TORONTO - Some concepts are far better in theory than they are in practice.

Case in point, Wednesday night's Canadian all-star reenactment of Neil Young's seminal 1971 album, Live At Massey Hall, as part of the Luminato arts festival.

Without the great man himself - newsflash he's touring in Europe - his music is so personal, so uniquely him, that it truly cries out for the Young touch most of the time.

But it was as if the sold-out audience kept expecting the 63-year-old Toronto-born singer-songwriter to suddenly appear from behind the curtain, walk out on stage and sling a guitar over his shoulder and make history all over again.

If only.

Yes, everyone's intentions here were good - let's celebrate a great songwriter's breakthrough work with some of Canada's best artists. But let's be honest - wouldn't it be a lot better if it was the actual songwriter doing the celebrating?

So it went for close to three hours at Massey Hall with an uneven mix of performances, which proved to be nonetheless crowd pleasing if less than memorable.

Call it Nearly Neil.

Most of the artists were backed by the excellent house band Sister Euclid made up of intense guitarist Kevin Breit - love this guy! - bassist Ian deSouza, drummer Gary Taylor and organist Rob Gusevs.

The standout performers proved to be those capable of making Young's songs truly their own like Danny Michel's echoey, drum-looped take on Helpless and Jason Collett's playful and inventive version of See The Sky About To Rain, which included him doing a little hip-shaking dance on stage and getting the audience to make rain and thunder noises with their hands and feet.

"Don't be so Toronto about it," Collett chided when the crowd was initially not participating as much as he would have liked.

Also good was Cowboy Junkies' harder-edged Don't Let It Bring You Down, with a special shout-out to guitarist Michael Timmins work; Roxanne Potvin's sly, upbeat country music take on Bad Fog of Loneliness; Chocolate Genius Inc.'s piano and strings version of The Needle and The Damage Done; Harry Manx's bluesy slide acoustic guitar rendition of Down By The River, which saw him in a fiery guitar battle with Breit, and master blues guitarist Colin Linden's Dance Dance Dance.

Somewhere in the middle was Steven Page belting out Journey Through The Past, the female pop vocal trio of Kathryn Rose, Emilie-Clarie Barlow and Melanie Doane's version of Cowgirl In The Sand, Carol Pope's take on Ohio, which I had the highest of hopes for but didn't quite deliver, and Sarah Slean's show-ending I Am Child featuring just her on piano.

Less successful were Holly Cole's oversung version of Old Man, Colin James' reggae take on Heart Of Gold, Belle and Sebastian's Stevie Jackson's plaintive, stripped-down A Man Needs A Maid, and the clunky all-star finale addition of Only Love Can Break Your Heart.

Truthfully, many of these singers seemed nervous to be singing these iconic songs and I can't say I blame them.

The concert began in a pretty laid-back fashion with the Bill Frissell Trio performing On The Way Home followed by Tony Scherr's Tell Me Why and didn't really ignite until Michel trotted out his bag of tricks.

It was if he understood the only way to cover Young is to come at it sideways.

As for host Matt Wells of MuchMoreMusic fame, he went from irritating (does anyone care that he learned to play bass on Keep On Rockin' In The Free World?), to informative (his actual stories about how the songs came to be were really interesting).

And his interviews with some of the artists didn’t always work, like when Issa (formerly known as Jane Siberry) - who had the most out-there performance of the night on There’s A World which included spoken word lyrics from two songs on Young’s Greendale album - challenged him.

Other chats went far smoother like when Page described loading up on potato salad in between Jonathan Richman and Michael Stipe at Young's ranch near San Francisco after playing The Bridge Benefit.

Still, Wells had a thankless job: keeping the audience entertained during musician changeovers and then there was a 20-minute intermission for what was already proving to be a long night.

The concert was taped for broadcast on CBC Radio 2 on June 29: Judge for yourself.