Fans go along for ride to Young's town

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"That was the weirdest thing I've ever seen," said one of the thousands of dazed and confused Neil Young fans who poured out of Merriweather Post Pavilion in Columbia, Md., Wednesday night. "Weird. But cool."

That seemed to be the general assessment of the devoted tribe that turned out to see the schizophrenic troubadour and his garage-band buddies in Crazy Horse roll out Mr. Young's latest: a sort of countrified rock opera, complete with actors, theatrical sets, production numbers, costume changes and giant video screens.

The production is a musically driven story of drugs, murder and environmentalism set in Greendale, a fictional small town that Mr. Young unfolds, song by song.

The story, not surprisingly considering the erratic nature of some of Mr. Young's more exotic projects in the past, is an incomprehensible mess. There's a beautiful teenage girl, a cheerleader who wants to see the world. There's a drug dealer who kills a cop. There's a tall cowboy who rescues the girl. Then they leave for Alaska in a rattling old pickup to keep the oil companies from raping the wilderness.

The vignettes, with actors lip-syncing dialogue sung by Mr. Young, unfolded in and around the band, off the side and on an elevated stage that rose magically behind the drum riser. At one point, the devil himself, in a bright red jacket and bright red shoes, shimmied across the stage in a kind of modified Bob Fosse jazz number.

The 10-song cycle wraps up with almost 50 people -- including Mr. Young; Crazy Horse; an air-guitar band pretending to be Crazy Horse; stripping police officers; people carrying flags; and dozens of dancers, backup singers and actors -- onstage, jumping up and down, waving their arms and singing some sort of "We Are the World"-style eco-anthem. The only thing missing was Quincy Jones.

"Save the planet for another day," Mr. Young pleaded over and over, and heck, who can argue?

No one, to be sure, in Merriweather Post, where the tribe roared its approval by standing long and yelling loud -- never mind those, like my companion, who wondered if the crowd's enthusiasm for the apparent finale was in any way related to the fact that it was, so obviously, a finale.

If the story was something of a joke -- it's Neil Young ... who knows? -- the music, fortunately, was not.