Good Vibrations (Crazy German, Crazy Horse, and a great Canadian in MGladbach)

On November 11, 2012 I went to a concert in Vancouver.  Neil Young & Crazy Horse. I got here by accident only; my friend Chantal asked me two days before whether I wanted to go!
I liked the concert so much I bought tickets for 2 concerts during the upcoming year.
A cell phone picture:





On June 15, 2013, in Dublin
I neither had a good camera nor a good seat ;-(









Then I dropped my camera in Saint Malo one week later and got a better camera ;-)


July 12, 2013 Cologne:

So its a bit of a tradition for me ;-)


Its July 25, 2014, which means there is a concert in Moenchengladbach for which I have 2 tickets.  2 tickets?  Yes, 2;another person was unable to attend.

Today's weather forecast calls for thundershowers again.  I've scouted out the stadium in early afternoon to see where I could park le Velo, and realized that it is an open-concept stadium where the bleachers barely cover the seats and the people in the standing area are fully exposed to the elements.

But the weather stays cloudless until 10 pm, which makes me happy but probably does not agree that much with the rain-poncho sellers at the concert.  Other vendors that were probably not too happy were the tour merchandise sellers, because a FREE tour T-shirt was waiting at the entrance gate for every concert attendee!  And consequentially the tour T-shirt vendors had moved their wares to the outside of the gate after the concert and were trying to get rid of their stuff at bargain basement prices.


Since my efforts of convincing other people of coming to Moenchengladbach to see the concert were not met with success, I was planning to just give the ticket away to anyone who wanted it (though I didn't spot the ticket-less people until half-way through the concert), but a scalper offered me 20 Euros and I happily accepted. I probably could have haggled, but I had already written it off.  He might have made a loss on that ticket, since no one ever came to occupy the seat next to me.

The view backwards from below the bleachers

I was still smoking back there when I heard the familiar guitar roar. Opening with Love and only Love again ;-)

The wide-angle view from my seat

There are two digital display panels, one on each side of the stage.  How does the refrain of Lou Reed's song go again?                            ... and the colored girls go    doop do doop do doop...

Doesn't look like the place sold out

Not long before the concert I heard that the standard bass player suffered from a minor stroke. 2nd from left bass player is playing well and adds some tranquility.

The man in the white T-shirt is the reason I get to see the concert at all. He fractured his hand on last year's tour (after I saw them in Cologne), so that any remaining concerts had to be cancelled . This year's concert is a make-up for last year's lost concerts.

people without tickets at the other side of the complex where I met the scalper

The song lineup is quite different from last year's concert; more emphasis on industry trying trying to appease automobiles everywhere by ripping the last drop of oil out of the ground.

Add to that Cortez the Killer & a line about drilling more and more holes into Indian lands added to "Keep on Rocking in the free world", and a lot of songs trying to motivate the crowd to affect change for the benefit of the children and I'm happy that I arrived by bicycles. But the crowd was here to see a show and be entertained and not to be told that they could do some things better (This is Germany, but Canada would not be much different).  When leaving the concert, I hear the words "Angry Old Man" being uttered.  
Ah well.  Pearls to the pigs again.