Hot Summer

Just in time for summer, there are lots of activities to celebrate the Canada Day long week-end down by Harbourfront. On Sunday and Monday, I spent a couple of hours by the lake to enjoy the festivities.

It's great that they have turned their large parking lot into a "park" called Canada Square. Although park might be stretching it. Certainly there were some trees and greenery, but it was mostly concrete (even if they were walkways) and artificial grass. You can't plant trees in fake grass and thus, you don't have much shade. So while there were some spectators for Chloe Charles set, they stayed far away from the stage, squirrelled up under whatever cool shadows could be found. She sang allusive and poetical indie pop with a touch of urban ornamentation. Though her tendency to structure most songs as a repeating sequence of plaintive, acoustic passage followed by loud, beat-heavy chorus got a bit tiresome.

If you wanted to dance and move your feet, Son Ache provided lively music from Latin America: salsa, meringue, rumba. Though most just tapped their feet, some did shake and groove, including a lady who was pushing 70. On the other hand, if you were older and in a nostalgic mood, a big band was playing on the main stage: Glenn Miller, Louis Armstrong (Just A Gigolo), Andrew Sisters (Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy), and the ubiquitous "Sing, Sing, Sing" (Benny Goodman).

On Canada Day, the 20-piece Motown tribute band The Big Sound took the stage. Given how long this has gone on for them, obviously the band would want to change their repertoire and not play the same old songs. But given that most here today would not have seen them previously at The Great Hall, it was surprising that almost 1/3 of their songs would not be familiar to a casual Motown fan. But all were catchy, prompting more and more people to stand up and dance (especially as the big hits were played) as the set went on. At each show, there has always been 1-2 singers that really set the stage on fire. Previously, it was Maylee Todd doing Michael Jackson and lately Tanika Charles has been killing with Aretha Franklin. Today, Gary Beales as James Brown got people cheering and standing up for his take on It's A Man's World.