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Speak Up

All sales pitches and clichés aside, the Donald was correct.

When the king of Canadian promoters strolled out onto the field on the Thursday before the big show at Magnetic Hill, with his big grin and sunglasses, he predicted the concert would go down in history and people would be talking for a long time about where they were when the Eagles played in Moncton.

Of course he was stating the obvious and spinning it into hype. That's what promoters do.

But as I walked into the kitchen Monday afternoon and found my better half sitting at the table slicing up newspaper articles from the Times & Transcript's concert edition and placing them neatly into scrapbooks, I wondered how many other people were doing the same thing.

We in the newspaper business seem to live for the moment, chronicling history as it happens on a daily basis. We capture the facts, the thoughts, the feelings, the emotions and the images of people at their best and their worst, put it on paper and distribute it to thousands of homes.

Some days the daily paper gets used to line the cat's litter box. Other days it becomes a treasure trove of memories for people like the 55,000 that gathered at the hill last weekend for the Eagles, John Fogerty, KT Tunstall and Sam Roberts.

The Times & Transcript had a full staff of reporters at the concert, two photographers on the site and another in an airplane to shoot the crowd from above. We came up with enough stories, photos and quotes to fill more than 24 pages of Monday's newspaper. I won't go into all the rules and regulations imposed on us by the promoters, but let's just say the media doesn't have as much freedom or access as they'd like to have at events like this.

I was asked the other day whether I got a chance to meet or interview any of the bands backstage. The answer is a distinct no. We in the media certainly don't have the freedom to wander past the yellow shirts and knock on the stars' dressing room door.

These days, you hardly get invited anymore. Back in 1993, I was invited backstage at the Shediac concert to interview the one and only Meat Loaf. And in 1999 I was ushered into the presence of the great Peter Frampton. We had a great chat as he nibbled on his poached salmon. I also got into a soccer game with the boys from Def Leppard in front of the stage at the Coliseum after interviewing the one-armed Rick Allen, but that's another story.

The closest brush with greatness last weekend came around 4 p.m., when this guy with long, stringy blonde hair breezed out of the security gate from the backstage area and rushed past our media tent. He was wearing an Eagles tour jacket with the collar pulled up around his chin and carrying a bunch of clipboards under his left arm. Could it be? I wondered. Nah. His hair's too long. But he does look like a skinny Gerard Depardieu. Hmm. Oh well, he's gone now. When I saw him onstage a few hours later I was convinced. Yep. I'm sure it was Joe Walsh running around, semi-incognito.

Just another concert memory.

Anyway, the point I was trying to get to was that these big shows are true events for Metro Moncton and all us music fans. Unlike big shows in huge markets like Toronto or elsewhere, these shows really are important to the fans and the local economy. People get excited about them. They talk about it for months, wonder how ticket sales will be, who will be there, why aren't there bigger names and -- most of all -- who will come next year?

According to Donald Tarlton's other promise, the Magnetic Hill Music Festival is here to stay.

It's going to be an annual event and an international event, something we can plan for and look forward to. I keep hearing that promoters from all over the place are impressed with the way we put on a show Maritime Kitchen Party style.

The festival has had some issues, but they are being worked on.

I suggest people who have real complaints or concerns make them known, not just grumble about them, and offer suggestions that will help fix the problems.

Everywhere I go, people still talk about their experiences at the Rolling Stones concert of 2005.

And, as The Donald predicted, they will probably be talking for many moons about the day the Eagles landed in Moncton.

It doesn't matter if you were disappointed with one band or surprised with the quality of another. Losing a shoe or a cell phone in the mud becomes part of the story.

What matters is that we did it.

We put on a big show without problems and we have the memories to prove it.

They can never take that away from us.

n Alan Cochrane is an editor-at-large with the Times & Transcript. His column appears each Friday. He can be reached by e-mail at cochrana@timestranscript.com