Tonight, Montreal's Global Television affiliate aired a special about Jazz Fest 2000. It showed footage of Ray Charles, Al Jarreau, Chick Corea, Holly Cole, Didi Bridgewater and the Manhattan Transfer performing. They made it seem like the 21st Annual festival was full of great outdoor performances.

They mis-represented the Festival, big-time.

Oh, all of these performers did play during the Festival - but all in indoor concerts, shows you had to pay major bucks to attend.

The outdoor free shows, while they sometimes had talented newcomers, were shows repeated as many as 10 times each during the entire festival. Not all of them were jazz music either.

The big outdoor show presented was a concert by a Brazilian group; last year was actually a show that garnered a lot of controversy for not being suitable: a Techno DJ spinning records. That caused a major uproar.

The show was packaged well; it adds to my desire to check out this year's Festival, more than I was able to last year. It just wasn't very truthful.