Monday, February 18, 2008

Neil Inc.


Read a review today in a Dutch newspaper (I can read that language pretty well, happens to be my mother tongue) of Neil Young´s first concert of three in Amsterdam. It was extremely positive, which didn´t surprise me really as Neil is one of the few dinosaurs who still delivers the goods, live as well as on album.

But I was kind of shocked about an observation the reviewer made in this article. He noticed that although Young (´62) is one of the few old rockers who potentially doesn´t only attract his own generation but also an audience much younger than himself, there weren´t any youngsters to be found at the show. Reason: a ticket price of - drumroll - 140 Euro ($ 205). Now I haven´t been to any major rock shows lately but I sure hope such a pricetag isn´t the norm these days. Makes you wonder who actually demands that kind of money, Neil Inc. or the promotors...

Anyway, guess I won´t be seeing Neil live sometime soon. But it got me to thinking: for what shows would I fork over such an amount of money? Dylan in a small club probably, and that´s it. Otherwise some time machine construction comes to mind, in which I´d gladly pay 140 Euro or more to see Elvis in his Sun period, Dylan & The Band in ´66, Gram with Emmylou, Jimi at Monterey or the Pistols early ´77 in some London dive... I´m sure you can add to the list. In the meantime I´m saving up for Neil´s Archives Vol. 1, which won´t be cheap either as it´s said to contain 8 cd´s, 2 dvd´s and a book. Got plenty of time to fill the piggy bank probably, as the release date keeps being pushed back. Meanwhile we´ve got the two excellent Performance Series Archives (Live At The Fillmore East ´70 and Live At Massey Hall ´71) to keep us happy.

Neil Young & Crazy Horse - Down By The River (live Fillmore ´70) MP3
Neil Young - Cowgirl In The Sand (live Massey Hall ´71) MP3

4 comments:

Unknown said...

Like you say, Neil is the only artist I'll pay a stupid amount to see, and probably just this one last time. For my tickets, the face value was £65, but with booking fee and all that bumf it came to about £71. Ridiculous, but on 11 March this year... I'll be seeing Neil Young live, and there's nothing I'd rather be doing.

Ramone666 said...

Have fun Neil!
More on Young´s ticket price policy here: http://tinyurl.com/39tu5f
Seems like I´m not the only one who´s weirded out about this...

Ramone666 said...

See if this works:
tinyurl

Anonymous said...

uhhhhh. i know this is really redundant (based on comment on above post) but i've always known i would pay up to $1000 to see the talking heads reunite