Well it was good news to wake up to. Two shows in New Zealand next year from Neil Young with Crazy Horse. We wait some 20 years or so for a Neil Young show – and he turned in a bit of a blinder at The Big Day Out a couple of years back – about as close to a greatest hits set as he’ll ever offer – and now, so soon after, he’s back with the Horse.

It’s been long enough that it’s worth seeing him again even if you went to the BDO he headlined. Shit, if he and Crazy Horse played the following day after the Big Day Out it would be long enough to wait.

I love Neil Young – and I really love a lot of his country/folk/acoustic/solo albums but there’s something about Neil with Crazy Horse. The way he just heads off, lets his guitar take him for a stroll. Line that band up with anyone else and they’d be rubbish – but with Neil they kill it. Put Neil with anyone else and it’s just not Crazy Horse, even with the same material. There’s plenty of proof of that – just watch him play Cortez The Killer or Like A Hurricane with anyone else. It’s just not (quite) the same.

And the new album is good. Good enough. But like the new album ever matters when you’re seeing Neil Young. He might just play a bunch of stuff he’s never released. And the chance to hear anything from Ragged Glory with the band that played it is reason enough for me to be excited about this.

So it was good news today.  I was contacted earlier in the year by a promoter asking me if I thought Neil Young & Crazy Horse would sell in New Zealand. Was a Wellington show even doable?

I said that I was a fan so of course I was going to say yes. But I also said that I’d feel very sad for New Zealand if two Neil Young/Crazy Horse shows didn’t sell. Well today I feel very happy. New Zealand’s Neil Young fans are in for a treat.

Will you be going?