Marksonland

For those unfamiliar, the Bridge School is a bay area school for children with severe speech and physical impairments. Neil Young's wife is one of the school's founders and every year Neil hosts a benefit concert at Shoreline for the school. Like clockwork, this show attracts some of the biggest names in the music business. The really cool part is that, for the most part, they all play acoustic sets.

This year was no different. Here was the line-up that we saw:

* Neil Young

* Wilco

* Jack Johnson

* Death Cab for Cutie

* Norah Jones

* Sarah McLachlan

Without reviewing every act, in summary: a nice fall night, a great venue, an excellent cause, a lot of big name acts and acoustic performances. i.e. Terrific night.

Now, with that, one observation: I'm finding the the music festival thing more and more frustrating. I mentioned this before with my review of Outside Lands, but to watch a great act only play for 45 min's or so is a tease. I like a good 2 - 3 hour show. The short set leaves me wanting more.

On top of that, when you go see a single band, everyone in the audience is there to see that band. But when you go to see multiple bands, not everyone is into every act. And when people aren't into an act, they tend to talk and not listen. In other words, for pretty much every act there was chatter throughout the audience (at least in the lawn seats). That was annoying.

Whatever. Petty complaints. Great cause, great night. Here's the YouTube channel dedicated to the event.