Neil Young - 2009 Australian tour

Tickets to Neil Young's January 2009 Australian tour went on sale at 9am this morning.

I saw Neil for the first time back in November 2003 - it was the Greendale tour. Gary and I scored third row centre seats for the Sydney Entertainment Centre. Nice. It was a great show - Greendale is a good concept album. But I was there to rock. And after the full run through of Greendale, Neil and the core band came back on stage and rocked out on 4 or 5 tracks from the Live Rust era as well as the finale - Rockin In The Freeworld

Ive been listening to Neil since the mid 90's. Id heard lots of his stuff when i was younger, but it didnt really hit me like other music at that time did. In 1993, Neil joined Pearl Jam onstage at the Mtv video music awards to perform Rockin In The Free World and that very performance by a band I was already obsessed with made me love them even more - but it also opened my ears to the work of Neil Young.

This video rates as one of my all time favourite TV music performances. Ever.

Im more of a Harvest, Live Rust, Weld, Unplugged, MirrorBall, Greatest Hits & Massey Hall kind of fan. Garys a huge fan and is always trying to get me to listen to more stuff - the CSNY stuff or the Buffalo Springfield stuff. I keep telling him "later". And he keeps giving me stuff every few months. And I like it. But ill get to more stuff later on. I like the albums I mentioned above - and that kinda does me for now. Especially the Greatest Hits disc. Its just so damn good. Its mellow, its folky, its rockin. Its great.

So in early September Neil was announced as the headliner for the 2009 Big Day Out. And as headliner, he would also play a separate solo show in Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne when the BDO was in town. I hadnt kept up with setlists or recordings from his current tour. But I did some research and saw this setlist from a show in Denmark in late August;

Love and Only Love
Hey Hey My My
Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere
Powderfinger
Spirit Road
Cortez The Killer
Cinnamon Girl
Oh Lonesome Me
Mother Earth
The Needle and the Damage Done
Unknown Legend
Heart Of Gold
Old Man
Get Back To The Country
Just Singing A Song Won’t Change The World
Sea Change
When Worlds Collide
Cowgirl In The Sand
Rocking In The Free World
A Day In The Life

So I decided to get me a ticket.

But - problem. Im in Melbourne. Gary's in Sydney. No-one to go to the show with. But I decided to go on my own anyway. The Melbourne show is at the famed Sidney Myer Music Bowl and even though ive only seen one show (Metallica in 2004) I love that place - its one of my favourite live music venues.

Yesterday was a Ticketmaster online presale. I was in a meeting and everyone else was busy so they couldnt log in and try for me. That left me two options for the general on sale at 9am today. 1/ i do the Ticketmaster shuffle on the web. 2/ i line up early.

I chose 2.

So I got up at 530am this morning and drove in to the city. Theres a Ticketmaster outlet around the corner from my office so I decided that was my best option. I got there at 630am and I was 6th in line. I loaded up Neil's greatest hits album on the iPod, opened one of the 7 unread Rolling Stones I have laying around and settled in for a few hours.

At 707am as Helpless was playing, my parents called. My aunty (on mums side) had died overnight. Fuck. I hit repeat and listened to Helpless again. It sounded fitting.

They let us inside the ticket office at around 830am. By this stage there were about 30 people in line. At about 10mins to 9 the ticket manager came out and told us the following;

- over half of the tickets were sold in the presale yesterday

- only a few people would get tickets in the seated section in front of the stage. We should be lucky enough to get general admission tickets though.

Fuck.

The ticket guy pulled every ticket he could, then split them up amongst the first few people in line. He got a total of 26 tickets. As I only wanted a single I was sorted. A few people behind me were also sorted. The rest had to opt for general admission.

I hate that stress when getting tickets. It shits me. I was talking to the woman in line behind me and I said to her that it would be great if promoters sold a small number of tickets (even the shit seats) on the day of the show at one outlet. No internet. No phones. If you want a ticket and you missed out at the original on sale then line up and get one of the small number of "last chance" tickets. She said it was a good idea.

So im in. Im tired. But im in