last night I had a premonition that today I'd have deja vu

Neil Young night:
Just watched the BBC4 NY programmes and they were all pretty good. The doc about his life was ok if I thought a bit short, they seemed short of footage, there was a lot of that faked up faux super 8 shots that pollute documentary now a days. You feel they could have shown more of the interview with Neil himself. He comes over fairly well, coherent and funny with a degree of self knowledge, he's obviously incredibly driven and artistically selfish in the way that only a few 60's era rock stars can be. Arriving in LA in '65 he's had the fame money, kudos to do whatever he's liked ever since for good or evil.

I think the CSNY:Deja Vu tour film (on afterwards) was if anything even better. The film is a record of the DSNY tours playing Young's anti Iraq war songs. A strange mix of concert footage, interviews and films about audience members. It's got scenes of really angry crowd members complaining about and berating the band for their anti-bush songs but also interviews with veterans and the families of dead GI's. The film is narrated and partly authoured by a senior CNN war correspondent their equivalent of John Simpson who is dispassionate in showing the sometimes negative reception the band gets.
The striking thing about the protestors against the Band's stance is that they shelled out 70-80 quid for tickets seemingly unaware of the Band's view point which although Liberal was actually (from the film quiet balanced). You have to think that some American's do live in bubble of unchallenged patriotism, if they went to the concerts expecting the Marakesh express it's not as if many of CSNY sixities songs weren't overtly political. Their outrage seems niave.

It's a fascinating film and a very rare one you can't imagine the Stones having a film were they are seen being booed by their own fans and having shots of "hockey moms" storming out of gigs giving the finger to the camera all cut to " brown sugar". This youtube clip gives a good flavour of this remarkable film. It may get shown again this week on BBC4 if not you'll have to track down the DVD.