City of Roses brought good times downtown

Members of the City of Roses Music Heritage Association are breathing contented sighs, recovering from their recent giant undertaking of a three-day music festival that brought the best of local country, rock and gospel music to downtown Cape Girardeau.

They met this week to review this year's event, which was the last weekend of September and was marked by ups and downs.

The attendance was light for country bands Friday night, possibly due to conflicting events. Dave Mason, formerly of Traffic, packed the venue Saturday night with his powerful voice and popular songs.

And the attendance bottomed out Sunday morning, when the heat kept many gospel fans indoors while a few hundred others came out to praise the Lord through music.

Everyone agreed that the repeat idea of putting the main stage on a barge in the river and making the terraced area leading to the river into seating was a good one.

There may have to be some fine tuning done, but the group deserves our community's thanks for a good time.