30th Annual Bridge School Benefit:
Opening sets featuring the Dennis Ally Wisdom Dancers, Neil Young, and Nils Lofgren
2016-10-23
Shoreline Amphitheatre
1 Amphitheatre Pkwy, Mountain View, CA 94043-1326 USA
12:00 PM, Sunday, October 23, 2016
Back to the previous event! ☸ Up to the 2016 yearbox! ☸ Up to the 2016 event list! ☸ On to the next event!
[1:49 PM Dennis Ally Wisdom Dancers blessing of the stage]
[1:58 PM, opening announcements and thanks from Pegi Young]
[Neil out to play after Ben Young declares the opening of the show]
I'm excited to get down to today's show, so we're up early and bustling about … trying to make sure everything's together for the long day. We actually get out of the house on time for once, and as traffic is miraculously light this Sunday morning, we zoom down to Mountain View with hardly a hassle. Plenty of street parking is available this early in the day, so we ditch the car near the freeway, then walk about a mile in to the venue. Way better to stretch the legs a little before (and after) the show than to sit and creep in traffic.
We run into friends as soon as we enter the lot, and while it would be sensible to take time to visit, I'm too excited to get inside – for some reason I think we're running late – so after quick hugs we hustle on in through the entry gates. An unannounced opener is just starting their set on the side stage set up by the totem pole, but I'm on a mission! Off to our seats! Happily, we are under the shade of the big tent, and we proceed to vegetate for a very long while as the place slowly fills up.
Eventually it's time to start. Yay! First up are the Dennis Ally Wisdom Dancers – a Native American family group – who offer blessings, invocations and prayers, and brief ceremonial dances. Next, Pegi offers thanks to a very long list of folks – good of her to be doing so, but not very interesting from a fan's viewpoint, and I assume most of the folks who are in their seats right now are there because they want to hear Neil's opening solo segment. Today he condenses it down to a single tune: Bob Dylan's Blowing in the Wind, stretched out to to allow Neil to interact a bit with each of the Bridge School kids sitting onstage.
Neil eventually winds down the song and introduces Nils Lofgren, who proceeds to entertain us over the next half hour. Nils fills us in by telling stories about growing up in rock-and-roll; his set sees sit-ins from both Neil and Pegi (separately), as well as Mickey Raphael. Excellent!
And so we're off!
Back to the previous event! ☸ Up to the 2016 yearbox! ☸ Up to the 2016 event list! ☸ On to the next event!