The headliner for the concert was Neil Young, in a reunion concert with his amazing back up band Crazy Horse, which he has not played with in nine years.
Wouldn't you agree it was worth a little extra effort to see this concert under the stars in Central Park?
We managed to get our points by posting on my blog, facebook and twitter and then we waited in vein for the next 24 hours to see if miraculously we would receive the coveted email with a link to free tickets.
The gates were to open at 3:00 with the concert beginning at 5:00. Around 4:00, with no tickets we headed uptown to see if we could at least get close to the concert. We followed the crowds until we got to a place where we saw concert staff shouting at the crowd to hold up their ticket print outs.
We stood around feeling very dejected. I even rummaged in my purse to see if I had printouts of any kind in there to at least flash quickly so that we could join the line of ticket holders. But there was nothing to even create a rouse.
Then we noticed someone calling out "Any extra tickets?". Miraculously someone stopped and gave him a printout. Not a scalper, just a young man who had an extra ticket.
Humm ...
Now it is not in our nature to do this kind of thing and I was pretty embarrassed (since the average age around us was about 21, but we were already there and could smell the concert from where we were standing (oh sweet maryjane). We had to give it a try.
Marc took one corner and I took the next and we called out "Any extra tickets?" and in about 10 minutes we had success! We proudly waved Nicolas and Andrew's tickets in the air and entered the long procession to the Great Lawn where the Black Keys were already on stage. In another 15 minutes we were there with 60,000 other fans, totally amazed that we had actually made it in to a huge concert in Central Park being broadcasted around the world.
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| We are in! |
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| Black Keys |
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| Foo Fighters |
Over the two hours, listening to the Black Keys and later the Foo Fighters, we worked our way up to the fence, which was the closest we were going to get to see Neil Young with our free ticket status. If we had payed thousands of dollars towards the benefit, we could have been on stage with Neil, but then we would have had to forfeit our ear drums. So we were fine just where we were. His 70 minute set was electrifying to say the least. I could go into details, but I have found two links that I think do the concert justice. This one about the music, and this one about the background for the benefit concert.
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| The finale with all of the bands on stage. link |
The finale with everyone onstage, was a moving rendition of "Keep on Rockin' In The Free World". It was very sobering to hear the lyrics to this song juxtaposed with clips of needy children from the developing world.
The concert ended at about 10:00 pm and we, and the 60,000 other fans filed out of Central Park and onto the subway trains dispersing us to our apartments, brownstones and homes all over the five boroughs and beyond. Within an hour we were back in our apartment on Ocean Ave as if it had not even happened.
On our way in, during, and after the concert, we both looked at each other and said "Can you believe we are in Central Park listening to Neil Young live?". Our conclusion each time was that in New York anything can happen. Luckily for us, that is where we are!
