing band:
    • 1969's Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere has the well-known examples of "Down by the River" (9:13) and "Cowgirl in the Sand" (10:06).
    • 1989's essentially live in the studio album Ragged Glory has two tracks that exceed 10 minutes ("Love to Burn" and "Love and Only Love") and an additional two that exceed 7.
    • 1975's Zuma has "Danger Bird" (6:54) and "Cortez the Killer" (7:29, which was even longer in the studio performance).
    • 1994's Sleeps with Angels has the nearly 15-minute "Change Your Mind", and two additional songs that exceed six minutes ("Blue Eden" and "Safeway Cart").
    • 2003's Greendale has three songs that top ten minutes ("Carmichael", "Grandpa's Interview", "Sun Green") and an additional three that top seven ("Falling from Above", "Leave the Driving", "Be the Rain").
    • 2012's Psychedelic Pill is an eight-song double CD with three songs topping 16 minutes. The opening number, "Driftin' Back", clocks in at 27:37. (The other two monster tracks are "Ramada Inn", 16:49, and "Walk Like a Giant", 16:27 for the record). Also note that the Blu-Ray Audio version of the album features the absolutely monstrous "Horse Back" as a bonus track; this runs for 37:05. However, it is a medley of previous Neil Young & Crazy Horse tracks, hence the name - there is an 18:50 vamp on a riff from "Fuckin' Up" and an 18:15 version of "Cortez the Killer". You may hear it here. Young actually released this video on Youtube months before Psychedelic Pill was even announced.
  • Even when Crazy Horse isn't involved, he can still get pretty long-winded:
    • 1974's On the Beach has one song that approaches seven minutes (the title track) and one that approaches nine ("Ambulance Blues").
    • 1977's American Stars 'n Bars has "Will to Love" (7:11) and "Like a Hurricane" (8:20, performed with Crazy Horse).
    • Two of the songs on 2007's Chrome Dreams II ("Ordinary People", 18:13, and "No Hidden Path", 14:31) surpass the fourteen minute mark with ease.
  • This is still far from an exhaustive list.
• Evil Has a Bad Sense of Humor: In his live acoustic performances of Greendale, Neil notes that the Devil's sense of humour is rather mean.
• Gainax Ending: Greendale. The Devil spikes Earth Brown's drink with devil dust, which evidently will cause him to be thirsty for the rest of his life. In the midst of a trip with Sun Green to Alaska, he leaves the camper during the middle of the night, and Sun has a bizarre dream involving most of the characters in the story (several of whom are now dead). The next morning, Sun finds Earth in the midst of a standoff with industrial machinery, and then "the green army rose". What happens next is left to the listener's imagination. This is likely done deliberately on Young's part.
• Genre Adultery: When he signed with Geffen Records in 1982, he released Trans (a synthesizer based album) followed in the same year by Everybody's Rockin' (a rockabilly album). He was ready to release Old Ways (a country album) before Geffen filed a lawsuit against him for making music "unrepresentative" of his previous work.
• Green Aesop: Some of his music has environmentalist themes. Examples include "After the Gold Rush", "Vampire Blues" (which, as mentioned below, is a metaphor for the oil industry), and the entire albums Greendale and Fork in the Road, though there are others. Some examples are quite subtle, others less so.
• Handicapped Badass: Neil suffers from epilepsy, and in his Buffalo Springfield days would often have fits on stage, earning him the nickname "Shakey". He's since learned to control it, but his eccentric guitar playing style and tendency to almost go into trance during Epic Rocking often come across as barely controlled seizures.
  • He's also a polio survivor, diabetic (type 1) and in 2005 nearly bled to death from complications following (successful) surgery for a deadly brain aneurysm. In 1970 he ruptured a disk while working on his house, and spent most of the next year in a brace -– but this led to his writing numerous soft acoustic songs, including the #1 hit single, "Heart of Gold", because he could sit down to play them. Surgery helped, but he's been plagued with back pain throughout his life. As if that weren't enough, he has scoliosis and osteoporosis. And he still gets up onstage and rocks his (and YOUR) ass off.
• I Call It "Vera": Young has a tendency to name his guitars. Some in his collection include "Old Black" and "Hank," the latter of which was named after its previous owner, Hank Williams.
• Lyrical Dissonance: "Rockin' in the Free World" is not proud or patriotic.
  • It may take a few listens to the Native American themed "Pocahontas" to register just how awful the events in it are.
• Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: The Devil definitely has some supernatural powers in Greendale, but it's left ambiguous as to how far they extend. Questions such as whether he influenced Jed to kill Officer Carmichael are left unanswered, but there is definitely a connection between them, since Jed sees the Devil before his crime, Earl paints the Devil shortly after it, and Jed and the Devil are noted to share similarities in their appearances. Earth Brown qualifies, too. It's not clear whether he's the literal manifestation of the Earth or just a particularly passionate defender of it.
• Misogyny Song: "A Man Needs a Maid" is sometimes interpreted as one. "Stupid Girl" probably also qualifies, though it's also probably worth noting that Neil was in the midst of a rather tumultuous breakup when he wrote it. His material in more recent years has generally been pretty good about avoiding this.
• Murder Ballad: "Down by the River" (..."I shot my baby").
• Old Media Are Evil: The local media in Greendale are not given a particularly flattering portrayal. In fact, they're implied to be responsible for Grandpa's death - it's not specifically said what causes it, but it's strongly implied to be a heart attack due to his rage at their continued intrusions into his family's life. This could be considered to border on Strawman News Media. Later in the album when they cover Sun Green's protest, they're given a more flattering portrayal, though.
• Our Vampires Are Different: "Vampire Blues" is a metaphor for the oil industry.
• Perfume Commercial: Spoofed in his video for "This Note's for You".
• Perishing Alt Rock Voice: Young's distinctive voice has been imitated by some Alternative Rock singers, like Wayne Coyne and J Mascis.
• Pun-Based Title: Le Noise was produced by Daniel Lanois, and Young's guitar tone on most of the album could be described as "noisy" ^note  This only works as a written pun, since the producer's surname is pronounced "lan-WAH" .
  • "A Rock Star Bucks a Coffee Shop" is a Protest Song about Starbucks Coffee's alleged use of genetically modified ingredients and support of bills to stop required GMO labeling (partly true) ...So it's a rock star "bucking" (as in resisting) Starbucks. He also says "If you want to rock Starbucks..." "rock" in the modern sense of "to use".
• Protest Song: So, so many.
  • "Ohio" — Written / performed during his time with CSNY about the famous Kent State shootings in 1970 within two weeks of the tragedy itself.
  • "Southern Man" and "Alabama" were tied to the mistreatment of African-Americans.
  • "Rockin' in the Free World" is a a general protest against the George H.W. Bush administration and the effects of Reaganomics.
  • Living with War is an entire album about Neil's thoughts on George W. Bush. Including one cheery sing-along called "Let's Impeach the President"!
    • Parodied on Saturday Night Live (where he was played by Kevin Spacey) as a "subtle, understated" album called "I Do Not Agree with Many of This Administration's Policies".
• Rail Enthusiast: Some people buy model trains. Young bought a model train manufacturer. Young's son Ben has severe cerebral palsy, and is especially into model trains -– so he started getting into trains to have something he and Ben could enjoy together. Young also invented a new kind of control for the train set allowing everything to be run from what he called "The Big Red Button", so that Ben, a nonspeaking paraplegic, could run the whole set himself. He's also the inventor of the CAB-1 remote control device, the Trainmaster Command Control that lets you run multiple trains from one controller, and Rail Sounds, which provides the authentic sounds of each train in your setup.
• Self-Deprecation: In Live at Vicar St., Neil makes a remark to the effect that when he was writing Greendale, he had "absolutely no idea what I was doing, as usual".
• '70s Hair: Neil originally wore his hair in a modified Beatle style, with enormous sideburns.
• Shout-Out: Greendale has one to Bob Dylan's "Like a Rolling Stone" and one to The Beatles' "Come Together". There's also a reference to environmental activist Julia Butterfly Hill.
• Sincerest Form of Flattery: Neil's musical styles, particularly his heavy rock style, have inspired a number of musicians to create closely detailed copies, as a tribute to him. Drive by Truckers' "A Blessing and a Curse" makes you expect to hear his voice. Dawes' rock version of "If I Wanted Someone" is another; it even references "A Man Needs a Maid". And Fox manage to capture the Horse in High Tide Rising in a beautifully crunchy, screaming, howling, loving tribute.
• Song of Song Titles: Lynyrd Skynyrd's "Sweet Home Alabama" contains many references to Young's songs "Alabama" and "Southern Man", mostly in the form of a Take That!, though not as much as you might think. ^note  Lynyrd Skynyrd were fans of (and later friends with) Neil, and he offered them a couple of his now classic songs ("Sail Away" and "Powderfinger") but the plane crash happened before they could take him up on the offer. Similarly squashed was a plan for Young to appear with the band during a show on the Street Survivors tour to play guitar on "Sweet Home Alabama" and sing the line "a southern man don't need me 'round anyhow". Rumour has it that Skynyrd frontman Ronnie van Zandt and Neil were planning to work on an album together as well, and that Ronnie is buried in a Neil Young T-shirt.
• The Stoner: In his autobiography, Neil admits to having spent the last 40 years smoking marijuana "like other people smoke tobacco".
• Stylistic Suck: The musicianship on "Roll Another Number" is atrocious because they were completely trashed when they recorded it. Somehow it just makes the song even more effective.
• Suspiciously Similar Song: Invoked with "Borrowed Tune", which outright admits it's lifted from The Rolling Stones' "Lady Jane".
• Take That!: "Alabama" and "Southern Man" are attacks on the racism of the southern United States.
  • "Thrasher" from Rust Never Sleeps is taken as an oblique attack on Crosby, Stills, and Nash.
• "The Villain Sucks" Song: Young's 2006 release Living With War was an experimental album detailing all the ways in which he disapproved of George W. Bush.
• Vitriolic Best Buds: This seems to be his relationship with Crosby, Stills, & Nash.

So those are just a few example of Neil Young "facts" generated by A.I.

Just as we said five years ago, who cares? Why does this matter? Here's what we said:

Lastly -- and really this is the point here -- many folks are quite oblivious to the amount of information that is gathered about them constantly. Data that is crunched, analyzed, bought, sold and profited upon.

You -- our dear TW reader -- are the product. You and who you are is what has value and is being sold to the highest bidder for a profit. And your share is exactly zero.

Who said numbers add up to nothing? Or maybe numbers really do add up to SOMEthing?

Maybe, just, maybe we R in control... or beware of the "singularity".

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