GOOD NIGHT, TUKTOYAKTUK: While most of the...

GOOD NIGHT, TUKTOYAKTUK: While most of the rock world was celebrating the opening of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Museum in Cleveland last weekend with a marathon stadium concert, the best concert of that day may have been one seen only by about 1,000 people--half of them natives of the Arctic Circle village of Tuktoyaktuk in Canada’s Northwest Territory. This was the event featuring Metallica, Hole and Veruca Salt, staged for winners of a contest sponsored by a Canadian brewery.

“It was the weirdest thing I was ever involved in, but it was great,” says Darius Aidala, who accompanied a New York contest winner and agreed to take notes for Pop Eye.

“The bands were totally cool,” Aidala says. “They had a meet-and-greet at the local high school gym, all the bands sitting at a long table and signing autographs. Courtney Love was downright coquettish, chatting a lot with the fans. And the guys from Metallica were really nice, talking with the local kids.

“Hole was like an intimate lounge act,” he says of the concert, which was held in an inflatable tent. “And Metallica was really entertaining, though in that small place, listening to them was probably like standing across the street from a car bomb detonation.”

Aidala, a photographer, also gathered a few statistics about the event: The cost was said to be between $10 million and $15 million, with 47 chartered flights to get everyone there--the farthest coming from Miami.

And the temperature on concert day? Aidala reports that it reached a summery 60 degrees.