Neil Young in Melbourne

I made the trip to Melbourne to see Neil Young in concert on Wednesday night. A few observations...

Neil Young still rocks

I was worried - I'd read a comment on a website from somebody who said he'd seen Young in concert a couple of years ago and said he was awful, especially his voice. I needn't have worried - Young sounded great. His voice sounded fine - just like you hear on all of his songs going back 40-plus years now. His guitar playing was as great as you could expect. He and his band played for two solid hours, and were very good.

Some complaints - I only knew about half of the songs he played. Some of the stuff, new and old, he played I just wasn't familiar with, although they all sounded good. And after great versions of "Spirit Road" and "Cinnamon Girl" - the highlight of the show - followed a long set of Young's more countrified stuff, including a couple of songs off of Harvest.

But then he finished with a fiery "Keep On Rockin' in the Free World."

When he came out for the encore and started the song and singing, I was disoriented. I knew the song - but this wasn't a Neil Young song. A split second later I realized it was the BEATLES' classic "A Day in the Life." And wow, Neil Young totally owned it. I was wondering as the song built up, how he and his band would handle the "wall of sound" parts of the song. The Beatles never had to worry about that - they had quit playing live shows by the time they released this song on Sargent Pepper's. Young and band just thrashed the guitars, drums, bass, and keyboards to build it up.

Despite muffing a couple of words (the bit about "found my way upstairs and had a smoke, somebody spoke and I went into a dream"), it was great. And the the final wall of sound to end the song was a loud, long, messy, glorious bit of rock-and-roll over the top performance. By the end, Young's guitar strings were breaking and he was using them to flail at the other strings. It was quite a performance.

This was one of the two most surprising encores I've heard. The other? Wilco doing "Don't Fear the Reaper."

But I was still disappointed not to hear my favorite Young song, "Like A Hurricane."

My Morning Jacket

I was glad to see Young - but the presence of Lousville, Kentucky country/prog-rockers My Morning Jacket made me really want to go. These guys are brilliant. They have a reputation for strong stage shows, and they were very good in their 45 minute set.

But...

Outdoor Venues Suck

But this was at the Sidney Myer Music Bowl, an amphitheater featuring a big lawn in a park by the Yarra River in Melbourne. And it had all the problems that this sort of place has. The ground is hard. People walk all over you. Smoking. The music isn't quite loud enough, so the morons around you can still carry on a conversation. And clearly most of the crowd didn't know MMJ, and all around me people were carrying on conversations while MMJ played. I'll have to catch them somewhere when they are the headliners.

Plus Melbourne was in the middle of a heatwave. The daytime high on Wednesday was 44C. That's 111F in American. Either way it's HOT. By the time MMJ started at 7:30 (a full 30 minutes BEFORE my ticket said the show was supposed to start, glad I was there by 7:15) it was still in the upper 90s. At least the sun had stopped beating on us.

And New Devices to Blather At Us

One more thing. Advertisers continue to find new ways to direct commercial messages at us. They especially like captive audiences. And Melbourne Airport has a new (to me) device. A little TV screen that comes on automatically. It is on those hot-air hand dryers! You put your hand under their to dry (no paper towels so you have to) and a little commercial comes on the little screen. It's enough to make a guy want to skip washing his hands.

Fifteen Well-Earned Minutes

Lots of people earn the proverbial 15 minutes of fame for doing something stupid like getting their head caught in a fence or leading cops on a cross-country car chase culminating in being rescued from a river. Or they earn it for somebody else's stupidity, like that call-girl who was ex-New York Governor Spitzer's regular "date."

But occasionally somebody earns it for something positive, good, not embarrassing, maybe even heroic.

Like Chesley Sullenberg, the pilot who landed the US Airways flight safely on the Hudson River in New York, saving now only his life and the life of others on the plane with him, but also the lives of who knows how many people in Manhattan or the Bronx that his plane could have crashed on.

His hometown of Danville, California gave him a parade. Katie Couric is going to interview him. This guy, who said he and the rest of his crew was "just doing the jobs we were trained to do" (an understatement), has earned it.

Obama - the View from Australia

The inauguration of Barack Obama as President has gotten a lot of attention in Australia. He has been front-page news all week in all major Australian newspapers, long TV news coverage of his various pre-inaugural events (speeches, train rides, paint jobs). And Australian TV showed the inauguration (oath, speech, parts of the parade, highlights from inaugural balls, etc) live, at 4AM local time, and again rebroadcast much of it, including the speech, during the day for interested viewers.

Why? I see four reasons. First, Australians are generally interested in the US. I'm struck at how much many Australians know about American politics. And they paid a LOT of attention to the whole election season, beginning with McCain, Romney, Huckabee etc on the GOP side and Obama, Clinton, Edwards, and the rest for the Democrats.

Second, Australians (like many around the world, it seems) are captivated by the idea that a black person has been elected President of the United States. I have to tell you, over the past year I had many Australians (including one political scientist who told me he had been predicting American elections since the 1960s and had only been wrong once) tell me confidently that the Democrats would never nominate a black man, and (after he was officially selected), how the US would never elect a black man. I nodded politely, and occasionally tried to explain (as an American) how I did not agree.

I think Obama's election resonates here in part because of the whole very poor situation of Australia's indigenous people. And Obama, very popular with Australians of all political persuasions, is even MORE popular with Australia's Aborigines. I was at a public event where Obama's inaugural address was being played (on tape; I only wake up at 4AM for World Cup soccer games!), and was talking with one Aborigine, who was gathering paper copies of Obama's address to take back to her friends and family in "the desert", because she said he was a role model for them, too. By the way, in "the desert" there is no internet access, so hardcopies, ignored by the rest of us who just planned to download them, were valuable for her.

A third reason for the attention is recognition that there are a lot of big problems around right now, starting with the global financial crisis which is beginning to hit Australia (despite the fact that it's banks are sound and have essentially no subprime market), and Australians are anxious to see what the new Administration does.

Oh, and the fourth and final reason for the excitement about Obama is that, to put it bluntly, the outgoing President is extremely unpopular here.

An Aussie Super Bowl

Well, more specifically, there will be an Australian player in the upcoming Super Bowl. Both the Arizona Cardinals and Philadelphia Eagles, who will play for the National Football Conference championship and a spot in the Super Bowl, have Australian punters. Sav Rocca is the punter for Philadelphia, and Ben Graham for Arizona.

Both were stars in the Australian Football League for years before making the move (Graham in 2005, Rocca in 2007) to the NFL for bigger paychecks. In another bit of trivia, Ben Graham was named one of the co-captains of the New York Jets in 2006, making him the first Aussie to be a captain of an American pro sports team.

So, barring injury or something, either Graham or Rocca will make the first Super Bowl appearance by an Australian.

Australian Anti-Shark Device

Australians are big swimmers, and there are sharks out there. So every Australian has an anti-shark device, or two.

Fists.

You think I'm joking? Steven Foggarty, out surfing near Sydney, felt a shark bite his leg. It wouldn't let go, so Foggarty punched it right on the schnozz.

And then it let go, and Foggarty got back ashore and off to the hospital to get his leg taken care of.

The Last Guest

I must admit to being amused at the ruckus over the fact that President-Elect Barack Obama can't stay at Blair House prior to moving into the White House because at President Bush's invitation, former Aussie Prime Minister John Howard and his wife Janette are staying there on January 15 so Howard can receive the Medal of Honor.

It's a bit of a tempest in a teapot I'd say. Though some commentators here wonder why Howard simply doesn't make the offer to leave, which the Obamas would probably politely decline. Maybe it's because Howard still remembers how back in early 2007, he said that terrorists would be cheering for Obama to win?