Music Blog

Music Blog

Deliciously Overwhelming: The Bridge School Benefit and Communion in the Redwoods

I've never seen Mountain View's Shoreline Amphitheatre as crowded as it was on Sunday for the second day of Neil and Pegi Young's annual Bridge School Benefit. One of the venue's employees estimated that the attendance was between 22,000 and 23,000. I guess a lot of folks come out to see a show featuring Neil and a bunch of his superstar friends, all in the name of raising dough for a non-profit organization dedicated to helping individuals with physical impairments. And this year, was the 25th anniversary of the two-day, October event, which was good reason for selling out the show beyond its capacity. The nearly ten hours of music—including Beck, Foo Fighters (including my favorite gap-toothed guitarist of The Germs, Pat Smear), Santana, Tony Bennett and Arcade Fire—was full of enough highlights to last a year. Here's a look at a good cross section of the event, including contributions from fellow writer, Stuart Thornton. The photo above features Marcus Mumford (of Mumford & Sons) joining Dave Matthews and Tim Reynolds for a killer rendition of Bob Dylan's "All Along the Watchtower."

Beck played several tunes from his masterful heartbreak album, Sea Change, including "Lost Cause," "Golden Age" and "Guess I'm Doing Fine." He thanked Neil Young for reaching out to him early in his career. Then Young joined in on his own tune "Pocahontas" as Beck's son played tambourine. Some of the videos below are from Saturday.

Mumford & Sons played a smoking mini-set—though many were bummed they skipped over "Little Lion Man"—followed by a collaboration with Young on his "Dance, Dance, Dance."

Eddie Vedder opened with Pearl Jam's "Elderly Woman Behind a Counter in a Small Town" followed by PJ's cover of Wayne Cochran's "Last Kiss."

Young joined Tim Reynolds and Dave Matthews on "Oh! Susanna."

Arcade Fire brought the house down with grandiose epic ballads, beginning with "Halflight II (No Celebration)," a song about San Francisco. Young joined in on "Helpless," before AF ended with "Rebellion (Lies)" and an explosive version of "Wake Up."

Young ended the show with "Long May You Run" and "Heart of Gold." For a finale, he brought back many of the day's performers to play the Youngbloods' hippie anthem, "Get Together."

Here's what some of my buddies had to say about the show: "The sound was pristine," Shane D. said. "If you've never seen Arcade Fire and expected something grand, you got it."

"I liked when Neil turned around to sing "Heart of Gold" to the kids on the stage cause that's what it's all about," said Weekly staff writer Walter Ryce. "The crowd was really nice to each other but there were too many people."

The day was one long continuous string of good music and yes, there were a hell of a lot of people and the space barely accommodated everyone, but I eventually got used to the mammoth sea of people. I'll definitely be returning next year...only if I get box seats.

Meanwhile, a couple hours south of Mountain View in Big Sur, Communion in the Redwoods (co-presented by (((folkYEAH!)))) planted its inaugural seeds at a free, three-day music festival at Fernwood. Coincidentally, one of Communion's founders is Ben Lovett of Mumford & Sons. The weekend featured everyone from Matthew and the Atlas and Lauren Shera to The Secret Sisters and Forrest Day. Weekly photog Nic Coury made it to the event on Sunday and shared some of his photos below.

There's definitely some difficult decisions to make when weekends like this happen.