A superb 90-minute performance by multiple Grammy Award winner, Stevie Wonder, headliner at last weekend's Tobago Gourmet Jazz Festival (TGJF), literally rescued the three-night problem-ridden production;eventually eliciting approval from music lovers who hitherto spent much of the weekend slamming the heavily touted affair.

Among the earliest challenges was getting to the venue, given the lack of signage en route. Several patrons reported having been lost in the effort, thanking Tobagonians for setting back on track to finding the hurriedly paved roads leading to the recreation ground.

The much-advertised "gourmet" foods, the festival's taste-delight, turned out to be nothing more special than bake and flying fish,chicken and chips, ground provisions with coo-coo and callaloo andchicken-foot souse, albeit sold in Styrofoam boxes at gourmet prices,served up from four tents in a scenario far below the standard of a really bad day at the annual folk-fair.

Up to the time of Wonder's appearance onstage, patrons of the inaugural TGJF, which was held at the uncut Plymouth Recreation Ground, had no shortage of reasons for vexation, particularly thosewho purchased event-specific tickets, only to later discover several advertised acts simply did not appear and worse, neither excuses nor apologies were forthcoming from festival producers, Los Angeles-basedHammond Entertainment. From a total of 26 acts on the marquee, 19 actually showed as scheduled and even so, fans of superstar American performers Angie Stone and Natalie Cole, who may have opted to go only on nights they were listed to appear, discovered upon arrival at the venue that in both cases their favourites had already performed.

Advertised for Saturday night, Stone worked on Friday's playbill and Cole, one of Sunday's star attractions, sung on Saturday nightinstead. And if that wasn't bad enough, patrons who coughed up $530 for Saturday's show and $600 for the Sunday event were loudly livid when they arrived at the arena to find touts selling the same tickets for $40 and $50 (respectively) and probably the reason patrons who had made legitimate purchases were rudely refused half-tickets as proof.

In addition, local crossover group Mungal Patasar & Pantar, American saxophonist Najee and lesser-known acts, Koffie Omaladay, Guy, Lina, Ledesi and Leyla Hathaway simply never appeared which, for those who expected tightly-produced shows, may have been the only saving grace as none of the three events ran for fewer than six hours.

The Friday night and Saturday afternoon shows kept patrons waiting without explanation, the first beginning some two hours after its advertised start-time and the second a whopping three and a half hours late, forcing those who went early to cop the few chairs provided and decided to stay the distance, into an eleven and a half hour stay at the venue, for a show heavily advertised as starting at 1.30 pm.

Fact is, the show started at 4 pm, a decision publicised no earlier than 10 pm on the previous night, after numerous promises from the stage to tell patrons when to come.

Those who did not attend Saturday's show therefore turned up at the venue in time for the published start, only to hear the Sunday show was now beginning nearly three hours later.

Trinidad-based patrons who booked their return journey on the basis of Sunday's advertised commencement, ether missed Stevie Wonder or waited at the airport for several hours yesterday in order to return home and that was after a 90-minute punishment in traffic just to get from the venue to the parking lot, some opting to walk when the shuttle service was overwhelmed by the 10,000 wishing to get back to their vehicles.

Some local artistes feared no better than patrons in that regard, most notably David Rudder, who was left waiting at the airport for nearly one hour before his transport arrived, then put to the ignominy of having to wait another three hours for transport from his hotel, even as the show hosts paged him and his band to "please, please report backstage," that ignominy compounded by a suggestion that he not perform at all once he and the Rapid Response band were finally brought to the arena. Rudder's act was consequently truncated.

Crowds were evidently less than expected on Friday night and Saturday evening, the latter only managing to top the 2,500 mark, leaving room for stray dogs to make use of available space. An imported DJ (from Los Angeles) seemed to make a point of not playing Trini music, that situation salvaged at the few opportunities accorded his counterpart from Tobago's Radio Tambrin.

Set changes for the various bands accompanying the slew of vocalists were generally inordinately long, topping that vexation was the O'Jays, who kept the crowd waiting for some 90 minutes before coming under the spotlight, patrons finding out only after the group's performance that they did not travel with their wind-instrument section and had to recruit locals from Wayne Bruno's Rapid Response orchestra during the exxtended intermission and teach them the horn lines, which the Trini musicians executed flawlessly.

Thank God for Stevie Wonder who, from first whisper had the crowd going and kept it that way with a segued set lasting one and a half hours, including some of his best known vintage works and three new songs, one of which was the chartbuster released last month, "What the Fuss?"If the THA and CL Financial, the event's major sponsors are good for their promise of repeating the TGJF, clearly, a whole lot of work has to be done before the next edition.