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I had no intention of going to the inaugural and ultimate (read: first & final) Eden Fest at Mosport Park near Oshawa, Ontario, which is probably why I missed the first day*. I don’t recall exactly how it went down but I remember it started with a last-minute phone call from an acquaintance (I forget who it was but I remember that it wasn’t someone I knew very well at all) who told me his girlfriend (whom I had never met) had a couple of Eden Fest passes but needed a ride, did I want to go?
I’m sure I thought “why not?” but I think I just said “sure”. So on July 13th, 1996 I found myself in strange company for the four-hour drive to the festival.
It turns out she had media passes for some reason or other, and it also turns out she was kind of freaky. We got in after a bit of a rigamarole, set up a pair of tents on a dirty knoll and hit the music.
We probably hung out together, at least for a while; I don’t remember. I do remember seeing Live (I always pronounce it “live”, as in “I live in Ottawa”, which bugs people to no end – I’m a horrible person) and Porno For Pyros, who redeemed themselves after shocking me to my neo-hippie core the last time I saw them, at Woodstock ’94.
But of course I was there for The Tragically Hip, who were still solidly at the top of their game with the recent release of Trouble At The Henhouse following up what I consider to be their best album, 1994’s Day For Night.
The Hip were great in a festival setting; the crowd was always onside and became an integral part of the show, singing every word of the hits and screaming like it was 1975 Led Zeppelin. And then there was Gord Downie (1964-2017).
There were few people in the business who could project to and engage an audience of any size every single time and Gord was one of them. Apparently Freddie Mercury was the same – unfortunately I never got to see him. But this Gord Downie fellah, he could take the back row of any room, indoors or out and have them hanging on his every word. For those in the closer-up (as I was this night) his every move was a theatrical event, he was a lead guitarist without a guitar, a soloist of words and muse, and I could never, ever get enough of it.
The band played lots of heavy-hitters: Nautical Disaster, Fifty-Mission Cap, Fully Completely, and their brand-new hit Ahead By A Century, which had been working itself out of the New Orleans Is Sinking jam for years.
They closed the show with Little Bones and Gord Downie somehow held his own against the hyped crowd who shouted every lyric at him with loud, drunken glee. Afterwards I did some trolling around before finding my way back to my zippered home-for-the-night. I hadn’t seen my travelling companion in some time but I found her back at our campsite shamelessly tongue-tying with some young buck. I cracked a beer and went to bed, feeling only a bit sorry for her boyfriend.
Thank ye gods we weren’t sharing a tent.
*That would have been my only time seeing The Cure, but alas, we weren’t there yet.
Todd Man Out 