#101. P!nk in the Rain (Sunday, July 7, 2017)

What was your best day…of risking something important for something you just wanted?

For a city that’s been traditionally associated with dull people and non-existent nightlife, Ottawa does go all in for its big events. Case in point, Bluesfest: the second-largest music festival in North America, which attracts over 300,000 people to this giant outdoor field area right next to downtown¹ for two weeks a year.

Despite hosting its fair share of blues artists, the event has always had a good number of headline acts featuring well-known musicians to draw in the massive crowds. The line-up for 2017 included: 50 Cent, Fetty Wap, Flume, Migos (a near-riot broke out on the day of their act), and P!nk. Well, P!nk was the one I wanted to see: I had been a big fan of her music ever since listening to her on the radio on the school minivan in fifth grade all the way to now – and was thrilled to be seeing it all performed live outdoors, in person.

Problem was: it would be on Sunday night. And I had work the next day; and, more importantly, a presentation to open up a conference we were hosting the day after. I thought it through a bit, drew from some past experience with similar dilemmas, and went ahead with buying the day pass.

That Sunday, I ended up spending the entire afternoon and early evening in my office getting the presentation ready and rehearsed. Then I took the short bus ride to Bluesfest, arrived an hour before start, had a gourmet poutine dinner at the food stands, and staked my spot about a hundred feet from the stage.

The act was freaking awesome.

P!nk enters to “Get the Party Started”, with all the crazy special effects. And in the moment she pops out center stage in her dyed hair rocking to the chorus, I get that awesome wow-I’m-actually-seeing-a-celebrity-performing-live-right-now feeling that you only ever get to have few times to your life (before you get used to it²).

She goes through pretty much the entire list of all her well-known hits³: “U + Ur Hand”, “So What”, “Raise Your Glass”, “Just Give me a Reason”, “Just Like Fire”, “What About Us”, and finally, “Try” – which is accompanied by her hooking onto this giant zipline and riding it across the crowd to this higher platform, then flying back. In the middle of this, a light drizzle turns to heavy pouring, and everyone in the audience of 30,000-plus (including me) takes out their umbrellas. But she just keeps going with an unwavering enthusiasm, front and center – on this smaller, not-covered stage further into the crowd – for the last forty minutes as the rain continues falling.

This is followed by two hours of me fighting my way to get on a bus and making it home past midnight. Which is followed me by killing that presentation two days later.

Which used to be a neighborhood that got rezoned decades ago due to toxic waste, and now is supposed to host the new arena for the hockey team.
Sheltered me (#115) never really got a chance to experience such a thing before.
Though the absence of my longtime favorite “Don’t Let Me Get Me” was disappointing.