Young and the Jets

Corey was in Lethbridge on Sunday and we had the chance to hang out the local watering hole and discuss hockey and watch the afternoon games on a big screen while quaffing pints of Guiness on tap. Good times.

Naturally with the Jets home opener on the tube, the subject of our conversation eventually turned to them, and Corey mentioned that Neil Young was involved with one of the other 'Welcome Back Jets' type of ceremonies.

I'm not the biggest Neil Young fan, and when I was younger I was openly dismissive of the folk rocker. Then in 1993, I saw this video of Neil Young and Pearl Jam blitzing the MTV music awards and my opinion changed forever.

When I asked if Corey had seen it, he said 'nope' - so here it is, IMO the greatest Neil Young moment ever recorded.

Here's my breakdown of it's awesomeness;

- Neil's had some great bands to back him up in his life time, but he has never had a band with more sheer muscle than the grunge gods Pearl Jam.

- I'm fairly certain that for the purposes of this performance Pearl Jam's drummer has been possessed by the soul of 'Animal' from the Muppet Show. At no time is his face ever visible through the flailing hair.

- The bands before Neil and Pearl Jam were your normal collection of fake pop music acts. Neil and the band arrive like a slab of raw meat on the stage. The contrast could not have been more stark.

- Like Bruce Springsteen's 'Born in the USA', 'Keep on Rockin' in the Free World' sounds like an anthem, but has the lyrics of an ironic protest song. It was Neil's giant 'FU' to the first President Bush, and he gets to deliver this middle-finger on a well-watched MTV special and backed up by one the world's most famous bands.

- Eddie Vedder (charismatic lead singer of Pearl Jam) doesn't get a lot of face-time other than one extended set of vocals, and some backup. He doesn't play guitar so for most of the song he bounces his head and gazes at his shoes. On a related note, there is a brand of alternative pop music that relies on long droning guitar segments and minimal lyrics that is called 'shoegazer' for precisely this kind of behavior from its performers.

- Neil gets not one, not two, but three extended guitar solos. The final one being the kind of feedback drenched squealing characteristic of punk acts like Sonic Youth, and simply not what one would expect from a folk musician. Neil proves again that there are no tools in the toolbox he hasn't mastered.

- Neil was already world famous and rich when the members of Pearl Jam were born, yet he is more relaxed and mobile than Vedder by an order of magnitude. Neil looks like he could play forever, while Vedder looks like he may have OD'd on valium.

- Mutton chops baby! This is pre X-men movies, and yet Neil is killing it Wolverine style in a way Hugh Jackman can never hope to achieve.

- In guitar solo #2 Neil and the Pearl Jam axman get into a bit of cock-measuring. Something tells me the guitar player for PJ will be showing this clip to his grandkids with a giant smile splitting his face.

- Having smacked the piss out of the audience in a way that can't ever be repeated, they proceed to smash their instruments. These pieces of wood and metal have achieved the pinnacle - better to destroy them at the top of their game.

- Vedder proves he has both a sense of humour and rythym - when the chaos starts at the end of the song, Vedder whips the mike-stand up in a high arc and slams it repeatedly on the stage - in time to the music. Once the chaos is complete, he takes a piece of the mike stand and just hands it someone in the crowd. Thanks Eddie!

- In the pull back shot that ends the video you can see that roughly a third of the audience had just seen the most incredible live performance they were ever likely to in their entire lives and this crushing fact has blown all the synapses in the brains - these are the ones jumping up and down, crying and cheering. Another third was talking and milling around animated by what they had seen. Perhaps asking their neighbour 'who is this Neil Young guy playing with Pearl Jam? He's not bad'. The remaining third are too stunned at hearing live music for the first time in their lives to adequately process the event.