Update on the concerts

It's funny how fast time goes by when you are busy with life. I have a lot to catch up on, so I will post a few items to get my thoughts and recollections on the record.

Friday: Joel Plaskett concert

Philson and I took our time getting to the show because we weren't too excited to see Jenn Grant, the opening act, plus it had rained heavily all day and we weren't sure watching the show would be all that fun, standing in pouring rain. As it turned out, it stopped raining so we headed down to the Dartmouth Landing.

Unfortunately, we missed almost the entire set of Peter Elkas and his band. We only caught the last song for that set (which was really good) and then waited for over half an hour for Joel Plaskett to come on. The two opening acts must have only been on for less than 30 minutes each, because we weren't that late. Joel and his band put on a great show, with Peter Elkas helping out on the keyboard and guitar for some songs and Gordie Johnson (the producer of Joel's latest album), looking cool in black and a cowboy hat, added to the show by playing rhythm guitar.

The Emergency played almost all of the songs from the new album Ashtray Rock, which is good because it is full of good songs and it is a concept album, so to fully present the concept you kind of need to play at least most of the songs. They also played Bo Diddley's song near the end of the show (as they did last summer at the show for the Lunenburg Exhibition that Cheryl and I attended); I think Joel was really moved by his meeting Bo Diddley a while back. They slowly turned the Bo Diddley song into a tribute to the deceased Bob Switzer who owned Taz Records in Halifax. "Hey Bob Switzer" fits in nicely instead of "Hey Bo Diddley". They also played a Big Sugar tune, which was cool since that was Gordie Johnson's band, and finished the night with "Come On Teacher" and "True Patriot Love", two earlier hits for The Emergency. Overall, great show on an open-air stage and the weather held off just for the show, which was lucky for us.

I will post my thoughts on the other concerts in their own messages.