081692 Bryan Adams/Steve Miller/Extreme/Sloan/Sass Jordan, Shediac, NB

On August 16th, 1992 (Elvis Day, doncha know) I joined tens of thousands of my fellow east-coasters for a time out at Parlee Beach in Shediac, New Brunswick.

(Though I was born in Toronto I spent enough of my formative years in Moncton to forever consider myself an east-coaster, and though when I’m asked nowadays I invariably respond that I’m from Ottawa, at the time I mistakenly thought that my sojourn to the nation’s capital was going to be as temporary as my university career. It wasn’t.)

The event was an all-day concert starring Bryan Adams, with Steve Miller, Extreme, Sass Jordan, Sloan and the Arc Angels rounding out the bill.  I found a posse of people to go with: my friend and co-worker from the warehouse days Danny Desire and a bunch of his friends.  

(His name is actually Daniel Desireé Joseph Cormier, but once I found out his middle name was Desireé to me he became forever and always known as Danny Desire.)

We all piled into a minivan for the twenty minute ride to the beach.  The show wasn’t actually on the beach – though I once saw The Beach Boys on the beach in Shediac – but being such a notorious cottage town I can only think of going to Shediac as ‘going to the beach’.  There was a huge line getting off the highway but no matter, this was the east coast; everybody was happy and friendly and we all got in with nary a horn honking, unless it was to let someone go ahead.

We parked on a grassy field, chugged a few road pops and headed into the makeshift venue.  We had missed the Arc Angels; Sass Jordan was on stage when we got in.  We spent her set finding a spot we could all agree on and sussing the place out.  I remember everything running pretty smooth – though I doubt I had much use of anything besides the porta-potties and the beer lines – and there was a huge crowd in there, maybe 30,000 people.

This was my first time hearing Sloan and it remains my only time seeing them.  It was pretty punky/heavy and none of the people around me had any time for them whatsoever.  I remember really liking the band, and I was happily surprised that such an edgy group was being included in such a radio-friendly festival.

This was the second time I had seen Extreme and while I liked the show it wasn’t nearly the mind-blowing experience I had when I saw them open for ZZ Top.  I was certainly farther back than last time, and stuck as they were in the middle of a five-band day perhaps I was a bit entertainment-weary for their set, or it could be that I was starting to develop an internal cheese-detector.  I do recall wondering aloud why Nuno Bettencourt had to keep playing from the top of a riser behind the drummer.  Still, I had a good time and enjoyed the hits. 

Speaking of enjoying the hits…Steve Miller!  This was my first time seeing the Space Cowboy (can I call him that?) and I loved it.  He’s a seasoned professional and he knows what the crowd wants to hear.  He played every song you could name and he played them all well.

The last act was Bryan Adams.  My cheese-detector had by this time grown big enough for me to have been long finished with Mr. Adams and his catchy three-chord rockers, but this show set me straight.  Like almost every other act of the day, this was the first time I had seen Bryan Adams in concert and he absolutely blew me away.  In no time he had me eating out of his hand and singing along with every word I could remember, and probably quite a few that I couldn’t.

By the time he got to Summer Of ’69 I was in such a froth that the song sounded like an anthem.  

Thinking back I find I am left with two conflicting memories.  I believe this was the Bryan Adams show I saw where he did one of his songs from a small satellite stage near the back of the crowd, which placed him right in front of me.  In my mind I can see him playing just a dozen feet away in the pouring rain.

However I have pictures somewhere of the afterparty we went to at someone’s cottage right after the show.  Like I said, Shediac is cottage country and no doubt someone in our crew had a cottage there (or at least their parents did).  We were burning lobster traps in the bonfire (Shediac is, after all, the lobster capital of the entire world).  I remember our host insisting they only cost $5 each and that they burned them all the time.

I wanna tell you, when you throw an old lobster trap onto a bonfire the thing burns.  They just instantly burst into flames and whilst they burn fast they retain their unique shape for a surprisingly long time.  Though it’s the only time I think I ever witnessed (or heard of) a good old lobster trap burn it instantly seemed so very Canadian.

The thing is, in my memory (and in the pictures) it’s not raining.  And would we have been having a bonfire if it had just poured down an hour before?  I doubt it.

So either the whole satellite stage bit is from another Adams concert – or it was indeed from this show and I’m mistaken about the rain – or the cottage memories are from a different night entirely.

Or it could be that we are indeed living a Matrix-like hallucinatory existence and I am merely experiencing another glitch in my computer code.  

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