Last week there was a folk festival in Calgary. I think it was fairly well attended (a million people to draw from) but it received negative press and, as a result, a lot of bad backfence gossip, because some of the acts tried to sell an anti-Bush-U. S. political agenda. This will hurt the festival organizers in the future. People here generally opposed the Iraq war, but they get more than enough in the press and TV.

The Dixie Chicks performed here yesterday to 15,000, but their protest content (a small part of the whole) was not aimed at particular politicians but at war itself. They received a good review in our arch-conservative paper, as well as from those who paid big bucks to attend. Of course, "country" music is big here.

Another fact of life is that musicians must be good entertainers, able to deliver varied content over the length of a program.