Thursday, November 22, 2007

C'est une question de feeling

For some reason, public figures in Halifax are flagellating the media and citizens for the cancellation of the Céline Dion concert originally scheduled for August 23.

I am truly baffled.

Here is the story. The city was negotiating to bring a major act to the Halifax Common. On the eve of a major announcement, the Céline people jumped the gun and posted an August 23 Halifax date online. So they announced the concert prior to its official announcement.

Haligonians were not, ahem, unanimous in rushing to greet Céline. A couple of days later, René Angelil, Céline's husband and manager, said they were pulling out of the Halifax date. He elaborated in a phone call, saying, ""There’s no business decision, it’s a question of feeling." Apparently people said nasty things about his wife on phone-in shows and Web forums (can you imagine?) So he cancelled.

As a result, people in Halifax have been beating themselves up for being bush league.

Are they nuts? We are talking about one of the top-selling female artists of all time (how that happened is beyond me) and she -- or rather, her husband, because he says Céline has not seen any of the criticism, since it is his job to protect her from it -- can't take barbs from radio phone-in shows and Web forums? Oh, and from a columnist from the Halifax Daily News, who spent most of his column welcoming the show, but made the dreadful mistake of being critical in his opening paragraph.

Instead of chastising us for making it difficult to bring future acts to Halifax, the city ought to be talking lawsuit against Angelil.

All of this has had one positive effect. David Rodehniser, the columnist who scared the pants off Angelil, has produced a hilarious column today.

Hooray! Ozzy Osbourne is apparently coming to Halifax next January. This will be the best concert in the city's history - equalled only by all the previous concerts in Halifax's history, which were all equally amazing in their own unique and artistically diverse ways.

Just in case Sharon Osbourne is clipping newspapers from around the globe to see what people are writing about Ozzy, I want the record to show that I fully, 110 per cent, endorse this concert. It should definitely go ahead and local fans will certainly buy out every seat.

The Halifax Metro Centre is the perfect venue for Ozzy to play, although if he changes his mind and wants to rock the Halifax Common, there is no doubt that his fans would stand outside in a raging snowstorm to see him perform. He could call it the Blizzard of Ozz, like his quadruple-platinum 1980 album, which yielded such classics as the blistering Crazy Train and the heartfelt ballad Goodbye to Romance.

Read the rest of it here.

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