JAIMIE VERNON – Old Man Take A Look At Your Life

I’m about to go off on a diatribe involving Neil Young (quelle surprise). If you’re a fan of Shaky you best leave this blog, get out your gatefold vinyl copy of ‘Harvest’ – yeah, the one you used to separate your weed seeds on and is stained with hash oil – click on a black light and tune out. This note’s definitely not for you.

Last week Neil Young – a Canadian that hasn’t lived in Canada since 1967 – decided to come home to play a few shows in an effort to raise money and awareness about (among other things) global warming, carbon footprints, fossil fuel, Corporate Oil gluttony, and the rape & pillage of land that Canada’s national people were handed in antiquated treaties back when White Man’s Guilt was an honourable profession for enterprising transplanted Euro-Dandy’s.

At face value it’s not hard to agree that there’s some egregious criminal behaviour being implemented in the name of Big Business and the Harper Government under the guise of Free Trade and capitalism. It’s not a Canadian phenomenon. Every industrialized nation has had to steam-roll the locals in order to create industries that will, hopefully, support a larger economic plan for the entire nation. In war they call it collateral damage. But that was back in the day when Everyman was a watchdog and no heinous suppression of human rights went unpunished come election time.  Hell, even Winston Churchill lost his seat as Prime Minister immediately after helping to win the Second World War because his very efforts plunged Britain into an economic spiral that some say they have never recovered from (though the Beatles did manage to prop it up for about a decade).

But back to Neil. It seems that after his failure to launch a new Crazy Horse tour in 2013 due to the illness of one of its members left Neil scrambling to fill his idle schedule with something, anything, he could use to generate some cash for his ongoing inventions: LincVolt – the dinosaur Lincoln Continental with the heart of a compost heap; Pono – the high rez audio format that everyone apparently raves about but no one wants to invest in because, like, the MP3 has already been invented and who the hell wants ANOTHER new format?; and his toy train set. Yes, Neil co-owns Lionel Trains and has his name on seven patents related to same.

Neil’s ‘Honor the Treaties Tour’ named after the American-based http://www.honorthetreaties.org was his vehicle (pun intended) for giving the First Nations a voice on the issue of the Alberta tarsands and what those tarsands have done to them and their land; The Athabasca Chipewyan claim that, depending on the time of the year, 80% their land is inaccessible due to oilsands development and assert that if growth in the region continues, Canada won’t be able to meet its commitment of a 17% reduction of carbon pollution from 2005 levels by 2020.

It’s a topic that has polarized the Left and the Right in Canada and even President Barack Obama has waffled endlessly on approving the northern link to the Keystone pipeline that will pump Canadian oil through both Canada and the USA’s heartland.

Neil quickly earned the ire of Prime Minister Harper’s office – a rare occasion as Harper never responds to his critics through the media. http://www.torontosun.com/2014/01/12/feds-respond-to-neil-young-anti-oilsands-tour . Neil got everyone’s hackles up. Well, except the oil industry who’ve heard all of this before from bigger and more influential people than a Hippie living in a canyon in California. They offered, not once, but twice to sit down with Neil and the First Nations reps to discuss the issues. Neil turned them down – giving no discernible or reasonable explanation. And this is where my skeptic Spidey sense went into over drive.

Seriously, Neil? You instigate a national discussion on oil and the rights of First Nations people but when confronted with a chance to get past the rhetoric and actually open a meaningful dialogue, you balk? Is that because you have no actual strategy or that your polemic ad-homonym diatribe looks better as a press release?

Just an angry mountain man who opened the newspaper one day to find out that the country you once lived in has changed…for the worse? Your traveling sideshow raised $500,000 so the people could fight their fight in court. A noble gesture…if that was your intent. But you brought along an arsenal of celebrity guests to prop up your public profile. A lot of hobnobbing with stars (Diana Krall, Elvis Costello, actress Daryl Hannah) took place but you know what we didn’t see? Any First Nations artists voicing their concern/support or even performing on those shows.

Where was Buffy Sainte- Marie, Tom Jackson, Susan Aglukark, Celyne Gaspe, Mishi Donovan, Shingoose (Curtis Jonnie), Kevin Locke, Kaibah, or even a reformed Kashtin or maybe Neil’s old friend Robbie Robertson of The Band or even fellow canyon girl Rita Coolidge (who is Cherokee)? It seems Neil was only concerned about profiling Neil. The $500,000 was a year’s worth of Neil’s royalty cheques. He could have handed the First Nations band that money over dinner.

So, I call bullshit, Mr. Young. Cause now you’re going to head back to California while Rolling Stone magazine does another story on you – speculating on when the next CSNY reunion will occur. That will keep you in the public consciousness until your next album comes out. Or your fourth attempt at a workable biofuel car is patented. Or you gouge your fans for grossly over-inflated concert ticket prices because you refuse to have any corporation under-write your expenses. At least when you pissed off people living in Alabama, Lynyrd Skynyrd wrote a decent response song. Leave saving the world to diplomats and the Geldofs. Even Bono knows how long he must sing the song. So, shut up and sing a damn song, Neil. It’s apparently what you do best.

Send your CDs for review to this NEW address: Jaimie Vernon, 4003 Ellesmere Road, Toronto, ON M1C 1J3 CANADA

=JV=

Jaimie’s column appears every Saturday.

Contact us at: dbawis@rogers.com

Jaimie “Captain CanCon” Vernon has been president of the on again/off-again Bullseye Records of Canada since 1985. He wrote and published Great White Noise magazine in the ‘90s, has been a musician for 35 years, and recently discovered he’s been happily married for 17 of those years. He is also the author of the Canadian Pop Music Encyclopedia and a collection of his most popular ‘Don’t Believe A Word I Say’ columns called ‘Life’s A Canadian…BLOG’ both of which are available at Amazon.com or http://www.bullseyecanada.com