"How bad can it be?"After the wonderful concert with Sheryl Crow and Brad Paisley on Tuesday night, we returned to Scène Bell on Wednesday night to hear the evening's performers. Lesson #1: If you've never heard of the performer before, do a little research. In this case, the performer was someone named Madeon and he fell into the "electronic" musical genre. Alison and I were familiar with neither the person nor the genre, so we shrugged our shoulders and said "let's check it out, how bad can it be?" In short: ridiculously bad. Our first clue that something was amiss was when we queued up at the main entrance and all entrants were being frisked by security, a pat-down from shoulders to knees looking for (I can only assume) weapons. Undaunted (we should have been daunted), we went in anyway. The music wasn't music -- it was noise, and it was deafening beyond comprehension. The "performer" was a single person on stage with a small mixing board with dials and buttons. He "performed" by occasionally pushing a button or twisting a dial, which served to modulate the (still deafening) noise in indiscriminate ways. We stayed for about 10 minutes, then Alison looked over and me and said "let's go get some ice cream." On the way out of the concert, we passed one of those portable lights providing illumination to an otherwise dark portion of the park. The light was powered by a diesel generator that gave off a thrum that was downright soothing compared to the electronica that was still thumping in the background. For the record, there were thousands of young people amassed at the front of the stage, waving their arms, jumping up and down and, somehow, singing along with the music. You'd think that The Beatles had reunited and were singing Let It Be. I don't get it. The SelfiesWe returned to Tutto Gelato on Rue Saint Jean, to recover from our disturbing concert experience. Tidbit
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Light on photosWe are very light on photos for yesterday, so to compensate I've provided an extra long title for this post, all of it true of course. In the afternoon, Alison gave a haircut to Amélie, our neighbor. For the record, this was her first haircut to a native Québecois. She had given a haircut to our neighbor Gaye from Lexington, but that didn't count. Frankly, I'm surprised that Alison had lasted three weeks without giving a haircut. After work, we sat on the patio behind the apartment and shared wine, cheese, meats and stories with Amélie. She's got many such stories. As I've said before, there is so much to Amélie that I wouldn't even know where to begin. After dinner, we headed to Scène Bell for our first full concert, start to finish. Sheryl Crow provided the opening act; Brad Paisley the main event. Compared to the previous evening (Alessia Cara and Selena Gomez), this audience definitely skewed older, with lots of cowboy hats and fewer piercings (they seem to be mutually exclusive). We expected Sheryl Crow to give a solid concert and she did not disappoint. Having never been to a country music concert, I didn't know what to expect from Brad Paisley. In short, he was a consummate entertainer: strong singing voice and virtuosic on the guitar, with an easy, informal rapport with the audience. His performance was terrific and we stayed to the very end. The SelfiesLying in the grass at the concert... Tidbit #1The United States and Canada are very similar in many respects. For example:
But then, of course, there are guns and gun violence. Those statistics look like this:
Triple the guns, triple the murders. The answer to the gun violence in the United States is simple: Fewer guns in the hands of fewer, better vetted and trained people will reduce gun violence. Tidbit #2You might be wondering about that naked lady mentioned in the title of the post. Yesterday morning, Amélie knocked on our door and asked if we had heard anything unusual during the night. It turns out that during the night, a woman had somehow driven her car through the thick, steel chain that cordons off the parking lot behind the apartment, and was found early in the morning passed out in her damaged car. Alas, when pressed, Amélie admitted that the woman was in her underwear, but here in "boring" Québec, that counts for naked.
There and back with a stop in betweenYesterday, Alison took her longest bike ride yet, spending 5-6 hours out and about along the riverfront with stops here and there. One of her stops was at the Marche Vieux Port, where she took pictures of some impressive root vegetables but dined on a sausage with sauerkraut. After she returned from her bike ride and I finished work, we laid in bed and continued to listen to an audio book of The Nature of the Beast, from the Québecois author Louise Penny. Unfortunately, at least one of us tends to fall asleep when we listen, so we wind up backtracking a lot. After listening, we had dinner on the back terrace. Alison prepared a mean pork chop with asparagus and mashed sweet potato. It was excellent, and a welcome change from the many meals out we've had. After dinner, we headed back to Scéne Bell to hear two musical artists: Alessia Cara from Ontario and Selena Gomez, the American pop singer. The 20-year old Alessia Cara was excellent: poised and confident and backed by a minimal band. She took the stage in jeans, sneakers and a tie dye t-shirt, had no special effects, but a clear and wonderful singing voice. The 24-year old Selena Gomez, by contrast, was disappointing. The performance was heavy on American-style spectacle and bombast, but the vocals had so much processing layered on that Alvin the Chipmunk could have been singing and you wouldn't have known the difference. In fact, I'm pretty sure that we were listening to pre-recorded vocals, since the vocals continued smoothly even when the hand-held microphone was nowhere near her mouth. About 30 minutes into Selena's set, Alison felt the early twinges of a sauerkraut hangover and so we hustled back to the apartment. She's now snuggled in bed, sleeping late and slowly recovering. The SelfiesPeople have complained about the lack of selfies recently, so we took these two. I'm not sure why they are dark and fuzzy. Tidbit #1
Here, there and everywhereWe ended our last Sunday in Québec City with the best concert yet at Scène Bell. Cœur de pirate is the stage name of Béatrice Martin, a multi-talented musician from Québec: singer, songwriter, pianist and all-round vibrant and energetic performer. She was a real pleasure to watch. Before the concert, we dined at Les 3 Brasseurs on the Grand Allée, which was unfortunately situated within earshot of two different concert stages. Once you add in the music playing overhead at the restaurant itself, it was a very unwelcome cacophony of sound. We'll be avoiding the Grand Allée for the rest of this week for exactly that reason. Before dinner, we spent several hours at Le Bistro Plus, a bar and disco (we didn't dance) on Rue Saint Jean. We were there to watch the final match of the Euro 2016 soccer tournament. France lost to Portugal, 1-0, but since we were at a French bar with our French friend Amélie, listening to the French-language broadcast of the French national team playing in France itself, the complete French immersion was pretty neat. Before the soccer match, we toured the lobby of the Château Frontenac, the icon Québec hotel on the promenade. Before the hotel, we toured the underground ruins of the Château Saint Louis, home to the provincial governors until the last incarnation of the château burned down in the late 19th century, not to be rebuilt. PanoramaBéatrice asked everyone in the audience to use their smartphone flashlights. VideosTwo videos of Béatrice.
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Librairie or bibliothèque?In French, "librairie" means bookstore and "bibliothèque" means library. Whether you know a bit of French or not, you figure that out pretty quickly once you've wandered into one of them thinking it was the other. We took yesterday's wet weather as an opportunity to visit a couple of the local bibliothèques. Since a steep decline in the church-going population that started about fifty years ago, numerous churches have been converted for other purposes; library is one of the most popular. Our first stop was Maison de la littérature, just a few blocks from our flat. We've walked past it a dozen times, seeing from the outside a brightly illuminated white interior, and I was anxious to see the inside. It did not disappoint -- it was bright and spare and modern. Our second stop was at Bibliothèque Saint-Jean-Baptiste, on Rue Saint John. Unlike the first one, this library looked like someone had walked in yesterday, removed the pews, added books, and reopened the same day. The stained glass windows, altar and statuary remain in place. PanoramaA panorama of the library, taken from the former choir loft. Tidbit
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