Nooooooooooooooo ! The FEQ is over… where is my handkerchief? As Metallica would say, it’s sad but true. For those who are not familiar with this acronym, FEQ stands for Festival d’été de Québec (Quebec City Summer Festival). It’s a festival that have become bigger every year. Now it’s a place where Black Eyed Peas, Rammstein, Iron Madien, Charles Aznavour and actually any big artist is willing to come.

I was a reporter for MSN.CA blog Vivre dans la nuit during this FEQ #44. This year the two big names were Metallica and Sir Elton John. What a show he gave! What a man! Ok, I must confess I was raised with Elton’s songs. I had my first beer listening to Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, kissed a girl for the first time with Don’t Let the Sun Go Down on Me playing on the radio of my car, and I certainly won’t mention what happened the same night while we were hardly listening to I’m Still Standing…

Elton was generous that night, he had come to Quebec City with one of his best voices and he didn’t limit himself playing his hit songs, he transformed them into different pieces. Hard not to be nostalgic. Just as Dr Emmett Brown would have done, he brought us back to an another time… Thank you Elton!

So yeah the FEQ was excellent this year again. The Metallica show concluded perfectly the musical trip with an incredible 2hour concert (120 000 people on Plaines of Abraham) that I won’t forget soon even though I’m far from being a metal boy.

Some days before I discovered on another venue Jimmy Hunt who seduced us within only 45 minutes. Excellent lyrics, cool attitude and folk songs that stick to you brain immediately.

The Black Keys, the new phenomenon from Ohio punched everybody in the face with pure rock songs. Nobody actually got hurt, except for the five first rows in front of the speakers…

Malajube did well too, one-hour set mixing old and new stuff even if the most recent ones were not driving people crazy. Not far from the stage was an other good rock band from Quebec, Karkwa. Unfortunately, I couldn’t go to the show, because of some incompatibility of schedules and because of a lack of ubiquity. I should learn that power for next year. Everyone I met told me the concert of Karkwa was awesome, the same thing for Buck 65 which I missed too.

There was so many things in the FEQ. Impossible to see everything. But I saw Elton and that is enough for me…