Gold Rush at The Half Moon (19 Oct 25)

I was always going to see Gold Rush on their latest return to The Half Moon Putney and this time I made something of an afternoon of it by tackling some location-based challenges in two phone Apps.

I collect Gold Gyms in PokemonGo (I have 750) and this means making repeated visits to specific locations to battle the gyms there, gaining more points each time until you read Gold level. I had a few targets in Putney and Wandsworth that I wanted to revisit, two of them in particular. Over the afternoon I got points at seven gyms and went Gold at two!

The other target was walking new (unwalked) streets for my CityStrides LifeMap. I had already walked most of Putney but there were plenty of gaps heading towards and into Wandsworth. It is a non trivial task to walk out the best route to cover new streets, I had to walk down and back a few dead-ends, but in the end I was pleased to tick-off 19 streets. This raised my total for LB Wandsworth to 975 streets which is just a midge shy of 60%.

I had to look after myself too and that started very well with an All Day Vegetarian Breakfast at Sweet Tooth in Putney, continued reasonably with a coffee in Black Sheep Coffee Wandsworth and finished correctly with another coffee and a cake at Nlack Sheep Coffee Putney.

I had not forgotten the main purpose of my trip and I duly arrived at Half Moon Putney around 6:30pm, in good time for a rest and a pint before the music started.

I do not have a lot to say about the Gold Rush concert that I have not said several times before, so I will mention Tom's guitars instead!

Tom have half a dozen or so guitars on stage and he surprised us on one song with a bright yellow one. He explained that he had been doing something else during the day (he is a co-founder of charity Electric Umbrella) and a helper had put the wrong guitar in the wrong bag.

He also had issues with his black guitar, pictured above, and had to swap it for a less iconic one for the last few songs.

Every Gold Rush concert is different, just as every Neil Young concert is, and my mood is different each time too, so different songs strike me harder each time. On this occasion my stand-out performances were Down by the River, Cortez the Killer (loved the keyboard intro) and Cowgirl in the Sand.

The night ended something over two hours after it started with some good news, Gold Rush had booked to play the The Half Moon four times next year. I will be there.

Neil Young at Hyde Park (11 Jul 25)

I try and see Neil Young whenever he plays in the UK, the last time being with Bob Dylan in Hyde Park in 2029. I was keen to end the long wait, mainly caused by Covid, I booked to see him at Hype Park again.

I was quite interested in seeing Van Morrison and reasonably interested in Yusuf/Cat Stevens and happily paid what, with all the add-ons, eventually came to £128.75.

It was one of the hottest days of the year so rather than go when the event started at 2pm I left it until 4pm which still left plenty of time to get the lay of the land and refill my water bottle before Van Morrison came on.

This safe approach did mean that I had no chance of getting a great place to see the acts but with BST allocating the first 50m or so as VIP space that was not going to happen anyway. This approach to grabbing as much money as possible off fans is very annoying - at a previous Neil Young event in Hyde Park I was able to move in and get quite close to the stage, about five rows back.

BST had not done a lot for the extreme heat, there was very little shade and there were very long queues and the two water supply points. I saw two people collapse within 5m of me and was not surprised, standing for several hours in the sun and heat hurts, even with plenty of water and a good hat.

To be honest, almost everything about the logistics of the event was bad.

Luckily the music made up for it. That said, it was close and next time I might agree to be exploited further and get a VIP ticket.

I have several Van Morrison albums, mostly from the late 70s (Hard Nose the Highway, Veedon Fleece, A Period of Transition, Wavelength and Into the Music), but I did not expect to know many of the songs, my hope was that they would be dancy, which they were. 

He was supported by several musicians including a significant brass section and between them they made a great sound. The songs were catchy is not familiar and the hour-long set was a lot of fun. He ended magnificently with Gloria, a song he wrote in 1964 when a member of Them. That might be sixty years ago but every seemed to know and love it.

Yusuf/Cat Stevens was more of a mystery to me and I only really knew a few hit singles. He played acoustic guitar in a folky style which while not particularly exciting it was perfectly fine. Not surprisingly it was the songs that I knew, like Moonshadow, that I liked the best and what was a surprise to me was that one of his songs is First Cut is the Deepest, better known for other versions.

He got political at one point mentioning the thirtieth anniversary of the Srebrenica massacre before playing a song that he wrote about it which he also dedicated to the children killed in Gaza; his shout of "Free Palestine" was received with a loud cheer.

Just before 8:30pm Neil Young and the Chrome Hearts came on stage.

This time I had a very good idea of what to expect both in terms of the songs and the way that the band would sound like. 

Of course there were some new songs, which sounded like old songs so that was okay, and while the Chrome Hearts are not Crazy Horse they played in much the same way letting Neil do his own thing and supporting him appropriately as he went in and out of extended solos.

Neil and the band played for just over two hours before the set cam to an abrupt end when the plug was pulled at 10:30pm when they were doing one of several false endings to Rocking in the Free World, always a great song to end a set with.

Along the way we had numerous classic songs like Southern Man, Harvest Moon, Cowgirl in the Sand and My My Hey Hey but even with two hours to play with there was no space for Hurricane, Cortez or Powderfinger. The Neil Young back catalogue is such an embarrassment of riches that even these were not really missed.

It was an absolutely fabulous couple of hours which even standing for hours in great heat could do little to diminish.

Gold Rush at The Half Moon (18 May 25)

Gold Rush, formerly Honeyslides, have the happy habit of playing The Half Moon in Putney every six months so I have the equally habit of going to see them when they do. It is easy to say it is because they play Neil Young songs (the rather obvious clue is in the name!) but it is more than that, they play an excellent selection of songs that covers more than just the greatest hits and they play them very well with joy and enthusiasm.

Every night is a little different and this time there were a few rows of seats at the front and thanks to my usual good queue management I was able to grab one in the middle of the front row.

Except for a couple of minor glitches, the sound mix and volume were superb. It is hard to compare when the gigs are six months apart but I think this was the best sound set up they have had. 

The set had a few differences, as it usually does, This time the new songs included Sedan Delivery which meant no space for songs like Powderfinger. and Sugar Mountain.

My highlights this time included Words, Cortez the Killer and Southern Man. Of course Like a Hurricane and Cinnamon Girl were blistering too.

It really was an exceptional evening and one I hope to repeat later this year.

My only regret is that the one decent photo I took that evening (of three) had just Tom Billington in it and while he is the main man they are a band and they all played a significant part in the success of the evening. 

Neil Young Coastal

The only question on the Neil Young Coastal film was where to see it and I opted for the comfort of Olympic Cinema in Barnes where my comfy seat cost me a reasonable £18.5. 

The film was taken on the road during his 2023 solo tour and featured some travel time in his electric bus, some backstage scenes and a decent amount of concert footage. It was all filmed by Neil's wife, Daryl Hannah , and in monochrome. It very much had a home video feel to it and there is nothing wrong with that, in particular the conversations Neil had with his driver were clearly genuine and while they were rarely deep they were also interesting.

The concert footage, which is what I think most people went to see the film for, was interesting for several reasons; there were none of the "greatest hits", a phrase Neil himself used and instead it was mostly new songs, i.e. ones I did not recognise. One song I did recognise was Vampire Blues, from On The Beach (1974), which I had never head Neil play live before.

I am not sure how deliberate it was but over the relatively few songs played Neil used a lot of different instruments and he told us stories about a couple of them, indeed he seemed quite chatty on stage.

Being a documentary of a solo artist playing unknown songs it was all rather low-key. Luckily that artist was Neil Young and he was playing typical Neil Young songs so everything was good. I bought a ticket for his Hyde Park show the next day.

Gold Rush at The Half Moon (6 Oct 24)

Once upon a time Goldrush were called The Honeyslides and I saw them whenever they played at The Half Moon in Putney (which was every six months or so) and I have been carrying on that tradition under their new name. The only difference over the years of seeing them is that they had a new dummer this night and the occasional female backing singer has not been at any of the recent concerts.

There have been other small changes, Luke (on the left) now plays piano too, some of the songs have changed and the music technology has had several upgrades but their concerts essential remain Neil Young and Crazy Horse playing Live Rust, and that is all I could ever ask for.

Harvest Time

Harvest is, I believe still Neil Young's biggest selling album having been first released in early 1972. I got into Neil Young a few years later, with 1979's Rust Never Sleeps and while I then bought everything I generally prefer the rockier albums, particularly those with Crazy Horse, to the more country ones (Old Ways is an exception because it had Misfits on it) so Harvest has never made my best-of list.

Of course a not the vest best Neil Young album is still a pretty good thing, it does have Words on it after all, so I was obviously going to see a film made during the recording of the album, a mere fifty years after the event.

The film had a limited release so I went to a showing a Kingston Odeon and willingly paid £15 for.

The film was delightfully casual with nothing (overtly) staged for the camera and it was like being alongside the musicians as they rehearsed and relaxed.

And because these were proper recording sessions the quality of the music was excellent even if the video was commensurate with the handheld cameras of the time.

The music carried the film and there were long sessions with Alabama, Words (hooray! and A Man Needs a Maid, the later being recorded with LSO in, of all places, Barking Town Hall.

I especially enjoyed the many close-ups of the musicians playing and seeing they ease with which they did so as a group.

It was a nice bonus to see Crosby, Stills and Nash recording backing vocals and a bit of a shame that we did not also get to see James Taylor or Linda Ronstadt who were mentioned in the contemporary introduction to the film that Neil recorded. 

There were some lovely little snippets in the non-music sessions too, such as Neil confessing to being a "rich hippie", saying that he had never heard of Pink Floyd (this was just before Dark Side) and comparing the approach to the final Beatles and Buffalo Springfield albums.

As with the Sparks documentary, The Sparks Brothers (now on Netflix), there was so much more that I wanted to see, things like the composition process and the reasons for working with LSO, but there is a limit to what you can include in a film running to just over two hours and in choosing to focus on the music Harvest Time got the balance right.

The Honeyslides (abridged) at The Half Moon (20 Jun 21)

It is a slow start moving somewhere back towards "normal" and The Honeyslides at The Half Moon was my first foray back into gigs. The Honeyslides have been a must-see band for me for a while 

Covid restrictions meant the venue was all seating and I was quick to book a table for four and to confirm that I wanted the one just to the left of the centre of the stage where I usually manage to sit thanks to careful planing and long queueing.

The timing of the concert meant that it made sense to eat at the pub beforehand which I had not done before. The vegetarian mock-chicken burger with katsu curry sauce did the job nicely as did the pint of Young's Ordinary (apparently it is called Original now but everybody who knows beer ignores that).

Covid had an impact on Honeyslides too and the previous four piece band plus backing singer was abridged to just Tom Billington, who plays Neil Young, and Luke (surname not found on Google), who plays everyone else.

Covid had also given time for Luke to hone his piano playing and the keyboard was a new feature for Honeyslides. 

With the reduced line-up it was no surprise that the set focussed on Neil Young's acoustic songs, of which there are a great many. Many, like Needle and the Damage Done and Sugar Mountain, were already established in the Honeyslides set and these were joined by songs like Thrasher (from Rust Never Sleeps) which I was particularly pleased to hear.

They also managed to play all of After The Gold Rush along the way, complete with a short break to allow the record to be turned over.

Being acoustic did not mean that they could not rock and we had powerful versions of Like a Hurricane, Powderfinger, Cowgirl in the Sand and Rocking in the Free World.

The Honeyslides are all about the quality of the songs and the quality of their delivery; the quantity was an impressive bonus with the set running for well over two hours.

Covid restrictions brought many changes to the venue, band and setlist but this was still a Honeyslides gig and an excellent one at that.

The Honeyslides at The Half Moon (18 Feb 18)

The Honeyslides have officially become a tradition on my fourth time of seeing them at The Half Moon in Putney since April 16. Now, as with Kew Gardens, the blog posts have the date in the title to differentiate the similar entries.

Things went much the same as usual this time, a 85 bus from Kingston at 6:45pm got us to The Half Moon just before 7:30pm. The doors were due to open at 8pm and there were already three people in the queue. We grabbed a couple of pints of Ordinary and joined them.

The wait was uneventful and we passed some of the time attempting the pub quiz questions. The biggest excitement came when a heavily laden and slightly flustered bass player turned up at 8pm. He obviously did not need to be part of the sound check!

The doors opened more of less on time. As previously one of the two central tables was reserved and the group in front of us claimed the other so we took the one on the left of the stage, as we had done in September.

The Honeyslides started just after 8:30am with just Tom Billington on stage doing an acoustic set. As expected this was very much a greatest hits selection and the mood of the evening was very much Live Rust, which is still the best introduction to Neil Young's music. That meant that it was not too long before we had the full band on stage and the acoustic guitar was swapped for a black electric one.

I did not attempt a set list this time, nor did I take any notes, as I wanted to concentrate on the music and I was not expecting surprises. While there were no surprises there were some changes. The most obvious omission (to me) was Words which was balanced, I think, by a couple of new songs including Farmer John. Some of the absolute classics seemed to be longer and even more energetic before, particularly Cinnamon Girl. There were some sequence changes too with Like A Hurricane and Cortez The Killer both coming almost at the end just as I was starting to worry that we might not hear them.

As before there was a pretty hard curfew at 11pm and if you do the maths that was almost two and a half hours of uninterrupted Neil Young music played with a lot of skill and even more passion. That's why seeing The Honeyslides at The Half Moon has become a tradition.

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.

Another brilliant evening with The Honeyslides at The Half Moon

It was almost a year since I last (and first) saw The Honeyslides at The Half Moon in Putney and it was an easy decision to see them play there again when they finally returned. A lot of the details were the same as my previous visit and perhaps the most significant difference was that I dug out a check shirt for the occasion, as did several other people. No jeans though as I do not own any.

Again I was too busy enjoying the music to do anything other than note a few words, words that will mean a lot to any Neil Young fan; Cinnamon, Pocahontas, Words, Alabama, River. Cowgirl, Ohio, Cortez, Hurricane, Southern. To which I would add the word Brilliant.

The Honeyslides played for the best part of two and a half hours until the 11pm curfew meant we all had to leave and find another pub to drink in (Willoughby was still open, of course). It was a stupendous two and a half hours and while I occasionally wanted some of the songs to last a little longer that would have meant playing fewer of them and I think that they got the balance right.

The Honeyslides were somewhere between sitting at home alone listening to Live Rust on headphones and being in the front row of a concert with Neil Young and Crazy Horse, and that was a might fine place to be.

Update: 18 hours later and I'm still singing Cinnamon Girl to myself, and sometimes to the rest of the office too.

Wallowing in the music of Neil Young with The Honeyslides at The Half Moon

I have seen many covers bands in the last few years, mostly at the Fox and Duck, and while they do the occasional Neil Young song it is not that often and it is almost always Rockin' in the Free World. So when an opportunity arose to see a Neil Young covers band I jumped at the chance even though it meant paying £8 (the Fox and Duck is free), travelling to Putney and missing the Sunday night pub quiz.

The band in question were the Honeyslides who get their name from a mysterious concoction known as a 'honey slide' that was heavily consumed during the On The Beach sessions. A somewhat obscure connection, I will admit, but they made up for it by putting Neil Young on their poster and going for a Harvest album cover look.

The doors were due to open at 8pm so Pete and I arranged to meet at 7pm and let the 85 bus take us steadily from Kingston to Putney. We arrived in good time and that allowed us to look in the windows of a books and a comics shop as we passed. It also allowed us to grab our first beers before going in.

I dug out my t-shirt from the NYAS London Convention in 2005, celebrating Neil's sixtieth birthday, and there were a few other NY t-shirts in the bar and quite a few people who looked like NY fans either because of their lumberjack style checked shirts or their general age and appearance.

There were a few very keen people standing near the door waiting for them to open and we were among them and so were able to claim a good spot. I was expecting it to be standing at the front but the room was arranged with tables and chairs at the front so we claimed a couple of seats at the table in the centre. Speaking to a couple sharing the table with us it appears that this arrangement is not unusual and I must admit that it was nice to have somewhere to put my beer, which encouraged me to have more beers than I might otherwise have done.

The Honeyslides took the stage soon after 8:30pm in a formation akin to Neil Young and Crazy Horse, a good sign. In addition to the four band members shown below there was a female vocalist who provided backing vocals on most songs.

I was not interested in compiling a full set list, just making a note on my phone of the songs that made be happy the most, and it became quite a long list. Normally in Neil Young circles, and elsewhere, songs are known by their initials, e.g. Rockin' in the Free World is RITFW, but I preferred to use key words and my list was; Cinnamon, Hurricane, Words, Alabama, River, Helpless, Heart, Sugar, Powder, Cowgirl, Cortez, Ohio, Southern,  Tonight, Rockin'. Remember, these were just my favourite tracks and there were fifteen of them!

As expected with Neil Young there was a mix of the rock and the folk with a run of four acoustic numbers (Helpless, Heart, Sugar, Powder) in the middle. The songs were not as long as NY has been known to play them but I timed Like a Hurricane at around ten minutes and some of the other songs, e.g. Cortex the Killer, were string out to a similar length with the extended guitar solos over the sympathetic rhythms of the rest of the band.

I was absolutely delighted with both the choice of songs and the way that they were played. My feet were tapping, my head was shaking and my lips followed the words. I was in rapture. It was that good.

The Honeyslides played for the best part of two and a half hours and were only stopped by the pub's curfew, they had more songs to play and they looked to have the energy and enthusiasm to play them.  I managed to get a few words with main-man Tom Billington afterwards and he was still energetic and enthusiastic as I explained how much I had enjoyed the performance.

There was so much to love in the music and, for reasons that I do not understand or particularly care about, it was Words (Between the Lines of Age) that rattled around my head for the next few days. A fitting tribute to a great evening.

Neil Young and Crazy Horse live in bed

Life does not get much better that this.

It had been a good Saturday evening watching a local band in a local pub then going to another local pub for a nightcap before settling in to bed around 2am.

Going to bed these days means a quick look at my new iPad (what are they going to call it when the next one comes out?) to check on my Words with Friends games and to check on the state of the world as reported on Twitter.

That was when I learnt from ThrashersWheat that a Neil Young and Crazy Horse concert was about to be streamed live from Austin, Texas. I followed the link and snuggled down in bed to watch the show.

I knew that it would be good but it was much better than that.

My previous experience of webcasts had been experimental and exciting for a technological perspective but somewhat lacking in terms of the quality of the music and video. This was completely different.

The technology has improved several fold since then. I now have BT Infinity broadband that delivers up to around 36Mbps (it varies by device) and an iPad with a retina screen to watch the bits on. The overall result was high definition picture and sound with not a hint of a skip or a pause.

With the technology working well that left me free to concentrate on the music. And that's how it should be, technology is at its best when it's invisible.

Neil Young playing live with Crazy Horse, what more is there to say? You know that means extended songs with Neil doing whatever he wants and the band following along as if it had all be rehearsed down to the last detail when you know that's not true. The first song lasted around 15 minutes, maybe more.

The concert offered up some of the expected classics (there are so many to choose from) including the most-played Powderfinger. It was also my first chance to hear some of the new songs and they sounded excellent, i.e. very much in the same vein as other Neil Young songs written with Crazy Horse in mind.

My only regret was the late hour and my lack of stamina. I watched for about an hour before the lack of sleep caught up with me and I drifted off very happy.

Neil Young at Hyde Park

The day after headlining at Glastonbury, Neil Young topped the bill at Hard Rock Calling in Hyde Park. There were quite a few other acts on the bill but I was there just to see Neil.

Unfortunately to get anywhere near the front for Neil I had to stand through Fleet Foxes which was probably the most boring concert I have ever seen.

But all that was quickly forgotten when Neil powered and growled his way in to My My Hey Hey. Intentions were announced, the crowd were engaged and the singing along started.

The show was a fairly typical trawl through Neil's extensive back catalogue with a spotlight on Everybody Knows this is Nowhere (1969) and Ragged Glory (1990) which each provided three songs. We also had the expected foray into his acoustic collection, such as Old Man and The Needle and the Damage Done.

This was all very good stuff indeed but the last part of the show was just sensational. We were treated to an elongated version of Down by The River that bounced and cavorted has only a long Neil Young jam can. This led in to Rocking in the Free World (with lots more crowd singing) that screamed its defiant message across Hyde Park to the accompaniment of belligerent lights.

That would have done but an encore was expected and duly arrived. Arriving with it unexpectedly was Paul McCartney who supported on vocals Neil in A Day in The Life.

Neil Young albums are usually a little patchy with a song or two that feels a little below the standard of the rest but live Neil is always good and always worth seeing, even if you do have to sit through the Fleet Foxes first.