by Ricky Wilcox
The Quebec City Summer Festival knows how to put on a show. Stages everywhere, street performers, beer and wine, a huge lineup of stars and lesser known talent, and beer and wine...priorities people! We left town too early to catch Sting or, even better in my tarnished rock and roll book, KISS!-damn- but we did see a couple of great shows, some by accident due to my inability to read a weekly calendar in French ("wrong turns to adventure!'” as my friend Ginger would say). Hoping to see The Proclaimers, we hit the main stage only to be greeted by the bass throbbing boom boom of Jamaican dance hall music. Have The Proclaimers changed their direction? Too much delicious and powerful Canadian beer? Alas it was Sean Paul, apparently hugely popular (reinforcement of how out of touch I am) but very entertaining, and by far the biggest crowd we saw all week- it was slammin'. The production was stellar- beautiful sound and lights and ambiance. I went to a very helpful info booth (for ditzy Yanks) and was told the show I sought was the following night...so we made it back and finally saw The Proclaimers who sounded great but were oddly a bit mechanical...brothers Charlie and Craig stood about 30 feet apart and never really interacted at all (ah- family), but the huge video monitors flanking the stage did a nice blend of the two, making it appear they were standing side by side in perfect rock star harmony! It was still a happy moment for me. Then came the headliners, The Brian Setzer Orchestra, who pretty much started off by kicking ass and kept right on taking names. Of course, we left early to make sure we got to see the tight rope crossing at 11:30 pm, only to be rained out...again! Unfortunately, a lot of rain didn't help my chances at taking photos, my camera stayed bundled up in the ol' backpack a lot of the time.
