TORONTO -- Neil Young wants to do his own thing his own way, and with his track record, very few people would want to stop him from doing it. But his latest pet project, the bizarre concept album/theatrical presentation/movie/ecological parable Greendale, could stretch the patience of even the most diehard Young fan.

Last night at the ACC, Young and his beloved Crazy Horse performed 10 songs from the new Greendale album on a stage decorated with a rickety farmhouse, a jail and various other locales from the fictional town, plus various crudely drawn scenic backdrops, including a pop-up car or two and projections of farmland, roads and, occasionally, figures from the Bush administration.

Meanwhile, actors playing the extended Green family and other characters stood awkwardly on the porch or loomed up ridiculously from below the stage to mouth the words Young was singing or illustrate parts of the convoluted plot.

It was not unlike a high school theatre production -- well-meaning but goofy, amateurish, politically murky, frequently incomprehensible and oddly boring, as Young and Crazy Horse churned out the sludgy, endless, seemingly interchangeable blues-rock numbers that make up most of Greendale while the audience tried to figure out what the hell it all meant.

The one bright moment was when Young sat down to play the beautiful song Bandit solo, but then it was back to Grandpa and his rocking chair and the perfect young symbol named Sun Green.

Eventually, after two deaths, one incarceration, a media frenzy and an odyssey to Alaska, everyone ended up on stage for the grand finale, in which anti-globalization eco-warriors danced like extras from a regional production of Hair and sang about saving the planet or being the ocean, or something.

Luckily, though, that wasn't the end of the show. After a bit of Young's movie Rust Never Sleeps was projected -- as if to remind us that he has always been a little off the wall -- the Greendale sets were covered up and Young and Crazy Horse came back out by themselves to give the people what they wanted: singalong oldies with lots of loud riffs, extended solos and jamming.

For one glorious hour they played supercharged versions of old favourites like Hey Hey My My, Powderfinger, Down By The River, Prisoners Of Rock And Roll, Cinnamon Girl and F*&#&$ing Up before it was time to leave. Those songs saved the evening, but many people still left scratching their heads at the antics of their musical hero.

JAM! Rating: 3 out of 5

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