Repunzel, Repunzel, let down your lens!

[John Watt]

This evening I made two videos from my balconey showing some of the Illuminaqua Concert Series as arranged by the City of Welland.
The newspaper quotes city councillors as saying Merritt Park, which doesn't even have washrooms, maybe two acres, is equal to London's Hyde Park and New York's Central Park. The first concert of the summer series featured a 21 year old singer-guitarist from Fonthill. When, after a few original songs, he turned to a cover of a Pink Floyd song, I caught the tail end of all the people who drove away.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-XANmEG-tY


When he began another original song, I began to think he wasn't a good vocalist. When he sang "I wrote this song for you", I thought, oh yeah, and started to sing along, what any good musician would do. This was very unprofessional of me. I had no mike, no reverb, no echo, no phasing, and tried to blend in with all of this by singing behind the camera. I didn't have warm water, massage my throat, and it was chilly. I took a chance with a high note, not knowing where the song was going. I like how I riffed off, singing "Come on" before he did, very predictable.
This isn't the new, changed me, it's my camera behavior that's growing.
This venue first began with big, black pots floating on the canal, in a grid, joined by hoses that created flames of different colours, a low budget copy of a Toronto attraction of the same name. But after a year they became logs soaked in gasoline, making smoke and ashes for stage performers, complimented by the spray from a nearby fountain. Yes, I know, a water fountain out in the formerly ocean and lake boat going canal. Do you see the talent as going the same way? And this is Welland. Even if ten bodies were found floating in the canal one summer, some going in off the stage, the newspaper only wrote about three.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bsf1BgV4J90

The city likes to call a black, floating metal barge out on the canal an amphitheater. It had no roof for three years, now a very high one to hold lighting, and has no backboard. The city creates non-existent City of Welland annual concerts, even a Christian concert, to lure outside bands and supporters, charging to set up the stage, fencing and security for the event. Most vendors don't make one sale.
Calling these videos bargery, a phonetic reference of English naval practice, is very appropriate, a step up for the Italian mob that built it.

 

[John Watt]

The Merritt Park Amphitheater



The first photo shows the side of the barge, a little more than half, with what look like mall landscaping stones as seating. That's a three lane regional highway across the canal that gets the most traffic in the downtown area. No amphitheater ever built in Greece, Turkey or Rome, was a floating metal barge with onshore seating.

The second photo shows a no smoking sign. That's right, it's legal to smoke tobacco in Ontario, but not outside here. Those are the burning pots of logs soaked in gasoline. A lot of people like my idea of getting rafts so that local pizzerias and restaurants can use them to cook and hand out slices as promotion. That is a little sick, considering that the two "chefs" who weren't supposed to be living in the Welland House, that burned down, both drowned during a canoe accident, found where the barge is now located. And no, they weren't smoking. They were doing something else.

The third photo shows the garbage cans that are placed and removed, and the white fence with many security guards, that keeps out the taxpayers who paid for these events. They were free the first two years, and then they started charging.

The portable washrooms are also brought in and removed for every event.

I got into it with some seagulls here, knowing the Mohawk trick for luring them in to grab one, but considering you hear me singing in the one video above, I thought I'd take it easy on you. And I didn't have anything to feed them. Besides, the seagull leader threatened me with a royalty lawsuit. It doesn't matter what the weather is like, or what happens to the barge. If you don't play, even if you cut your set short, you don't get paid.