July 09, 2004 - 2:02 p.m.
Kristy has written an article about the Neil Young Tribute concert that we went to the other week. She did a really admirable job of researching what the set list was, since it was this cavalcade of performers and it was terribly difficult to follow what was going on. Earlier that day, "Larue" and I and our big sunhats went to the East River Park Amphitheater for a Cat Power performance. It seemed like hardly anyone was there. There was this flat gravel pit area in the front where nobody dared stand except people trying to be discreet about taking photographs. The space is kind of down at the heels but it was neat to watch boats going by behind the stage. "Chan" played for about 45 minutes. I remember she played "Satisfaction" and "Metal Heart," and "I Don't Blame You." I can't remember what else. [OK later I looked it up and my memory was jogged that she played "Who Let the Dogs Out?" and a White Stripes song: "I Want to Be the Boy to Warm Your Mother's Heart."] She appeared to run out of ideas so she asked the audience for suggestions (I helped get Metal Heart going), but boycotted doing ones like Moonshiner and Good Woman. Oh how did I almost forget? For the last song she unplugged the mic and got down in front of the stage and danced around lip-synching and interpretive dancing to some rap song sung by a small child. I'm not cool enough to have any idea whose song it was. She seemed pretty cheerful but not so much that she would have wanted to stay there for 3 hours singing to us, which I would have preferred.
PS Kristy mentions a bathroom problem in her article. It's not her problem, it's the park's. For the women they have 3 or 4 stalls and 3 portables. So it took about 30 minutes to go to the bathroom. Then not knowing who was playing when, you had to gamble with when you decided to go, and poor Kristy lost! Well it was only a 3 minute song but it was fully half of Cat Power's contribution that she missed! Sux! Have you seen the needle and the damage done, chan? Have you? I hope so.
