August 4th, The Concert.

I parted ways with my father in mid afternoon on Tuesday, the night of the concert. I had spend the previous four days in North Bay with him and the visit went very well all things considered. He had to head back to North Bay for work the following day and I had the concert and the beginning of the long awaited trip the next day. Earlier in the day I thought for about a minute that I would not be able to take the trip. I had gone to the Greyhound station in Sudbury to claim my ticket to Vancouver which I had already purchased online. The man at the counter told me that they had a record of the purchase but the ticket had been erased and could not be recovered. We argued for a few minutes and eventually the man relented. He wrote out the ticket by hand and I was satisfied with this. I hoped I would not have to deal with this everywhere I went on this journey.
At about 7:45 PM I left the hotel to go to the arena for the concert. The main event was to be Randy Bachman and Burton Cummings, formerly of The Guess Who. I didnt have to wait long before they let us in, I noted that the apparent lack of security. When I had come in November to see Bob Dylan there were dozens of security people everywhere. I went to my seat and noticed half the floor was empty, and remained empty for the whole night. I looked at the areas I had sat at or stood at for previous events in this arena and remembered some things from those nights. I've been to more concerts in this arena than any other place. On the screens adjacent to the stage they were playing a video from the making of Bachman Cummings "Jukebox" album from a few years ago. Unfortunately the sound was too low to really understand much of it. The opening act was Booker T and the MG's, much to my surprise. Most of you have probably heard "Green Onions", even if you dont recognize the name. It was an early hit of theirs back in the 1960s. They played a forty five minute set and at the end Booker T handed a member of the audience a copy of their latest record. After about twenty minutes the main event started. They opened with an early Guess Who song, "Runnin' Back to Saskatoon". It was a pretty good show. They played stuff from the Guess Who, Bachman-Turner Overdrive and from Burton Cumming's solo career. I noticed Burton Cummings was wearing a t-shirt with an image of Jimi Hendrix on the front. Interesting choice. They played most of the hits, "No Time", "No Sugar Tonight/New Mother Nature", "Let it Ride", "Break it to them Gently" and the obligatory "These Eyes" and "American Woman". For "American Woman" there was an extended intro in which Cummings took quotes from several songs by The Doors. I remember seeing an interview of Cummings spoke of how on his first night in Los Angelas he met Jim Morrison and went on quite the adventure for a few hours. Cummings did most of the talking. He introduced "Hey You" as a 'song Randy wrote when he wasnt very fond of me'.
When they came back for the encore they each held one end of the Canadian flag for a few minutes before returning to their instruments. The final two songs were "Share the Land" and "Taking Care of Business". It was a very good concert. I never thought I'd get the chance to hear these songs performed by the people who wrote them and did them originally. I've heard a lot of them performed by bar bands but coming from those who wrote them is something special. I went back to the hotel and stayed up for about an hour before going to bed. It would be tree nights before I slept in a bed again.