Sun shines on Moncton
Published Monday June 29th, 2009
Hot sun gives show a laid back but happy vibe as 33,000 pack the hill
Rock and Roll saves lives.
OK, that may be overstating things a bit, but the T-shirt slogan spotted down front at the Magnetic Hill Concert Site Saturday night was onto something.
Rock and Roll may not save lives, but there are times when it makes life worth living, days when slush and sleet and paying bills and dragging yourself to work every day are a distant memory.
"It's summertime, right?" Jon Bon Jovi himself told his 33,000 newest friends. "We're in the Great White North. With girls in bikini tops. Drinking beer."
Jon knows. It's all about the music, but the music's only part of it. The summer kick-off to the 2009 Magnetic Hill Festival was bigger than the sum of its parts; a hot and sweaty and thick and breathing and throbbing living creature -- everything a summer music festival should be.
The sun blazed, the beer flowed, the shirts came off, the bands rocked and the crowd swelled into Atlantic Canada's first great party of the summer.
It was Bon Jovial. C'etait Bon Jovial.
That may be bad English and worse French, but "Bon" and "Jovial" are the best ways to describe it. It was really good and people were really happy.
And when Bon Jovi the band took the stage at 9 p.m., 33,000 fans were ecstatic, hundreds of them scrambling out of the beer garden to get closer to the stage.
When Bon Jovi the man took the stage, women screamed so loud it seemed that glass might shatter from the hill to Hillsborough.
It wasn't quite clear, but it appears the New Jersey rocker might be kind of sexy.
Andrea Wallace of Summerside, who confidently told a reporter she too was going to be a rock star some day, got to about 60 feet from Jon Bon Jovi and seemed to speak for every woman on the hill when she said, "I want to touch him so bad."
Down in front in the concert crush, the crowd was one organism with thousands of mouths singing in unison, thousands of pairs of eyes darting back and forth between the giant video screens and the living musicians on the stage.
Deprived of sight and hearing, you would have still known you were at a massive concert from its compound smell, 20 brands of sunscreen blended with sweat and bug spray, beer, perfume and that pink soap they dispensed at the Porta-Potty stations.
For all the excitement and magic Bon Jovi's performance brought to the day though, the event was a slow burn. Crowds were slow to arrive and the gulf between the lively beer garden and the dry zone of the concert site was more pronounced for this show. Even in the beer garden, things seemed a bit more laid back in the lazy heat.
The heat was great for beer sales, though. Moosehead Brewery president Andrew Oland, on hand for the show, said, "we were hoping to sell somewhere between 2,500 and 3,000 dozen. We had 3,500 dozen (42,000 cans & bottles) on site, and we had to go get some more."
Another 12,000 cans and bottles -- the concert was the coming out party for the new Moosehead Light Lime -- were brought to the site, but Oland was speaking late afternoon, so there may have been further beer runs after that. NB Liquor should have sales numbers later in the week.
At $7 a beer, the economic implications of the show and the weather were obvious. And a lot of the money went to a good cause and stayed in the community. United Way volunteers provided 120 of the staff, with their salaries going to the organization.
It was just a lot of beer moving through the site.
"We used 6,000 pounds of french fries," said Raymond Roberge of the Delta Beauséjour. The fresh-cut fries were a particular success Saturday, and Roberge says they plan to have 25,000 pounds on hand for AC/DC.
"It's hard to pour beer when you're jumping up and down," said Natalie Bourque from the Delta crew, talking about the fun to be had even for people who worked the concert.
And it was undeniably a fun summer day and night. When Bachman Cummings played the role of this year's John Fogerty, superstars of yesterday whose solid set reminded people talent never goes out of style, the concert really took off. American Woman got the attention of people right to the very tippy-top of the hill, and Taking Care of Business got everyone singing along.
No one was more excited about Bachman Cummings that Dylan Porter from Parrsboro. "I came to see them," Porter said. The 19-year-old has been a huge fan ever since he saw a Guess Who reunion concert in Halifax, back in 2000, when he was just 10 years old.
Speaking of young concert fans, there were more children at this weekend's concert than have been typically seen. Nine-year-old Tyler from Halifax (his parents asked that his last name not be published) was in his father's arms and getting a bit sleepy during Bon Jovi's set. Tyler proved a young man of few words when he was asked for his review of the day, but he did smile and give the whole day the thumbs up.
He was far from alone.
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OK, I take back what I said in my first post about not believing there were 33K present at the show. You have to admit that the numbers that the T&T get for some of these shows is pretty suspect though.