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Niel Young Greek Theater Review:
July 23, 2003 01:31 PM
by Gabriel Sheffer
Neil Young (music)'s upcoming CD, "Greendale," is a concept album about the Green family, a fictional, down-home bunch that gets caught under the thumb of big business, a rabid media, and a frightening environment-destroying government.
Neil Young Greek Theater
After Cousin Jed kills a highway patrolman, Grandpa confronts news cameras on his porch while Daughter Sun goes on an eco-crusade against corporate giant Powerco. All this goes down in a small town called Greendale, really a fictional Anytown, USA.
Young and his band Crazy Horse are currently on tour previewing "Greendale" with what is essentially a Broadway show disguised as a rock concert, and on Tuesday (7/22), Young took his production to the Greek Theatre for the first of three shows in Los Angeles. The full-blown production comes complete with a sizable cast of actors and dancers lip-synching lyrics, and an elaborate stage that features three sets, including a raised mechanical stage, a house, and a jail cell.
This isn't the first time Young has tried bringing a high-concept performance to the stage; it also happened in 1979 with "Rust Never Sleeps." But "Greendale" is Young's most ambitious and complex production to date. Indeed, it's a production that sometimes gets bogged down in its own ambition.
Young and Crazy Horse played out the story's soundtrack with music that was epic, propulsive, and loose, while the characters onstage acted out each song in overdramatic fashion. Grandpa waved his cane with exaggerated disgust; protesters lunged into each other in animated undulations.
And surprisingly, the fans went for it all. Between songs, some actually shushed each other to hear Young's spoken narration. The music, too, was grand and dynamic. When Grandpa dies, Crazy Horse provides a steadfast groove behind Young's ragged, melancholy guitar lines. The show ends with a climactic finale that puts "Les Miserables" to shame.
Once "Greendale" concluded, Young and Crazy Horse took a brief break and returned to the stage to drop extended versions of classic crowd-pleasers. The six-song encore opened with "Hey, Hey, My, My," included "Cinnamon Girl" and "Why Do I Keep F'n Up?" and closed with "Keep On Rockin' in the Free World."
As "Rockin'" wound down in a blaze of drums, bass, and collapsing walls of guitar, Young, hunched over his six string, rattled off some distorted lines of "The Star Spangled Banner." It was a fitting end to a night that explored the virtues of modern day America, Neil Young and Crazy Horse-style.
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