Montreal Prog Fest, September 2007

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What a wondeful festival it was!Great music,relaxed and friendly atmosphere and top notch organisation.

What I like about those festivals is the community type of vibes that emanates throughout.All week end long we could chat with prog industry peoples;musicians,record labels owners,promoters and most importantly enthusiastic fans.It's like a pilgrimage where all ''devotees'' meet and share common love for common tastes(PROG!).

My favorites were Ville-Émard Blues Band,IQ and The Strawbs but all bands gave us a taste of their own brand of prog be it RIO,Neo,Symphonic,psych,folk,jazzy,ect...

Quite an eclectic bunch of bands.Kudos to the promoters(Sean Macfee,Stephen Takacsy,Robert Dansereau and Michel St-Pere) for such variety.

The location was perfect.Modern,clean,coazy and the staff very accomodating and charming(not to mention cute hostesses!)

I had the privilege to talk and shake hands with some of my idols:Maneiges' Yves Leonard,Jerome and Vincent Langlois,Gilles Shetagne,Alain Bergeron as well as Michel Séguin of Toubabou,Ville-Émard Blues Band and Guy Leblanc.

 

Let's hope they make it an annual event,Montreal deserves to have it's own prog fest.!

At 13 h 30: HAMADRYAD, a rock symphonic progressive band from the province of Quebec.  I liked their sound, their drummer, their guitarist , the keyboardist. Their bassist , a very nice bassist, is the singer. Unfortunatly, I don't think that he fits in a rock progressive band at all. He is more a singer for a metal band or rock band. A Van Hallen type of singer.  Like we say in french: il n'a pas rap... Even if their musicians are talented for most, ( excellent keyboardist ...), I don't think that they have a great musicianship. I think that Karcius are better for the musicianship. ( I saw Karcius last year, and I loved it...). Their performance was ok, but that's all...

 

LE VILLE ÉMARD BLUES BAND, with his 14 musicians, and singer and chorists gave a nostalgic show for those who were there in the seventies. It was blues of course, some world beat with their huge hit "Yamanech!, but also some intensive rock progressive music. They surprised me a lot because at first we were thinking what this group have to do with progressive music. We found out and we were satisfied. A big party.

 

NATHAN MAHL; after the quick lunch, this group from Ontario and Québec came to play for us. I liked it because this group is more keyboards oriented. Their keyboardist Guy Leblanc is excellent. While other groups had something like one or two keyboards, Lebland surrounded himself with something like 5 or 6 different keyboards. He can make a lot of different sounds like Rick Wakeman or Keith Emerson. So, with this group, I was really satisfied; it was about time to have a more keyboards oriented show. Guy   Leblanc played several years with Camel from 2000 to 2003.

 

FINALLY, IQ; ( pour le dessert). IQ played for us for more than 2 h 30 and they gave 3 encores. They were very generous. It was a special show for them because it was the last time after 26 years in the group that their keyboardist Martin Orford were playing with IQ.  IQ is very professionnal with a lot of musicianship, a lot of talent, generosity and a lot of class. I did not really know this progressive rock symphonic from the eighties, except maybe that I listened some of their music on My.Space.

 

Actually, I think that they can be as good even better than Genesis who just repeat their success night after night. IQ show gave me more satisfaction in a certain way than Genesis. First, I was sitting in first row in the middle. The sound was better. The musicians played with a lot of energy. ( I did not see this kind of  energy or effort from Tony Banks of Genesis last friday). On IQ show, on the other hand, everybody was giving everything. Their music is complexed, but also very melodic. Their singer knows how to sing ( nice voice), and he can speak french ( better than Phil ...).IQ had a sophisticated play of lights combined with videos ( 3 screens) behind. Their music is everything that we want in a progressive group; long pieces of music, long songs, thematic ( topics like geo-politics,), spacy ambiance,  many variations, sometimes melodic, sometimes powerfull,  all this combined with many different emotions rendered very well by Peter Nicholls.  It was a great evening of  progressive music. It was almost 1 a.m when they left the stage. 

 

What a surprise near the end; MUSICAL BOX singer, Denis Gagné, came on stage to sing with Nicholls. Those two are friends for several years now. It was one of the great moment of the festival.