More Neil Young wonderfulness from The Honeyslides at The Half Moon

My excuse for seeing The Honeyslides used to be that it was a rare opportunity to hear some Neil Young songs played live and while that is still true I can now add that I wanted to see The Honeyslides.

This was my third time seeing them and after the first two I was very keen to see them again. So much so that I was happy to make the epic journey to Putney (two buses) and pay £10 for the privilege when I have plenty of opportunities to see covers bands for free within walking distance.

The 8pm start meant a 7pm bus which then left time for a first pint of Wimbledon Somethingorother before the doors opened at 8:15. I had two more later.

The waiting was enlivened by the chaos of the pub quiz in which the golden rule of writing your own questions was broken leading to much confusion and some comedy.

The timely arrival and some astute defending of my position got me into the music room first. My plan was to take a seat just to right of centre of the stage, as I had been left of centre last time, but the two table on the right were reserved for family members so it was the one just left of centre again.

I was not clock watching but I think that it was around  8:45pm that they started playing and they played non-stop until just after 11pm in a blistering set that went electric, acoustic and then electric again. It was a typical, for them and for Neil Young, mix of greatest hits and some surprises.

As last time I just noted one word from each song for the set list to save time writing and this is what I wrote: tonight, palomino, winds, cinnamon, hurricane, winter, river, alabama, revolution, words, highway, gold, moon, comes, old, rose, sugar, loner, thrasher, needle, castles, powder, cry, walk, cowgirl, dance, ohio, tonight (reprise), southern, rocking. This time my standout track was thrasher for several reasons.

There were a few technical snafus, a bit of technology broke and so did a guitar string, but the band kept playing until things were sorted and everything was fine. Better than fine actually.

It was another excellent evening thanks to Neil Young for writing the songs and The Honeyslides for playing them so well and for corralling them together into a great set.