The first night of Fête Nationale festivities ended Friday night with a performance by Clay & Friends up on the big stage on rue Saint-Charles in Longueuil. While I used to consider myself to be rather knowledgeable about most things music, the arrival of The Heir Apparent and Crown Prince has taken a little bit of my listening time away. With that in mind, when I end up shooting a concert of a band that I don't know, I often find myself leaving rather happy with the experience to discovering a new band. But, in this case, it ends up that I actually did know Clay & Friends after all. Their most popular song, Going Up The Coast, is the theme song for a television show that My Lovely Assistant and I have been watching for a few years now. I'd always bop along to the beat on the couch as it was very catchy. Imagine my surprise when the band
announced that they were now going to play probably their best know song and then those familiar notes began to play. With all of the activity up on the stage, I doubt that anyone was actually looking my way, but if they were, they would have seen a cloud of befuddlement slowly lift as I put two and two together in my head to finally figure out what I was hearing. I was clearly the only one not in the loop as the crowd was roaring before the band even hit the stage. While it's true that it was a street festival, it still takes some kind reputation to draw a couple thousand people out to dance in the streets with you. And dance they did. I've seen some active bands before but this performance was almost entirely non-stop action. Everyone got in on the act as they were dancing, running, shimmying and shaking all night. I was tired just watching them, but the later in to the set they got, the more the crowd would respond to their requests to dance, sway and jump. Clay & Friends are obviously a party band, and that crowd was definitely there to party. The first photograph was taken at f/3.2, 1/1600sec, ISO 6400 at 70mm and the second photograph was taken at f/3.2, 1/250sec, ISO 6400 at 50mm. Here are several more photographs of their performance.
