Our Kevin Bacon game, so far:
The Black Keys’ Patrick Carney produced – and is the husband of – Michelle Branch, who was featured on Santana’s “The Game of Love.” On a later album, Santana collaborated with Metallica, who backed up Lou Reed, who was in The Velvet Underground with John Cale, who wrote an album with Brian Eno, who produced the first album by DEVO, who were in a film directed by Neil Young.
I’ve seen Neil Young live a few times, but one experience that stands out was on the tour for his album Greendale. This is a concept album, which was released alongside a film. On the tour, the actors from the film performed the action live on stage while they played the album. It’s an interesting album, but it’s not exactly what everybody is looking to see performed live. This led to several repetitions of a scene that I always find entertaining. It goes as follows: A casual fan, or someone who only has a limited knowledge of the extent of the performer’s work, goes to their concert expecting something that is very different from the latest album that is the focus of the tour. Their reaction can be quite extreme at times and varies according to the artist’s current direction. In this case, a lot of older audience members were expecting Neil to play his old, acoustic, sitting-down performance that they saw him do back in the day. Greendale does have some very nice, light moments to it, but it also gets loud. Additionally, once they had finished with the album, they played a set of some of Neil’s heavier and more energetic songs. There were a whole bunch of walkouts at that one. I find this reaction both amusing and disappointing. It’s a bummer to think about people going through life being so inflexible, even about their supposed fandom. It makes me pity them, because there’s no way this is the only scenario in these peoples’ lives that causes them to react thusly. Sounds like a boring way to go through life, to me.
New Album A Day 