So here in Halifax the big thing in recent years has been trying to get big name concerts to come and play in the Commons, which is a park in the middle of the city. The Stones played there in 2006, and after that we thought we could get anybody. Rumours of AC/DC, U2, The Who, Paul McCartney, and just about anyone else you can think of flew in the winter after the big Stones concert. They would usually last a week or so then someone at the promotion company or the city council would drop the ball and things would fall through. Anyways, in June 2007 the city began dropping hints of a huge concert on the Commons in September. Two weeks of speculation followed in the media, even U2 was rumored to be coming (in July 2007
). Two days before the official announcement date, the local news paper got the scoop that this massive, world-shattering act that was coming to grace our city was...Celine Dion.
After a collective "what the fuck?" from the city, and the city council acting like they'd landed a reunion of all four original Beatles live at the official unveiling on the six o'clock news, people started to laugh. Both major daily papers in the city printed multiple pages of angry letters from readers every day. Folks were pissed that all summer the city kept screwing deals with great bands (AC/DC and The Who were all but booked to play the Commons, but the deal fell through because the city couldn't find another park for senior league baseball on the day of the show), and then they acted like music industry kingpins when they landed Celine Dion, on her first tour since the 90s and fresh off playing daily to Vegas crowds. The promoters predicted a crowd of 100,000 at a Celine Dion show, of a city population of about 400,000 (they predicted the same number for the Stones, sold about 65,000 tickets and had about 45,000 bodies at the show because it was an absolutely horrendous day). They were pissed that they'd bought into they hype that seemed to be promising a world-shattering show. The papers ran with it. Every day seemed to bring new editorials and cartoons mocking Celine Dion/her music/Titanic/city council/the promoters/the mayor. After a week or so of this, the news broke: the Celine Dion concert was cancelled because she was playing in Quebec City the next night and the schedule wouldn't allow a Halifax stop after all. Two days later, on an interview with the local six o'clock news, Rene Angelil said straight up that it was the media backlash that caused the cancellation of the show. Some people were upset, but the majority of us thought it was hilarious. We didn't get any concerts on the Commons last year because of it (a manager for the Who said specifically that they wouldn't play Halifax because he didn't want the band to "get the Celine treatment"), but we still get decent acts coming to our ancient and tiny rink downtown, and Kiss is coming to play the Commons this summer.
Long story short, when the news broke that Celine was thinking of buying the Habs, 40% of us thought it was one of the funniest things we'd ever read. The other 60% are Habs fans and are having trouble deciding whether to scream or cry.
ETA: [/storytime]
