To me, the most challenging thing about the GA pit tix, is deciding WHEN to arrive. Let’s face it, noone wants to kill hrs in line as amusing as some interactions can be… on the other hand, you sorta go all in with these tix because you really want to be right next to the stage, with the unobstructed view, to be a part of it all… And so now I know: 2:40pm for Neil Young’s 8pm gig (doors @7) is waaaaay TOO EARLY. And as some sweet security guard was giving me explicit instructions as to where outside at 35F under light snow I was supposed to spend the next 4.5hrs – it looked sad. I brought a whole bunch of work hoping to sit with it, in line, somewhere in the corner – but there was NO CORNER and NO PLACE TO SIT – AND NO F*CKING LINE – I was the first one. I’ve never been the first one for anything in my life. So I settled for an hr in a bar across the street and finished work and wine and pretty horrible food staring out the window at that magic door… still unattended. 4pm. Got out, hid from snow in the employee’s entrance, asked security if it was ok – they said “no”. I turned on my iPod and started watching the WOWOW broadcast. They made no effort to kick me out and pretended I wasn’t there – I love New York. By 4:25 a few ppl showed up so I re-emerged. A funny crowd in its diversity – some young kids, some old-time hippies, those who don’t fit into any of the above groups (me?), some drove from Ithaca, Jersey, Boston… still a SHOCKINGLY small group of 11 (Ocean’s 11?) till ~5:30. Almost disappointed, I noted: “At a Radiohead gig, there would be 200 ppl making a snowman by noon!!” That was a lie – the SNOWMAN part of it… ‘cause snow didn’t stay. Instead, some awful undecided form of precipitation was dropping from the sky getting progressively worse. At 6pm, security opened magic doors dragged out a table (the purpose of which remained a mystery) and pushed the line (‘sorry guys, we need to move you’) out from that little overhang to the middle of the sidewalk. The snow got nasty. One fringe benefit at the front of the line (which was ME) was the subway vent of several sq feet: every time the train passsed underneath, a whole bunch of hot air was pushed out. So standing on top of it prevented my feet from getting frozen solid. Another nice thing abt this little social network that formed at the front of the line was that a few ppl were here the night before and knew exactly WHERE TO GO once we are finally in. Apparently, security was useless - and there’s a million gates inside… So if any of you ever do the pit at MSG → 2 flights up → gate 54 ;-)7:02 (2 min late!!!) – the doors opened and they started letting ppl in … commotion… They warned us so many times about the bags that I actually hesitated inside with my bag open for search – but noone seem to care for me. What the hell was I waiting for? Clearly, my brain didn’t work properly anymore. Everyone’s rush pushed me out of my hypothermic stupor, and I followed the same group I was hanging out with for hrs …we got wrist-braced with pretty MSG thingys, flew upstairs and OMG!!! – this was almost beyond belief as I found myself at the DEAD CENTER OF THE RAIL ~6 ft from the stage. I was the geometric center of the rail. I slid down to the floor ‘cause I had just about enough standing and shaking and focusing on maintaining my body temperature ;-)… Amazingly enough, on each side of me there were the guys from that first 6 ppl on line!! There was some fairness there I guess – which is rarely the case.I have to say, it was a very ‘civilized’ pit – through the support acts, there was actually a decent amount of room to sit or move around, and there were guys selling pop-corn and beer, and you could leave and come back, and ppl respected each other’s space. This really hasn’t been my experience at, say, Radiohead gig in Toronto. Perhaps because the crowd at MSG was more ‘adult’, and more hippy-ish, or – because it’s New York, and we are awfully nice around here ;-) (hey, this wasn’t a joke!)Now, I don’t remember much of ‘Everest’ – I think it has to do with the time that my brain required to thaw. But it was a short set – they started at 8 and played for ~30min. WILCO though was a treat! Never seen them LIVE, and they were cool. Right of the bat, Nels Cline, their guitar player is something else... And his oddly charismatic look in my opinion totally captured the attention of the audience. (NO, it had NOTHING TO DO with is RED PANTS!!!) I uploaded a bunch of Wilco pix for ya. A nice touch was that it happened to be Jeff Tweedy’s son’s 13th birthday, and so the boy came out to play drums for one of the songs. That was sweet ;-)Set change took some time, and finally Mr Young took the stage at 10:15. Oh my… “Hey Hey - My My… New York City will never die!”… ;-) It was like touching history. Mindblowing. I was so ridiculously close – I could read what the pin on his jacket said “Hippies for OBAMA” (check the pix – see for yourselves ☺ ). So, alright Neil may look old, perhaps older than his years (he looks totally iconic if you ask me…). And I won’t guess what forms of abuse his body has been through over the years… but when he started playing – the energy of it, the force… was simply astounding. It filled the space completely. And when he sang, he sounded the same! I mean, if you were to just hear the performance (which is what I’m doing now – and let me know if you want the complete audio-track), you wouldn’t guess that it is 2008!… He played many classics “Needle”, “Cinnamon Girl”, “Heart of Gold”, “Cowgirl in the Sand”– check out the set list… but also quite a few new songs that I never heard before. In fact there was so many – he had these big cardboard thingys with pages of lyrics for new songs glued on, just in case; those were lying on the floor. But a snatched a picture of those before he started playing (there’s a snapshot in my ‘album’). Mr. Young advised us to “make a shitload of noise” whether we liked the new songs or not ☺. The guys next to me screamed “We DO!!!” The INTENSITY was beyond anything I expected. He played for 2+ hrs straight and asked as if we wanted another song. The audience roared. “You will regret that at 3 o’clock in the morning” – he said. I didn’t! Personal highlights? Many… “Cortez the Killer”… so much power, and darkness, and punishing devastating guitar riffs. God!! And there’s something to be said about those 10+min tracks. Sometimes you just need the time to live it, you want to stay there and not be found for a while… Like…what the heck happened to the extra 4min of Paranoid Android?!? (uh-oh, getting sidetracked – sorry). The main set closed with “Rockin’ in the Free World” when his band was joined by the entire crowd, the guys from Everest and Wilco, and it seemed like all of the audience. It just resonated so well with the times this country is going through… - truly galvanized everyone into a frenzy. Mr. Young went backstage for just a couple of mins and was back for the encore. “Sorry it went a little bit late, – he said at some point, - but that’s OK…”The Beatles’ “A Day in the Life” was a set-closer! Could it get any more unexpected? It was very different from the original though. Darker. And at the end, Mr. Young was ripping the strings out of his guitar, and as they were flying and hitting the metal generating this crazy wall of sound…. It was so profoundly awesome ... I caught a few frames of this grand finale too. The gig ended at 12:45AM.And the subway was appropriately packed. And my connecting line was out of service… At the surface, snow changed into pouring rain and I decided to take a cab half way and walk the rest to get drenched. Seemed like a thing to do.xoxo
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