By Dessa Bayrock (The Cascade) – Email
I was afraid I wasn’t going to be able to get a ticket.
Jian Ghomeshi—aside from being wickedly handsome and wildly charismatic—is a Canadian ‘90s pop darling. He was a member of the satirical and sometimes a cappella band Moxy Früvous, probably best known for their song “King of Spain,” and these days he is the host of CBC Radio’s Q, a show focused around long-form interviews of artists, filmmakers, musicians and politicians.
It’s a smorgasbord of culture crammed into a two-hour period, and I was hoping I wasn’t too late to get a ticket to see Q recorded live.
The line snaked through the lobby, doubled back on itself, and finally spilled out the doors. Three women manned the box office windows, distributing the broad blue tickets like blackjack dealers deal out cards. Finally I obtained one and made my way through a sea of people, stumbling over the legs of already-seated audience members and trying not to think about what would happen if there was a fire.
The place was packed. Later I found out the audience was 1500-strong, the largest live audience the show has ever had.
I had been seated for maybe five minutes when Sheila Coles of CBC’s morning show introduced Jian Ghomeshi, although an introduction probably wasn’t necessary.
“The king of CBC comes to the queen’s city,” she said, to thunderous applause. And just in case we were wondering—
“Yes, his eyes really are that mesmerizing.”
When Ghomeshi strolled onstage, I doubt too many people were close enough to swoon under the power of his eyes, but his charismatic voice filled the hall with ease. The cloud’s adoration was clear. We stomped. We cheered. I’m at least 80 per cent sure I heard someone yell out a marriage proposal.
He handled the attention good-naturedly, and ran through the plan for the evening as though we were all sitting at his kitchen table and had just arrived for a night of board games.
The show would start recording at 7:06 p.m. and run as though it were playing live for two hours. It wouldn’t be edited after we finished (so whatever happened, happened), and would play the day after in Q’s regular time slot on CBC Radio
“I’m going to say, ‘Happy Friday,’” Ghomeshi warned, half-jokingly. “Now don’t you get confused by that! Any questions?”
The audience members looked around at each other, waiting for someone to ask a question. There were no questions.
“Go Riders!” one guy finally yelled.
“’Go Riders!’ is not a question, sir, but thank you for representing Regina,” Ghomeshi replied.
With that, we were off. The musical introduction built up into the familiar tones of Q and Ghomeshi dropped into his most seductive baritone voice.
“Well, hi there. Happy Friday – and happy Friday from the Conexus Arts Centre in Regina, Saskatchewan!”
In a nod to the Juno Awards, Ghomeshi interviewed Dragonette, Bahamas, k. d. lang, Tom Cochrane and Corb Lund. How’s that for a Canadian music mouthful?
I won’t go into details, since you can listen to it yourself by clicking here (and I highly recommend that you do): http://www.cbc.ca/q/blog/2013/04/19/listen-to-q-live-in-regina/
After two hours of solid interviewing, broken up by musical performances, Ghomeshi wound the show down by thanking all the guests and the crew that mans Q behind the scenes.
But even when the show was finished recording, he wasn’t quite done with us. It was Q and A time.
Michael Buble came up in one of the first answers; Buble will be hosting the Juno Awards broadcast on Sunday, something Ghomeshi is jokingly bitter about.
“He’s the Marcia to my Jan Brady … except I’m a brown Jan Brady,” Ghomeshi said, grinning. “Because he gets everything.”
An audience member asked him what shows he planned to attend as part of JUNOfest (10+ venues and 100+ bands performing over the course of Friday and Saturday nights).
“What shows am I going to at JUNOfest?” he replied, slipping into his deliberately sexy voice again. “Why, where will you be?”
