The 30-second Neil Young Concert Review

It was awesome, man! It was darn AWESUM!

OR - whatever that guy in the Free Press said.

On a more comprehensive level, here are some personal notes from the London,Ont. Neil Young concert of this past week.

... Well, I had to go into work that night for the midnight shift so I told Neal (that's him in the photo above sitting on the bumper of my Edsel,) when he came over for ping-pong shortly after getting into town, "Hey, I gotta work tonight, man - so can you try not to drag those guitar duels out toooooooo long for a change?"

"Sure, man," he replies. "How ya doin'?

"Hey, when's Steve and Mike getting here?" Me, Neal, Michael Todd from Speed City Records and Steve Plunkett go way back to when we all first met at a George Barris car show. And I've been listening to his music ever since. Of course, for the first month I thought he was Neil Diamond. As a result, I do a damn fine rendition of 'Cracklin' Rosie.'

Anyways, we do a bit of sparring and that repost/repast repartee stuff with the ping-pong ball waiting for Steve and Michael to show up. Sure enough, when Plunkett shows, it's in a 1948 Cadillac - so I says to him - "But Steve, baby - you already have a '48 Caddy!" And he says, "Yeah, but this one used to be owned by Hank Williams Junior. I thought the Neiler would like to take it for a spin."

Well, turns out Neal had to show up for something called a 'sound-check' about then so they went for a cruize to the Beer Arena downtown and while they were gone, Michael got here - and of course, he's got his banjo with him and one thing led to another and by the time the other two got back, the hamburgers I was barbequing were almost burned.

Well, tough shit I thought. Neal's always bragging about how he gets free Domino's Pizza before every show cause of some stipulation in his contract anyway so I knew the cat wasn't going to be dying of malnutrition before the night was over. Got to watch out for the brutha. Know what I sayin'?

So they get back half an hour later and bring back Neal's wife Margaret with them - and she proceeds to beat the shit out of all of us in ping-pong. Even Plunkett. And he's pretty good. Used to be on the ping-pong team when he went to college in Korea.

Everyone turned down the burgers so we filled up on potato-salad (it's pretty hard to screw that one up - although I've seen it done - I don't know why anyone would put pickles and eggs in a potato salad - it's supposed to be just potatoes and mayo, that's it,) and walked down to the show.

Neal had his usual 'pre-concert jitters' so he walks fast so he can get there early enough before the show so he can sit on the toilet for a while to supposedly 'compose my thoughts' and get his head together before he has to go on. But I think the guy just ate too much potato salad.

As for the show itself, it was pretty darn good. Even though Neal didn't play 'Cracklin' Rosie' - EVEN THOUGH I request it every damn time he invites us to see him play. Well, next time I'll know enough not to burn the damn hamburgers. Boy, talk about touchy.

Personal highlights? When Neal invited Mike Todd up to do the banjo-plunkin' on that song about the old man. 'I Am, I Said?' Something like that. ... and when I jumped up on-stage when the rest of the band was doing one of their impromptu 'jams' and I pulled out my harmonica.

But I'll say this for the man - he's the hardest working man in rock-and-roll. Played for two-and-a-half hours straight.

Of course part of that was because he added an extra five minutes to every song by showing off how much he loved his guitar and dragging every closing power-chord out to the point that I was almost late for work when he finally finished at 11:30. I was starting to think his encore of that Hendrix song would never end. The crowd seemed to like it tho.

Plunkett and Michael told me the next day that they all went over to the Brunswick after the show for brewski's and pickled eggs. Me? I had to go to work. Well, at least they were stimulating the economy.