Where to begin?

Taking the whole family on a 2-hour drive from Kitchener to Barrie for an all-day concert with 22 acts seemed like a natural enough idea - definitely worth the drive. However, after coming home late from UW Canada Day celebrations the night before, we didn't actually get on the road until after Tom Cochrane had already kicked off the show. So, we missed a handful of acts by the time we had parked in a farmer's field in Barrie, walked a couple kilometers to get in the North gate and followed the crowd back down to the grandstand. Nevertheless, we grabbed a great spot along the tree line, in the shade, and caught the introduction as Dan Ackroyd and Tom Green air-guitar'd the signature riff from Deep Purple's "Smoke On The Water".

What a great way to enjoy a concert - out in the open air, able to wander around to get a different vantage point. In fact, you could judge the popularity of each act by the clouds of dust stirred up down by the stage (the recent heat and lack of rain, plus the stomping of hundreds of thousands of feet, have left Park Place in Barrie somewhat of a dust bowl) as people raced to get a closer look. The Tragically Hip and Barenaked Ladies drew enough fans running to the front, that they didn't need fog machines - they had a cool dust cloud drifting onto the stage... The sound was great out in the park, even giving the satellite performances a "concert" sound. The Canadian crowd especially appreciated Pink Floyd and The Who appearing on the video screens from the London show.

Crowd favourites in Barrie? The Tragically Hip, Barenaked Ladies, Neil Young, and Gordon Lightfoot.

Musical Highlights:

Stephen Page and Barenaked Ladies were their usual spunky selves on stage, ripping through stellar versions of "Brian Wilson" and "If I Had A Million Dollars". Was it any surprise to see Page launch into "Tears Are Not Enough" to end their set? Nothing surprises with these guys, that's why we love 'em so much... Andy Creeggan shot video of the concert and the crowd, to send back to the children he recently visited in Tanzania, and Ed Robertson bid farewell by saying "We're Barenaked Ladies, and you're Barrie".

There couldn't have been a more pleasant day for an outdoor show, sunny and warm, not blistering hot like most of June has been. I know there will be a lot of screams in the shower Sunday morning as those many proud, bare-chested males realize they really should have considered some SPF 45.

Even after the show was over, and we made the 2km walk again to find our car in the farmer's field, we had no choice but to wait 75 minutes to get out of the parking lot (who's responsible for the design of this venue, anyway?), but at least many of the folks in the parking lot, er... field, had the right attitude, and took the wait as only a mild inconvenience. There was plenty of friendly chatting, and even the chance for last-minute T-shirt sales. Some folks came prepared - I saw a keg or two being tapped in the back of mini-vans to the delight of the still-singing Barrie concert lovers. Too bad that some of those folks had to pull over on highway 400 to give back the beer they enjoyed so much an hour earlier...

And whew! That was a close one, when a sudden lane change left our car squeezed between the curb and a recklessly-driven ice-cream truck - maybe I'll boycott Space Pops for the rest of the summer in quiet protest...

The crowd at Live 8 Barrie was a truly Canadian one - there was no pushing or shoving, and plenty of polite respect for those around us, except for the raunchy-sweet smell of the "wacky tobacky" that continually drifted on the breeze, no matter where in the park you sat or wandered.

Hershey representatives wandered the field with cooler bags filled with a new kind of chocolate bar, tossing bars at everyone ready to accept free food. Friendly conversations sparked spontaneously in the line-ups for the portable toilets, and even the dancing concert-lovers were considerate about respecting the blanketed land claims made by those who were absent, either buying bottled water or hot dogs, or over-priced T-shirts. Passers-by offered to take photos so that couples could pose together in front of the huge Live 8 graphics on either side of the stage (good marketing was in full supply at Live 8 - the slogan decorating the stage read "We don't want your money - we want your voice").

At only one point did the crowd throw politeness to the wind and voice a decisively collective opinion - during the introduction of Celine Dion, performing live via satellite from Las Vegas. Loud boos seemed to take hosts Dan Akroyd and Tom Green by legitimate surprise, and they tried their best to defend her honour while continuing the introduction. But the crowd was obviously unimpressed by Celine's appearance via satellite, figuring that this event was important enough for her to forego a Vegas show or two to hop on a private jet and fly to a Live 8 location to perform in person. Sorry, Dan and Tom, it appears that Celine may no longer be considered a Canadian treasure by the country she left behind to set up her flashy show in the desert...

Once the show was over, and the crowds had fled Park Place, what remained was a sad sight - garbage and empty water and beer bottles blanketed the field. I was struck by one thought - are these the right people to be expected to effect a world change? They can't even take responsibility for their own trash... But not to worry, they played their part simply by coming out and enjoying themselves.

Without 9 simultaneous concerts in 9 cities around the world (plus Peter Gabriel's Eden concert, entirely lined with African entertainers), without 2 million people attending these concerts, there would be no world television event. The big ticket for Live 8 was television coverage, blasting into comfortable homes around the world, to people in a position to immediately log onto the live 8 website (www.live8live.com) and register their names on the Live 8 petition for the attention of our world leaders.

If Sir Bob Geldof knows anything, he knows that it's next to impossible to get millions of people to give up something of their own for the benefit of those less fortunate. This time around, all he asked was for people to give a minute of their time to type their name onto a web page. The concert-goers today were just a piece in the entertainment puzzle (man, I feel so used...). Look at it this way - in the weeks leading up to July 2nd, even with all the media coverage and hype, less than 200,000 people had signed the Live 8 petition. But after a day of television coverage, broadcasting over 100 acts performing across the world, the list of names on the Live 8 petition had exceeded 25 million.

So it would certainly appear that Sir Geldof achieved his goal of gaining world attention for the cause. Maybe he was hoping for even more names on the petition, and we won't know until the leaders meet, whether it was enough. But in the end, how else do you grab the attention of enough people to justify a hope for change? To convince the leaders of our wealthy nations to listen up and talk about this problem? To encourage the comfortable consumers of fast-food and satellite TV to get off their collective butts and give a little bit of their attention? The secret? Television entertainment... and musical television at that.

I hope we really did make poverty history today. And as Dan Ackroyd said in Barrie, in response to criticism that these concerts were self-indulgent and misdirected - "Will we tell our children that we did nothing, or that we did something?" We definitely did something today.