I Love the Smell of Perfume in the Morning

by

Those of us who relish a good outdoor music festival – especially of the grassroots-and-granola variety – have learned to endure any number of indignities in the pursuit of someone else’s towering art.

Long, blistering weekends with no shower facilities, and nothing more than Ian Tyson’s Navajo rug between you and a colony of red ants? No problem.

Some ginger-haired goddess you’ve never heard of has a hammered dulcimer and a lifetime of repression to share? You’re there for her, as if she were Jane Siberry herself.

Mile-long lines for the Porta Potty, and not enough patchouli in the universe to mask the experience? What does it matter? There’s a vendor near the instrument lockup selling kale-and-tofu burgers to die for.

Sleepless hours in the rock-strewn camping area, while some tone-deaf balladeer one site over keeps your 7-year-olds, Ziggy and Stardust, awake till dawn assaying the only two chords he knows? Small beer. It’s festival weekend, man. Go with it.

The acme of outdoor concerts (albeit of the rock persuasion) was the weed-laced blowout in Max Yasgur’s cow pasture in Sullivan County, New York, in August of 1969. Despite rain, mud, heroin overdoses, two live births, and threats of National Guard intervention, the show went on. And on. For four historic days.

Don’t believe me? Watch the Oscar-winning documentary, or listen to Joni Mitchell’s iconic song, “Woodstock.” If you’re of Geezer vintage, but were nowhere near upstate NY that weekend, you’ve probably lied to your grandchildren 100 times over about being part of the assembled throng of 400,000.

Which brings me to one of Canada’s neatest little music festivals. To protect my sources, I won’t identify it, except to say it has been an annual event in southeastern Ontario for more than four decades.

But this year, the festival’s very existence may hang in the balance. Not because of financial irregularities. Not because the lineup is lame – with performers such as former Yukoner Kate Weekes on the schedule, it’s anything but.

It isn’t because there may be droughts, plagues, pestilences, or 40-day floods in the weather forecast.

No. It’s because a week before the festival, one of the organizers caught wind of the fact that a sweet little critter known as Mephitis mephitis may be lurking on the festival grounds, ready to cause a stink if someone’s pedal steel disturbs the sleep of her black and white-striped kits.

Did rain and mud scupper Woodstock? Nay, nay. Did a stabbing at a free concert in Altamont, California the same year spell curtains for the Rolling Stones? No way.

But could an agitated Momma skunk make central Canadian folkies run for the hills, apologizing as they go? Maybe yes, maybe no.

If she does, I can’t wait to read the official report to the event’s funders. Stay tuned.