Neil Young, My Morning Jacket@ Myer Music Bowl (28/01/2009)

Sun 1st Feb, 2009 in Gig Reviews

If there was any reason to dread attending a Neil Young gig, it was the heat wave that swept through like hatch of the furnace of hell had opened up at Melbourne’s doorstep. Despite the temperature, the Myer Music Bowl was a menagerie of homo-sapiens (and possibly a few neanderthals). Among them were ageing hippies reliving their youth, clueless scenesters pretending to dig the jive, the occasional open-minded arbiter (such as myself) all unwillingly supplementing the rising stench of body odor. The most shocking sight was a washed-up groupie sunning her wrinkly, orange-skinned, rake-thin figure as if she was at a Beverly Hills tanning salon.

As I found my way to my seat My Morning Jacket were churning the grist of their trade. Inexplicably, the wavy haired frontman Jim James had draped his burly figure in some sort of cape. I was half expecting the fat on his body to literally melt leave James cawing in a puddle like the wicked witch of the west. Fortunately that didn’t happen and MMJ began belting out the Wordless Chorus from their fantastic record Z. The audience was still being herded in at this point detracting from any atmosphere MMJ might’ve built. However, James and his cohorts continued steadfastly, eyes fixed on the heavens instead of the stragglers milling around in front of them. They played a great assortment of old and new, songs like Touch Me I’m Going To Scream Part 2 and What A Wonderful Man were delivered with the necessary fervor and vim to win some applause from the bovine throng.

At around 9pm, Neil Young and his picaresque band shuffled onto the stage, greeted by a huge cheer from the throng. This entrance was refreshingly laid-back as the pretention of being escorted out to rousing fanfare blasted across the PA system was absent. Neil Young was decked out in three-quarter length cargo shorts and light open collared shirt. His shaggy grey locks were blown about by a massive industrial strength fan sitting next to a wood carving of a red-Indian on the left of the stage.

I’ve always stood by the fact that performers who dress really flash (Nick Cave aside), sport foppish haircuts and generally seem to worry more about complementary colors than chord progressions are, more often than not, talentless hacks and do not deserve to be mentioned in the same breath as any genuine musician. Scruffy Ol’ Neil stomping along like a kid crushing bugs while willing a litany of distorted chords from the guitar thrust against his tumid belly, added weight to my argument that when it comes to music the external superficialities are irrelevant.

The first third of the set was all rollicking southern-fried riffage and rousing anthems. Dipping into his vast back catalogue, Young’s guitar-work was stunning and his tremulous voice was in fine shape. Ably backed up by the band that included his wife (*Pegi Young*) on backing vocals and, as described by Young, the legendary Ben Keith on steel guitar he continued to plough through, defying his age and the overwhelming heat.

The second segment of the set contained mellower tracks and included a couple of recognizable tracks like Cinnamon Girl and The Needle and The Damage Done. There were times when Young strapped on the harmonica to evoke desolate western atmospherics and even slipped behind a pipe organ to deliver an understated ode.

The final half-hour or so brought more barn-burning rock. Highlights came in the form of the big-singalong chorus of Rockin’ in The Free World, and the absolute corker of an encore that began with the song Bad News Beat off the Landing on Water record and then morphed into the Beatles A Day in The Life before switching back to the original song. At the end of the song Young forced a haze of feedback from his amp and eventually broke all the strings of the guitar, proceeded to flay the guitar with the broken strings causing a shower of distortion, left the guitar and signaled the end of proceedings with a single hit of the xylophone.

As tiring as the day was due to the extreme heat, Neil Young managed to not only hold the attention but also raise the roof and propel chills into collective consciousness of this assembly. Delivering plenty of passion and craftsmanship with his catchy tunes and crazed freakouts Young proved he is still a consummate performer and a vital progenitor of contemporary music, one that remains relevant fifty-years from the time he started performing as a solo artist. If one person can beat the heat and rock out in a pair of cargo-shorts, that person would be Neil Young.