At long last here is the conclusion to my trip to Quebec.
So we arrived in Quebec at around 11:00am...that is the City of Quebec. I've been talking to our bus driver and it seems he's more then meets the eye (or is that the Transformers), he's worked in the music industry for years and has been the tour manager for bands such as Slayer, Poison, Tesla and Steve Earle. He drives bus cause it more relaxing. As we pull into the city I give our tour manager a call to tell him we've arrived. He sounds a little frazzled as the festival promoters are "
dicking" us around. I offer to help him by getting the band and their wives into the hotel and also get our credentials for the day (I find out later from my friend that being given this responsibility is very rare for a tour security guy). I manage a quick shower in one of the hotel rooms...the Hilton seems nice...at least its shower is. My next order of
business is to figure out transportation. normally this means talking to one driver about pick-up times. This festival is so big however that they have 16 vans driving around the city picking up various artists and
VIP's. This means I have to make sure I give the entire schedule for the day to the director of transport
unfortunately our schedule changes about twenty times a day. I don't know what they did on tours before cell phones. The days goes by like most others with press and meet and greets and show time finally comes around. Once again
Alexisonfire is opening for Billy Talent so the Mosh pit is going to be huge. I don't realize how huge until I get my first look at the crowd. The Festival De
Tete is one of the largest festivals in Canada and tickets are so cheap that they normally sell about 60,000 tickets for the ten day festival. Today we have broken all previous records with 80,000 patrons. The festival has never hosted a lineup with such a heavy Mosh crowd before and while I'm in the pit helping the security guys I notice a large problem
occurring ... the barricade that has been placed to cut the mosh pit in half isn't holding up to the crowd crush and has broken. This is a metal barricade!!! Between
Alexisonfire and
BT's set we quickly fix the barricade with pieces of wood and about 8 security guys. The show goes pretty good with no serious injuries in the pit...the barricade barely held but it did hold (see picture above). As I'm down checking out the damages to the barricade I run into the only patron left in the venue...an intoxicated young guy. I say hello to him and he tells me to f#%k off and starts to climb over the barricade towards me...I think what the hell? Then after a short struggle manage to
wristlock him and remove him from the venue...drunk people are stupid. It's know about 12:00am and some of the guys are looking to go to one of the local bars. I tell them I'll see what I can do (80,000 people are wandering around the city looking for bars as well) I manage to find a local who knows a guy who knows a guy that manages a bar...after a brief conversation through a translator the guy agrees to come pick up our party and drive us to the bar. Furthermore he tells me that we will get free alcohol, a VIP room and our own security detail. Sure enough when we arrive an hour later they have 5 security guys (well they look more like
gorillas then guys) waiting for us at the door and they quickly usher us through the bar to a VIP lounge stocked with alcohol...so this is the rock star life style I hear about. We stay till 3:00am and it is by far the easiest night I've had working in a bar. We get back to the bus by about 3:30am and quickly start our journey back to Toronto. I hit my bunk by 4:00am...for once an early night.
