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Archive for the ‘Neil Young and Crazy Horse’ Category

Neil Young & Crazy Horse (Freedom Mortgage Pavilion, Camden, NJ, May 12, 2024)

Posted in Camden, NJ, Freedom Mortgage Pavilion, Neil Young, Neil Young and Crazy Horse on May 13, 2024| Leave a Comment »

[ATTENDED: May 12, 2024] Neil Young & Crazy Horse

My wife and I are both big fans of Neil Young.  Although we tend to prefer different eras, we enjoy most of his catalog pretty equally.

We had seen him play solo ten years ago.  We saw him play Promise of the Real nine years ago.  If we ever got to see hi again, I never would have guessed it would be with Crazy Horse.  I would have loved to get close up seats for this show, but JFC, the pit and front row seats were like $600 a piece.  I actually assumed we were priced out, but I knew how much we both wanted to see him (I mean, Neil is 78 how many more tours is he going to do?).  So I bought two not-outrageously priced seats in the 200 second (front row).

The band wasn’t exactly Crazy Horse.  Nils Lofgren is playing with Bruce Springsteen (booo).  But he was replaced by Micah Nelson (who I have seen as Particle Kid).  Truth be told, I couldn’t tell a difference.  They were far enough away and the spotlights blurred everything anyway.  But he sounded great, as did everyone else.

In classic Crazy Horse style, the three guys up front stood about a foot away from each other.  So despite the size of the stage (and the massive Marshall stack backdrops), they were all within whispering distance of each other.  Which I assume was Neil’s way of letting everyone know what was happening next.  (more…)

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Reverend Billy & the Stop Shopping Choir (Freedom Mortgage Pavilion, Camden, NJ, May 12, 2024) [NEIL YOUNG & CRAZY HORSE]

Posted in Camden, NJ, Freedom Mortgage Pavilion, Neil Young, Neil Young and Crazy Horse, Reverend Billy & the Stop Shopping Choir on May 12, 2024| Leave a Comment »

[ATTENDED: May 12, 2024] Reverend Bill & the Stop Shopping Choir

I didn’t know there was going to be an opening act for this show until a few days before the event.  I was glad that there would be one because Freedom Mortgage Pavilion is a pain in the ass to get into on time.

When we saw Pearl Jam, we missed the opening act entirely because of the poor infrastructure there.

It was even better that the opening act was a band I’d never heard of and didn’t care about.

So who are this Choir?  Wikipedia says

Reverend Billy and the Church of Stop Shopping is a radical performance community based in New York City. The Stop Shopping Choir is accompanied by a comic preacher, Reverend Billy, portrayed by performer William (Billy) Talen. The philosophy of the Church of Stop Shopping surrounds the imminent “Shopocalypse”, which assumes the end of humanity will come about through manic consumerism.

The Stop Shopping Choir accompanies Reverend Billy and stages guerrilla theater style actions, singing on the property of the Disney stores, Monsanto facilities, and Trump Tower, among others. They are often considered part of the Culture jamming movement.

The group uses the content from their direct actions to create songs that are performed on concert stages and in cabarets. The director of these shows is church co-founder Savitri D.

The character of Reverend Billy was developed in the early 1990s by actor and playwright, William Talen. His family was Dutch Calvinist.  The Reverend Billy character isn’t so much a parody of a preacher, as a preacher motif used to blur the lines between performance and religious experience. “It’s definitely a church service,” Talen explained to Alternet, but, he added, it’s “a political rally, it’s theater, it’s all three, it’s none of them.

(more…)

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