Neil Young - 21 March 2013, Vector Arena, Auckland

For a year and a half I've been labeling every recording I make with Melbourne, with the intention that I would, at some stage, do some recording in other locations. That's finally happened, and I was lucky that its a show a few people will want to hear. The reason for that is the appearance of Surfer Joe and Moe the Sleaze, last played in 1990. Not exactly an overlooked gem, but exciting for hardcore fans nonetheless.

The last time I saw Neil Young was in Sydney in 2009. It was bad. International acts don't seem to realise that Australians and New Zealanders assume that if you give them seats its because you want them to sit. We're odd like that. But Neil was fairly incensed that people remained seated. This time round he made the sensible decision of having a standing floor and for whatever reason the performance (and his apparent enjoyment) was great. Of course there are always lots of people that claim to be hardcore fans, but are shocked that a show featuring Crazy Horse is loud and doesn't feature much off his more acoustic albums. For people who aren't idiots this was a great show. I was particularly excited to hear Dangerbird (and pleased that Neil is mixing up his setlists a bit, rather than playing the same thing every night).

The sound here is pretty good. At times the vocals are a bit distant, but that was the fault of the venue sound, rather than the recording (those who only want to hear Surfer Joe will be pleased to know it doesn't have this problem). I turned the input down really low, given how loud this was, but that added a bit of static during the acoustic portion. It isn't too bad though, and I suspect lots of people won't even notice.

Lastly, I know that some people have a strong preference for getting these things in WAV format. That requires a bit of extra effort on my part, and dramatically increases the total size of the files (I'll be using FLAC to reduce the size, but they're still big). In the past I've only ever put things up in MP3, but from now on I'm planning on putting up some shows in both formats. This will be the first of those shows.

Love and Only Love

Powderfinger
Born in Ontario

Walk Like a Giant

Hole in the Sky

Heart of Gold

Twisted Road

Singer Without a Song

Ramada Inn

Fuckin’ Up

Cinnamon Girl

Surfer Joe

Mr Soul

Hey Hey, My My (Into the Black)

Dangerbird

Sedan Delivery

Roll Another Number (For the Road)

MP3 Download

WAV Download