On Saturday, I rectified two things I'd overlooked for some time. First, I did a show at a place owned by Kat and I for the first time in many months. Second, I paid overdue homage to one of my musical heroes. Not a bad way to spend an hour on a Saturday afternoon!
On November 12, 1945, a certain guy named Neil Young was born in Toronto, Canada. To commemorate the birthday of this amazing singer-songwriter who has been an enormous influence on my own songwriting style, I decided to perform a one-hour show of nothing but Neil's songs. That's right; not a single original, and not any tunes by anyone else. Just a solid hour of Neil. Trust me, the only difficulty there was narrowing down through the 40-50 songs of Mr. Young's that I'm comfortable playing at any given time.
As mentioned above, we hosted the show at my SL Neil Young Archives, a place I built to showcase Neil's music and life in SL. Hey, nobody else seemed to have done it in SL; why not me? The SLNYA was one of the earlier things I did in SL, back in early 2007 I believe, and many NY fans have dropped by over the years to enjoy the collection of albums and memorabilia. I was planning on doing shows there on a regular basis, but like many good plans, it fell to the side as I began focusing heavily on playing outside venues, doing my own original music.
However, on this special occasion of Neil turning 64, we invited the Neil Young Fans of SL and anyone else who could drop by, and had a really fun show. As I said, the hardest thing for me was choosing which songs to play; I love a great number of songs by Neil, and have tried to play most of them. Narrowing it down to the 11 or 12 that I can do in an hour was rough. So, I stuck with the crowd-pleasers; maybe on some other occasion, I'll do a whole show of super obscure NY tunes.
By the way: extra-special Zak Fan credit goes out to Horizon Darkstone, who not only came all the way from Australia to see the show ( ;) ), but did so on crutches, having fallen down a flight of stairs.
The NY B-Day Set List...
Heart of Gold (Neil Young)
Down By the River (Neil Young)
Old Man (Neil Young)
For the Turnstiles (Neil Young)
I Am a Child (Neil Young)
Comes a Time (Neil Young)
Powderfinger (Neil Young)
Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere (Neil Young)
Southern Man (Neil Young)
Alabama (Neil Young)
Cinnamon Girl (Neil Young)
Mr. Soul (Neil Young)
Happy Birthday Neil! Keep on rocking on the free world, or any other world you see fit! And also, thanks to the folks who came out to support the show!
claudia Amaterasu, Vanity Sugarplum, Shellie Sands, Horizon Darkstone, Vue Ling, Blindboy Gumbo, melzi Amat, Haroldthe Burrel, and my darling Kat Claxton!
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