Neil Young 2003-11-21 Sydney Entertainment Centre Sydney, New South Wales Australia

From Waz From Oz Uncirculated Master DAT

NEIL YOUNG and CRAZY HORSE

Sydney Entertainment Centre
Sydney, New South Wales
Australia
21st November 2003

Greendale Set

01. Falling From Above
02. Double E
03. Devil's Sidewalk
04. Leave The Driving
05. Carmichael
06. Bandit
07. Grandpa's Interview
08. Bringin' Down Dinner
09. Sun Green
10. Be The Rain  

1st Encore  
11. Hey Hey, My My (Into The Black)
12. All Along The Watchtower
13. Sedan Delivery
14. Love And Only Love
15. Rockin' In The Free World  

2nd Encore  
16. Cinnamon Girl
17. Roll Another Number (For The Road)

(if burning to CD track splits are CD1 = t1-8 / CD2 = t9-18)

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2003 Greendale Tour of Australia with Crazy Horse & the Mountainettes

Neil Young - Vocals, Guitar, Pump Organ & Harmonica
Frank Sampedro - Guitar, Keyboards, Backing Vocals  
Billy Talbot – Bass Guitar,  Backing Vocals
Ralph Molina - Drums, Backing Vocals  
The Mountainettes Backing Vocals
Pegi Young / Nancy Hall / Susan Hall / Twink Brewer  

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Australian 2003 Greendale Tour

Brisbane, Entertainment Centre, 19th November
Sydney, Entertainment Centre, 21st November
Melbourne, The Sidney Myer Music Bowl 22nd November

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Floydee Clause

Please be aware that this recording has audience participation, you know people enjoying a live show.
So hopefully you’ll bypass this torrent, which means you won’t need to post as per usual negative comments. From PM’s I’ve received regarding your comments, one word comes up often, which sums you up.
I’m sure that you’ll continue to be that word, however I do worry about you going blind.  
But it does seem that you also may have an ear problem. You moaned about distortion on my Faces 1974 Copenhagen SBD torrent which stopped you from downloading it. At time of writing it’s been grabbed 735 times plus issued as a silver CD by the Japanese.
But you remain the only one to mention this distortion. Says a lot doesn’t it!

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The first time I can recollect hearing a Neil Young album was at my much older cousin’s home in London in February /March / April 1971. I’d gone back there to stay with my grandmother. He was hip (man) & thanks to him he turned me onto many artists I probably wouldn’t have heard otherwise.
That album was After The Goldrush.  I really liked it, so much that my cousin presented me with a copy of it when I left the UK. On my return to Australia I purchased from hard earned pocket money the two albums before that. The first Young LP I brought on its release was Harvest.
And continued to do so up till Old Ways, which means I brought the three previous turds, you know Re-Ac-tor, Trans, & Everybody’s Rocking, they IMHO contained very few likeable songs.
Luckily from Old Ways on, I had a friend who worked in the music biz who provided of Youngs new LP releases & later CD’s, the majority of which once I’d taped the handful of songs that appealed would find their way to 2nd hand shops.
Funny enough a few years back I came across those cassettes & CD-R compilations, playing them again reinforced that I did the right choice.
I did like albums such as Ragged Glory, Freedom but never found them to be consistent like the albums of old. But when I heard Greendale, I immediately liked it & played it often, I still can’t put my finger on exactly why it appealed, some tracks do remind me of songs on earlier albums so maybe that’s part of it.
The track that I liked the least was Bringing Down Dinner, followed by Bandit which turns out to be many folks’ favourite on the album, including Sydney music reviewers as both Sydney Greendale reviews posted below pick out that song.
I saw Neil twice on his 1985 The International Harvesters and Crazy Horse, the first & last Sydney shows, the latter had Bruce Springsteen joining him for the last encore Down By The River. Again, for one night in 1989 on The Lost Dogs tour. Both tours occurred during my non taping period, shame as I now wish I had.
When the Greendale tour was announced I knew that myself & recording gear would attend. When tickets went on sale my fellow Neil Young enthusiast Kym & myself lined up outside the venue early & were rewarded with tickets in Section B Row 8. Right in the middle.
On walking into the arena floor, we noticed Greendale booklets on every seat, which until I read it after the show, I’d mistakenly thought was Greendale lyrics, but it was the story & lifeline of Greendale plus some short reviews. Arriving at our seats I was quite taken by the futuristic look of Neil’s microphone stand.
The show started & as it progressed, I loved it, helped by the fact that the Greendale songs in a live setting came across as beefier than the studio versions.
I must agree with the two Sydney reviewers that at times the stage props / cast did make it look like somewhat like a high school Eisteddfod production, a high school that didn’t have a huge budget.
For the last of the two Greendale songs the cast of um er one score & more were whizzing & pasting & pootin through the day helping Neil burn his poots away!  
See what I did?
IMHO Greendale worked well in concert.
audiowhore saw & taped the Greendale Brisbane show, he tells me the venue was only a quarter full, several hundred people walked out during the Greendale section & so missed the Crazy Horse set altogether, seems it was promoted more as a Neil plays the oldies show.
Sydney was the opposite, the venue was rather full, I saw no walkouts, it seemed to have gone over well with the Sydney audience, although there was a bit of confusion after Greendale finished as people didn’t know if that was it or we were going to get a song or two more.
Neil must have appreciated the Sydney Greendale audience as we were treated to 7 songs in the Crazy Horse segment whereas Brisbane & Melbourne only received 6.  On Neil’s next Australian tour in 2009 this was reversed as Neil wasn’t too pleased with the Sydney reception & so we were gifted with the shortest show of the tour!  
The Crazy Horse segment was perfect, I even got my wish for Cinnamon Girl.
The only downside of the show for me were audience members.
Firstly, the late comer cretins arriving in our row during Bandit, the braindead clowns decided to take the longer route to get to their seats instead of sensibly coming in the opposite side as there were less people, they had to shuffle past.
audiowhore has muted their inane mutterings as they felt they needed to say something to every person they passed.
Secondly & the biggest problem was the sheila’s sitting directly in from of Kym & myself. The one in front of Kym had long hair down to her date / ring piece / asshole, instead of putting her Rapunzel like tresses between her back & the
inside of her chair, no she draped it over the chair, so during Greendale when she rocked out Kym & me were whipped by her Mr Ed like tail. I had to untangle some of her locks a few times from the mic, the lead plus a few times from our north & souths.  
We didn’t want to ask her to stop as we didn’t want our voices to be on the tape nor her replies, so instead we’d tap her lightly on the shoulder & on the odd occasions when she would bother to turn around to look at us we’d mimic her hair whipping us like galley slaves.
All to no avail, she’d turn around with a foul look on her face as if we’d asked her to provide us with some Harvey Weinstein type suggestions!
Hey Hey, My My must have been her fave Neil song because as the feedback that starts that song started she went ballistic swinging her head side to side, whipping us so Kym gave her an aggressive poke on the shoulder.
She turned around & bleated “You know what, If you touch me again, I don’t know what your problem is, don’t touch me”.
Kym flipped her off & with my free hand flicked some of her hair back in her face.
It must have finally sunk in her thick skull as she pulled her hair in front of her & didn’t bother us again, but as my mic was just behind her & her mate’s noggins you can hear them natter every now & again.
To sum up this was a great performance by Neil.

These days I’ll listen to the listen to Neil’s latest releases via Spotify to see if I like it enough to buy it, whereas with his Performance series 9 times out 10 I’ll buy it sound unheard.
Which reminds me Neil please release a full 1973 Time Fades Away show instead of a mutilated one!
My next & last Neil offering at some stage will be Sydney 24th January 2009.

As always thanks to audiowhore.

Enjoy,
Waz From Oz

 
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Sydney Morning Herald

BOLD rock theatre dares to succeed.
Neil Young
Sydney Entertainment Centre,  
21st November 2003
By Bernard Zuel

You either go with him or you leave; there’s no middle ground with Neil Young.
It doesn’t mean he’s always right. Lord knows some of his decisions have been bad calls or miscalculations – even if sometimes it was not a failure of craft but a failure to communicate why he was doing it this way. But it does mean that what you get on record or in  concert is mediated not by your demands / expectations but by where Youngs restless imagination has landed that year.  
This year it’s a concert album and home-made movie called Greendale, a bizarre enough idea in an age when political parties run from ideas and pop shows make a virtue of their shallowness. But it’s made more outrageous by Young’s decision to perform the album as theatre.
While Young and Crazy Horse perform the Greendale songs in sequence, around and behind them actors, singers and some roped in nobodies from each city on the tour act out, lip-sync or dance. The acting is gestural and broad and, combined with props such as cardboard cars, film footage and crudely drawn animation, there is a distinct rock eisteddfod feel.
And all this with songs that are light on melodies and within a narrow framework of bluesy rock that doesn’t have the beauty rock chat that doesn’t have the beauty of his prettiest folk songs not the ragged assault of his rockiest Crazy Horse moments. It shouldn’t work. And some of it nearly doesn’t. But by the time Young closes the first part of the evening with the final exhortation of Greendale – “Be the Rain”  it becomes clear that he has pulled it off.
He’s made you party to this story, this ramble through a fictional everyman American town and the central three – generational family, the Green’s.
The secret’s out that he’s made the songs live – much more than they do on the album. Linked by his explanatory documentary  - maker style “ narration” and some visual cues to its philosophical core (for example, a billboard purportedly  from the conservative media conglomerate  Clear Channel asking “Support Our War “  that blocks out the “Welcome To Greendale” sign the story becomes tangible.
More than that, though it becomes involving, emotional. Sure the solo acoustic song Bandit is a riveting moment of pure Young, tinged with lost dreams and the highlight of the Greendale set. But either side of the song Carmichael builds on itself  masterfully while circling death and anger and Grandpa’s Interview turns repressed frustration into a sort of viciousness while never letting go of the sadness.
Mind you, for all the satisfaction of seeing Greendale work when it could easily bomb, it is the second leg of the night of the night that really rouses the audience. Here after a short break, Young and Crazy Horse return form a straight ahead drive through some of their back catalogue, along the way finally animating bassist Billy Talbot, guitarist Pancho Sampredro (who has played keyboards throughout the Greendale set) and drummer Ralph Molina.
Over the next hour this still- fiery rock band play only five songs, beginning with Hey, Hey, My My so bursting at the seams that it almost loses control in the piledriving outro. But it’s a visceral hour, lacerated by Young’s expressive control of noise, soothed by his ability to coax tenderness out of that noise and climaxing with a defiant and energised Rockin’ In The Free World.
Undoubtedly no one in the room would have objected if the band had played Cortez The Killer or Like A Hurricane.
He knew how easy it would be to satisfy us. But, well he’s Neil Young.

 
Drum Media  

Neil Young
Sydney Entertainment Centre,  
21st November 2003
By Les White

Mr Americana, the Godfather Of Grunge such are the sobriquets that Neil Young has enjoyed. Here is an artist who hasn’t so must rested on his laurels as wilfully flushed them down the s bend on a regular basis.
And so to Young’s latest album Greendale, more soap opera than rock opera which, performed in its entirety forms the bedrock of tonight’s show.  
Young and band (the plodding powerhouse that is Crazy Horse) amble onto a stage that lights up to at various times to reveal  a front porch, jail cell and pop up car – peopled by a cast of 20 or so dancers that make up the protagonists in this tale of America under onslaught.
There’s laid back Grandpa, Carmichael the policeman, Sun Green the activist daughter, and other members of the extended Green family. It’s a loosely woven  tale of small-town values , media intrusion, murder and eco vigilantes.
There’s a lot to admire in Young’s latest work though it must be said in seeing the show on stage there’s that nagging sense that someone accidently booked the rock Eisteddfod and Neil Young on the same night and pretty much left them to it -  dancers and actors swanning broadly about the stage while Young and band impassively (although passionately) play on.
Greendale is best appreciated as one elongated song cycle. Many of the tunes (such as they are) pivot on the same mid-tempo rhythmic plod  and the  obvious highlight for many is when Young abandons the band for acoustic guitar to perform “Bandit”, a simple elegiac tune where Young’s upper-register, plaintive voice is given full cry: his guitars bottom e-string flapping wildly to resonant effect.
Greendale is a brave if flawed  concept, and courtesy of Youngs presence and passion, a strangely captivating one. The man himself utters little save for the between the dryly delivered between-song  narration.
A short break and Young and Crazy Horse return to the stage to perform more familiar tunes.
Young and the band (now with) guitarist Frank Sampredro having strapped on an electric guitar having till now provided keyboard noodles hunker down for majority engorged rifferama  in the guise of Hey Hey, My My waves of warm simmering electricity washing over is all.
Watching Young squeezing thick ‘ n’ oily single notes from his Gibson guitar
Is to see a performer undeniably savouring the moment that the effect is mesmerising beyond description. Other Crazy Horse standards follow heroic and anthemic all, including the timely “Keep Rocking In The Free World”.  
Raw genius all.

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