QUESTLOVE EXPLAINS "WALK ON" MUSIC

A lot had been made of how Conan O'Brien had Max Weinberg and the band play very expensive songs in his last week on The Tonight Show last week. Questlove of The Roots, house band for Jimmy Fallon's show, breaks down the science "walk on" music on late night shows - I didn't realize that this was started by Paul Schaffer on David Letterman's show. Read all about it on a very extended Quest tweet.

MORE THOUGHTS ON CONAN O'BRIEN

I wrote about Conan O'Brien's last stand at host of The Tonight Show in my last post, but I wanted to dedicate a post to his final words on the show.

"To all the people watching, I can never thank you enough for your kindness to me and I’ll think about it for the rest of my life. All I ask of you is one thing: please don’t be cynical. I hate cynicism — it’s my least favorite quality and it doesn’t lead anywhere. Nobody in life gets exactly what they thought they were going to get. But if you work really hard and you’re kind, amazing things will happen. As proof, let’s make an amazing thing happen right now."

What a lovely sentiment.  What a dignified way to sign off. What a great attitude.  Words to live by.

Also worth mentioning here is what Neil Young said to Conan after his great performance of "Long May You Run": "Thanks for all you've done for NEW music!" It's true: I'm listening to the 1997 collection: Live From 6A: Great performances from Late Night With Conan O'Brien.  Like Arsenio Hall in his day, Conan brought artists onto TV who wouldn't necessarily get on network television at the time. Some of the artists on the collection, like them or not, include Cake, Ani DiFranco, Edwyn Collins, 311 and Matthew Sweet. Conan is a true music fan, and it showed when you watched whatever he was hosting, Late Night or Tonight Show. Long May You Run, Conan.

NEIL YOUNG - LONG DAY, GREAT PERFORMANCES

It seemed like such an odd day: it was Conan O'Brien's last day as the rightful host of NBC's The Tonight Show, and while that was a bummer, the Hope for Haiti telethon put on by MTV put everything in perspective. Tom Hanks appeared at both events, as did Neil Young.

Although the telethon aired (live) before Conan, Conan taped his show before the telethon, so both Tom and Neil probably had to jet across town.  It all worked out.

Neil performed at the telethon with his fellow Farm Aid chairperson Dave Matthews.  They did a pretty stark acoustic duo version of Hank Williams' "Alone and Foresaken." On Conan, he performed one of his classics, "Long May You Run" (the title track of the lone Stills-Young Band album, released in 1976). If you saw the show, it ended with Will Ferrell dressed as the late Lynyrd Skynyrd singer Ronnie Van Zant, leading Max Weinberg and the band through "Freebird." The performance was cooler looking than sounding, because Will's voice got annoying. But when he wasn't singing, he was making out with some chick, or playing (what else?) the cowbell. But a funny point was that he was wearing the same Neil Young Tonight's The Night t-shirt that Ronnie used to wear. The band were joined by supporters Ben Harper, Billy Gibbons and Beck. And Conan actually played a pretty face-melting guitar solo himself.

Back to Neil.  What I didn't know (until I checked the great fansite Thrasher's Wheat) was that yesterday, Neil's long time film making collaborator L.A. Johnson passed away. L.A., who worked on the Woodstock film, worked with Neil as a director or producer on many of his films, including Journey Through The Past, Human Highway, Rust Never Sleeps, Weld, Year Of The Horse, Silver and Gold, and also worked on Neil's albums including Greendale and Living With War.  He also worked on the video content on the Archives box set, and was working with Neil on the Linc-Volt documentary.

NEIL YOUNG PLAYING CONAN'S LAST NBC SHOW TONIGHT

Image and info from MTV. So, after you finish watching MTV's Hope For Haiti telethon tonight (or you can listen to it on SIRIUS XM's The Pulse) you can switch over to NBC to watch Conan O'Brien's final show as host of The Tonight Show. As everyone probably knows, Jay Leno takes over after the Winter Olympics. Tonight's musical guest will be none other than Neil Young! I wonder what he will play.

I look forward to see where Conan (along with his great band, The Max Weinberg 7) ends up.