The Edmonton Chamber of Commerce held their annual Chamber Ball this past weekend. So LA and I got all dressed up (“black tie or business formal”) for a night on the town with 1,500 of our friends in the business community.

The event had all the makings of a great night. Northlands new Expo Centre was the venue and it was superb – airport hangar huge, stylishly designed and sparkling new. And the event production was top-notch – multiple large screens on which to follow the proceedings, thematic wall projections and dramatic lighting added to the coolness.

But, there was this little oddity: the entertainment.

It seems that someone thought that a Woodstock music show would be a good idea at the Chamber Ball. Now, of all people, I have a healthy respect for the sixties and its iconoclastic music scene. But it has its time and place. I’m not so sure how anyone could think the drug-induced psychedelic and political music of the sixties was going to fit with the formal, button-downed tone of a business function. I mean, wasn’t the whole message underlying the sixties about tuning in, turning on and dropping out? And we were going to celebrate that “let you hair down” spirit in tuxedos?

“The heroes of Woodstock – taking us back and bringing us higher.” So went the radio promo for the annual Chamber Ball. “Party like its 1969,” the posters said. Well, if the smell of vomit in the bathroom was any indication, some folks were certainly taking it to heart. Personally, I was curious about how they were intending to bring us “higher.”

Country Joe McDonald opened the show with his guitar. He looked like someone you’d walk past on the street, fairly unremarkable. After his first song that nobody recognized, he played his “1,2,3,4, what are we fighting for” anti-Vietnam song. I recognized it from the Woodstock documentary that I had watched years ago and listened to many times since. And a few other old-timers knew it as well. But, the funniest part had to be when he repeated his now classic FISH cheer:

“Gimme an F!”

“F!!” The crowd responded.

“Gimme a U!”

“U!!”

“Gimme a C!”

“C!!”

“Gimme a K!”

“K!!”

“What does it spell?”

“F…uck,” a few keeners shouted.

“What does it spell?”

“F…uck,” a few others who had been drinking too much slurred.

In a sixties sense, it was actually kinda funny watching some of the business elite dressed in their finest penguin suits shouting the f-bomb – and the others looking embarrassed about the ones who were.

The show spiraled down from there. We were forced to endure Big Brother and the Holding Company’s Janis sound-alike who screeched until she was hoarse. Then Canned Heat (“the best boogie woogie band in the world” went the intro) made it clear why boogie-ing and woogie-ing is best left to the Discoers. We left before Jefferson Starship hit the stage.

If you liked this year’s music, maybe next year you should consider late seventies punk rock.