Friday night a friend and I were trying to figure out how many times we'd seen Neil Young over the years and in how many different outfits. My first was 1974 when I saw Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young at The Cleveland Municipal Stadium. Since then I reckon it's been about 15 times.
I had plans of being in San Francisco over the weekend for Hardly Strictly Bluegrass. In fact, I'd have been on the red eye as I type right now. That didn't pan out though. The good news is that I'll be plenty rested for Neil Young and Crazy Horse tonight at the Wolstein Center. I'll need to be as I'll be up front, standing on the floor in general admission.
I'm slightly disheartened that the show hasn't sold out. Hell, Los Lobos, one of the great American bands of all time warms up. I suspect it'll get close to a sellout tonight. Everywhere I went this weekend the show was a topic of conversation. It convinced a number of friends to grab tickets.
My core group of friends are rabid Neil Young fans. As a reader of Radio Hannibal you know my passion for the guy. We play Neil Young as part of the warm-up to Browns games. Have for years. We call it the Neil factor, though it hasn't been much of a factor at all. 0 and 5, the worse start since 1999, the debut year of the new Browns. But I digress.
In Young's new autobigraphy he describes the feeling of playing with Crazy Horse as being a condor, feeling the wind in his feathers as he soars over an endless herd of buffalo. It's such a great passage from the book, at the end of chapter 18. I re-read it about five times.
Tonight I'm hoping to be up there, flying with Neil, the sonic sprawl of Crazy Horse lifting me from my mortal being. Yeah Neil, I can get pretty cosmic too. I want to walk like a giant with you.
