The great thing about living in Belgium is the fact that Belgium has quite the reputation as being music lovers and are willing to pay handsomely to see artists in concerts. Compared to some other European countries we see a lot of the world's greatest artists in concerthalls or open air concerts. Belgians love their music and are willing to pay for it, for example tonight and tomorrow Céline Dion is singing in Antwerp and tickets average well above 160 EUR. The fact that we, Belgians, are willing to pay makes our tiny country the place to be for artists and groups that love to make money. This means that we have a steady stream of top artists on stage. Last week it was Adele, yesterday it was Iron Maiden, tonight it is Céline Dion, in a few days we have Neill Young, a bit later and Paul McCartney is here, The Red Hot Chili Peppers, Bruce Springsteen, etc... The fact that the artists are well taken care of when they are performing in our country also helps a bit. The world top of stage building, logistics, etc... all are Belgian companies.
And then there's the fact that Belgians aren't afraid to experiment a bit. About 10 years ago a couple of brothers thought that it would be fun to have a festival with electronic music. Not just a regular festival but a high end festival with stages right out of fairy tales, high quality food, etc... Some deemed them crazy but today it's one of the biggest festivals in the world catching 180.000 people per festival (and they have it twice a year, once in Belgium and once in Brazil). But when we go even a bit further back in history we see a couple of students who watched to the BBC Last night of the proms and thought "we can do better" and so it occurred, in the mid 80's the "Night of the Proms" was founded in Belgium as a concert where pop meets classic. Today the Night of the Proms has concerts in Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, the US, etc... and many famous artists have performed.
At the Night of the Proms I've seen many many artists during the more then 10 years I visited the show each year... For some artists it were nearly the last concerts they played (James Brown, Ike Turner) and the performance of several artists will always remain with me.
Ultimately there will be one name that remains connected with the Night of the Proms for ever and I'll add "the Proms song" here:
John Miles with Music: