Posted by My first-ever trip to Montreal – to see a Bob Dylan concert at the old Forum – coincided with the ninth annual Montreal International Jazz Festival. I was not at all a fan of jazz at the time nor had I ever been to a music festival, but I was giddy to get in on both.
This was before the Place des Arts complex had been built; at the time the block along Ste. Catherine between Rue Jeanne-Mance and Rue Saint-Urbain was an empty, oblong park with a rolling, manicured lawn and a few small trees. The festival had stages set up on three corners of the park pointing in towards the green space and when one act ended another started up on another stage right away.
I remember people sitting on blankets, pulling beers and picnic lunches out of coolers and enjoying great music on a sunny day. And while I’m a big fan of arts centres and entertainment/theatre complexes I sure do look back on that park with pangs of nostalgia. Nowadays you couldn’t find a blade of grass anywhere on the whole block – now it’s all concrete and glass (all of which is in the service of the Place des Arts entertainment/theatre complex, but all concrete and glass just the same).
July 9th, 1988 was the final day of the burgeoning festival and Mick Taylor was the headliner of the day, playing a free show starting just before sunset. The former Rolling Stones guitarist was playing on a different stage altogether, this one facing up the slope of Ste. Catherine from the corner of Bluery Street, directly in front of The Spectrum. I had recently begun my intense love affair with The Rolling Stones so I made a point of getting to the very front and raging my butt off for the entire set, just a few metres from Mr. Taylor.
I felt pretty lucky to have fallen into a free show, piggy-backed as it was onto a Bob Dylan road trip but I don’t think I fully appreciated how rare of an opportunity this was. Unbeknownst to me, Mick Taylor tours were a relatively rare occurrence and I wouldn’t get a chance to see him play again for almost thirty years*. And even then it was just a short sit-in with his former bandmates at a few Stones mega-concerts.
That said, I vividly recall having a great, great time at this show. I also remember looking behind me at the massive crowd that had collected. People were packed from one sidewalk to the other, rising up the grade of the rue until they collectively disappeared over the horizon, and I remember thinking to myself how very cool free concerts held outside in the streets were.
And of course I was right about that.
*Correction: I had momentarily forgotten that I saw Mick play a very memorable set with the great John Mayall almost exactly five years after this show, in almost exactly the same place: July 3rd, 1993 at The Spectrum.
Todd Man Out 