You could not come up with 2 concert films that are more different from each other than NEIL YOUNG : HEART OF GOLD and AWESOME! I FUCKIN' SHOT THAT!
Jonathan Demme's work documenting Young's 2005 Ryman Auditorium performance is straight-forward and polished much like the music it presents. I'm far from a hardcore Young fan - I have I guess what you'd call the essential discs ("Harvest", "Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere", "After The Gold Rush", "Rust Never Sleeps", etc.). have seen him live a few times, but over the years have drifted away from his newer releases because of too many same-sounding songs.
A few songs into the show - that complaint melts away.
With a large band of ace players (including Emmyloo Harris, Dan Penn, Spooner Oldham, and wife Pegi Young) Neil plays the Prairie Wind album in its entirety then a smattering of crowd pleasing hits (like the title song especially) and it all sounds sweet to these ears. The DVD has some cool extras most notably a clip of Young on The Johnny Cash Show in 1970. Man, they need to release that show in full!
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Whatever your opinion of the Beasties' music this film is a lot of fun to watch - the split screens, the fast cutting, the wide range of angles, and the sense that the whole arena was pumping and pounding. It does drag a bit at times - the trance instrumental set wasn't as exciting as other bits, but this inventive and punchy concert flick definitely deserves the right to, you know...party.
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The overwhelming amount available of Johnston's self documentation pours out of the movie and into the bonus features on the DVD - it takes quite a bit to get through all of it but it is worth every second.
More later...
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