2013/08/10

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  Rue Prince-Arthur – 2013.07.24
  Scènes de Montréal – Montreal Scenes
  

  Above

  Pedestrian and mostly restaurants street Prince-Arthur where it ends in front of Carré St-Louis (St-Louis Square). There are lots of restaurants in Montreal where you can bring your own wine (or beer or digestive). In those cases, no alcohol is sold in the restaurant. But what if you forgot to bring one? Gee, how convenient, there is a dépanneur just across the street. Oh, and the music fairy did pick up the piano that was on the corner of St-Laurent, about four street intersections in the other direction. The pic was taken in mid-afternoon, hence the low population density.

  

  Wow Wow Wow take II

  After Italy won the fireworks competition, I was hoping that one poster on Youtube would show up. He makes high definition videos of some of the shows (maybe all but posts only a few) and I remembered from last year that he never posts them before the awards ceremony is over. So now that this was done, I went to check and yup, he’s there all right. I think Italy also won the best sound track award. Making a sound track for a pyromusical requires a lot of editing, and talent. Bits and pieces of songs have to be put together and the result must be harmonious and seamless. In this case there was also some voice commenting which blended in perfectly. More often than not, when there’s comments, there’s nothing else going on. Here it’s a perfect voice-over of both the music and the fireworks. As for how the sound track blended in with the fireworks themselves, or the other way around, reserve 34 minutes of your time, click on the embedded link below, put it on full screen if you can and let yourselves be mesmerized! I would not have done this ordinarily, but this show was so exceptional that I bothered translating the woman’s comments, which were in French of course. This is Montréal.

  
  [Intro & Fifties]
  Ladies and gentlemen, good evening to all of you. I present this evening on this stage, exclusively for you, a story, my story, which could also be the one of each of you: the sounds of an authentic juke-box playing an old vinyl 45 single, transporting me in the past, from the fifties to the eighties. A wonderful voyage populated with moving souvenirs and intense shiverings. Me, pin-up of the fifties, of the fabulous fifties in fact, I remember that era when we danced on frantic rock & rolls, the euphoria and the rampant creativity. Each one of us felt the pressing desire to feel being in the center of the world.

  [Sixties - 8:15]
  The revolutionary sixties, craddle of change and of so many sensational discoveries. To name only one, an ordinary day when I learned through television that someone had walked on the moon. For us, the youth of those times, new values, new aspirations, a new life style, a new music. Do you remember twist and rock, or the coming about of the Beatles, absolute protagonists of all our evenings?

  [Seventies -15:15 ]
  I had the chance to breathe that air, the air of the seventies. The strongly tinted mythic years, where we occupied the front line, we the eternal flower childs, the hippies. We who have made out of freedom and transgression a life philosophy. And this time, it is her again who was the indisputable star of the decade: music. Sound tracks of our daily emotions, which are far from all being equal.

  [Eighties - 20:24]
  The last segment of the souvenir trip are the eighties, source of innovations in many sectors, from technology to fashion to music. In a short time, they have
  made me relunctantly abandon my old record player, which had such an incomparable sound, and those juke-boxes qui played endlessly at the corner café.

  [Epilogue - 30:24]
  And this is where concluded a day and age, coinciding with the beginning of a new era. I would surely have more marvels to relate, everything has changed rapidly, the world, us. But I prefer stopping here, savouring what this imaginary voyage in the past has risen. An important part of our history.

  The only thing missing, of course, is being there, part of that big crowd, of which only a happy (and paying) few have access to the launch site itself, the Lac des Dauphins (a pond) at La Ronde on Ste-Hèlène Island. Personally, I prefer where I go which is in the opposite direction of the video’s view, on the north shore of the St-Laurent, in Montreal itself, a little east of the first large bridge pillar. It is about twice the distance from the pad and that’s better. Less, if any, up and down head movements. Only drawback, can’t see those fireworks directly on the ground or floating on the water. These can be viewed well from the bridge but I don’t like, when you’re up there, to view some of the high-firing ones almost at eye level at times. Scraps some of the awe.

  Twenty-eight years of this and I’m not tired yet. Mind you, it’s like the rest. Every year brings its novelty. They are evolving and I’m sure that the first shows that threw me off my chair, I think of a certain Spain show in the late eighties, probably would seem to me much less flamboyant now that time has passed. They are getting better and better, if that may be, and that’s probably also why year after year, this competition still attracts thousands and thousands. However, I’m glad for having this particular video made available. When I’m there and the show is exceptionally good, I wish I could share with some in other planetary locations what I had witnessed, in lieu of them being able to be here. Thanks to some posters on Youtube, it is now possible at times.

  

  Much needed rest

  After having had our breath nearly taken away, how about a little rest to recuperate? Some people in the city have thought about it and have installed on boul. St-Laurent, midway between the Sherbrooke and Mont-Royal metro stations, and in the street, a rest area for pedestrians. It’s made out of used containers. It has nice wooden seats and some vegetation, and also much appreciated when it’s scorching sun outside, a closed top. And if your eyes are bagged from all that video watching, they also had the clever idea to install it near the corner with Bagg street. BTW, I don’t know why St-Laurent is called a boulevard. It isn’t one, technically. There’s surely an historic explanation. It exists since the beginning of European (French) settlement here in the early 1600s, and splits the island in two, spanning from the Old Port to the Rivière-des-Prairies river separating the island of Montreal (eden) from the (yech-yech) surburbian island of Laval.

  

  

  

  • 17:53
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