The new Neil Finn thread

[Brian]

The old Neil Finn thread, started in 2010, spreads 63 posts over seven pages. It can be found here.

No You Tube videos or photos of Neil Finn's two hour performance at Largo Saturday night will ever be posted. Instead, his knowledgeable and adoring audience got to hang out with him in a space smaller than most living rooms in nearby Beverly Hills, waiting for every piano chord to fade before erupting in applause.

With Anni serving as key grip on the least obtrusive flashlight we brought, I wrote down the setlist while they clapped for us. I'm labeling the new songs in italics with words from the refrains:

• Only Talking Sense
  
• Silent House
  
• Not the Girl You Think You Are
  
• Message to My Girl
  
• I Feel Possessed
  
• only one way down
  
• Faster Than Light
  
• Pour Le Monde
  
• Wherever You Are (Jon Brion joins)
  
• Private Universe
  
• Sinner
  
• Four Seasons in One Day
  
• starlight companion (Sharon Finn joins)
  
• don't die wondering
  
• when you become a recluse
  
• impressions
  
• dizzy heights

[/i] (Sharon exits)
[/li][li]Fall at Your Feet
[/li][li]I Got You
[/li][li]All You Need Is Love (The Beatles)
[/li][li]Don't Dream It's Over
[/li][/ul]

[Brian]

Montrose Peace Vigil message board member Martine launched a thread on Next Exit about Neil Finn's Largo date last Saturday before I started this one. Our cat Bernard -- as a kitten, he was Martine's constant bathroom companion when she came here from Winnipeg in 2009 for three Largo shows by Neil -- sometimes takes over this computer while I'm sleeping to post on Next Exit. Here's their exchange:

Sept 1, 2013 17:11:36 GMT -8 martine said:

Can you give us a bit more detail Bernard? How do the new songs sound...did Neil say anything about the release of the album he's been working on or a possibility of a tour? ;D

In his introduction, the club owner mentioned that Neil has an album forthcoming, Martine, and Neil said the new songs will sound different when they're released, as if they already have been recorded. But really no mention of any future concert plans.

Neil and Jon switched between keyboards and guitars at Neil's direction. At one point Neil said that he and Jon had done 20 to 30 such gigs at Largo over the years -- had they ever rehearsed? No, Jon said. A musical genius, he strummed chords in the right key while Neil led the new songs on the house's upright piano. Sharon, who sat on a folding chair near the drum kit for five songs, seemed to know her bass lines, so I assume she's on the new album.

Ah, the new material. I've read comparisons on the Internets to the piano ballads on "Try Whistling This" and "Time on Earth." Those were the arrangements we got. Certainly, we heard Neil's gift for surprising and delightful melody and his fine voice, once in falsetto. But I was impressed by the mature, outward looking lyrics. The song I identified as starlight companion -- apparently "Strangest Friends" on the setlist from the stage -- sounds to me like Neil's update on Ziggy Stardust, you know, the aliens have landed. (I like my title better.) In "Recluse," he name checks Howard Hughes, J.D. Salinger, Gretta Garbo and others at the end. This ain't the guy who sang in 2007, "All I want is something I can write about." But he clearly knows what it means and how it feels to want to be alone.

[Brian]

Neil Finn vacationing on a Greek island last summer.

We got the word from Martine via e-mail on Monday: Neil would play one-hour gigs next month, "Neil Finn: An Intimate Night of Dizzy Heights," at Largo in Los Angeles, someplace in New York City I never heard of with a French name and St. James Church in London -- the three cities that remain the capitals of the waning music industry -- to showcase his new album. Tickets would go on sale online Friday. Largo never sent me an e-mail about this date, and I can testify that I get them for every other show on the calendar.

Anni hit refresh until 10:00, when she was allowed into Ticketfly's system. The time stamp on her confirmation reads 10:03. I still keep up with Peter Green's bulletins on the old Neil Finn website, and Peter says that Largo tickets sold out in two minutes. Anni checked back at 10:15 and they were indeed gone.

Naturally, I'm taking off work for half a day on Tuesday, November 19, along with the next day to recover.

[Brian]

Last Thursday, Neil Finn's people posted "Divebomber," the first song to be released from his album, "Dizzy Heights," due next February in Australia and New Zealand. And it sounds like nothing he's ever recorded. Perhaps Neil is reaching out to a new audience. Anni and I have been playing the audio repeatedly.

I've got two weeks to wonder what this showcase concept means. Will Neil just play the album by himself on piano and guitar, warning us that we are not hearing the fully realized record, as he did last August at Largo? Does he have a pick up band? Or would he consider singing the album with backing tracks?

[anni]

Here's a chance to spend almost an hour, up close, with Neil, in studio...charming always. New songs and old, this webcast is a real treat:

[anni]

Thanks to Bernard's Auntie Martine, we got our pre-sale tickets to Neil's 'Dizzy Heights' tour. The date is April 2, 2014...at LA's Orpheum Theater

You, too, can order 'pre-sale' tickets using the secret code...dizzy13:

ONLY these dates:
11/12 10am local – 11/14 10pm local (password dizzy13)

Here's the TicketMaster link:

www.ticketmaster.com/event/09004B65B04B48B8

;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D

[Brian]

Neil Finn was 18 years old, a month younger than me, when I saw his brother's band Split Enz on their first U.S. tour. He would join a couple of months later. Because of that evening in February 1977, I found myself nearly 37 years later at Largo this Tuesday, enjoying one of the finest concerts of my life.

Neil brought a nine-piece string section, led by Victoria Kelly on keyboards, piano and vocal harmony, along with Chris the drummer from New Zealand, all dressed in black except for Chris in his grey suit. They played eight songs from Neil's forthcoming album plus "Sinner" before relinquishing the stage to his longtime L.A. cohorts -- Mitchell Froom, Mark Hart, Grant-Lee Phillips and Sebastian Steinberg -- and sometimes Victoria and Chris again for seven more songs from Neil's deep catalogue, one more from "Dizzy Heights" followed by an encore of "Private Universe" and, fulfilling a shouted request, "Message to My Girl," alone onstage at last.

My new favorite stagehand of all time handed me the setlist. You can print your own from this PDF:

Attachments:

[anni]

I feel privileged/lucky having experienced this concert.
The arrangements sublime...the strings adding mystery. A kind of spiritual uplifting that one doesn't often get with rock & roll. Has Neil come of age or is he just doing the work of an artist...daring to push the limits, real or imagined?
In doing so we all can travel with him to 'Dizzy Heights' and beyond.

[Brian]

Until my CD arrives, I'm listening to Neil's new songs on his You Tube channel.

Seems like every post I've made in the last decade about a new album by one of my favorite artists begins with a rant about what I went through just procuring the CD.  Physical recorded music is dying, faster than printed newspapers.  But the main reason I bitch is that I'm spoiled for life.  I worked at a record store most years in the 1970's, and I still remember yanking the shrink wrap off of Bob Dylan's "Blood on the Tracks" and Ian Hunter's "You're Never Alone with a Schizophrenic," records I've played hundreds, maybe thousands of times since, yet I can still tap back into the feelings I had the first time I heard them on the day they were released.  And because Chrysalis Records mailed Split Enz' "Mental Notes" for free, I'm writing about Neil Finn today.

I don't have two hours (including browsing time) to drive to Amoeba in Hollywood, the one store that I'm sure stocked "Dizzy Heights" last week.  I bid fond farewells to the few remaining independent record store owners who own stores closer after they told me they would have to special order new releases by the likes of Ian Hunter and Neil Finn for me -- on the Internet.  I preordered Ian and the Rant Band's most recent CD for same day delivery on Amazon, and I got it two weeks later because Amazon used a carrier I had never even heard of.  So I got smart and preordered "Dizzy Heights" for standard delivery via the good old U.S. Postal Service.  Amazon sent me an e-mail on the day of release that they had shipped it.  Eight days later, I'm still waiting.

Through the Internet, I'm hearing it anyway.  My wait for Ian's album taught me how much better most CD's sound compared to mp3's online, so I'll withhold my judgment until I have the damn thing.  Instead, let Martine have the first word, quoting her from an e-mail:

There are enough catchy melodies and solar-plexus diving lyrics to keep me glued to this record for a little while. My favourites seem to be In my Blood, Recluse, Ponyride and White Lies and Alibis so far.