Bluesfest has begun

[Northern Wish]

Oh and for what its worth I thought Kid Beyond was terrible.....

The guy who they slotted in for Jakob Dylan was great and I loved what I saw. Kind of a white boy Otis Redding type group. Nothing bad about saying that.

And finally before I go to bed.......

BEST BLUESFEST MOMENT EVER:

A rickshaw flying two Confederate Flags drove by me, AD and smoothedshredder (along with our ladies) up Rideau. SS in total jest yells out "The South shall rise again"; of course not noticing a gentleman behind him (I'll let you guess) who cursed "Not if I have anything to do with it." Maybe you had to be there, but with his handlebar mustache and punkish cap he looked like he could have meant it..... We laughed our asses off all the way down Sparks St. to Wendys where I got my Big Bacon Classic with 2 minutes till closing time.

S

[Booche]

Personally, I really dug Plants and Animals' 40 minutish set. Then again I love their most recent album.

[Booche]

mighty popo had these crazy drummers that came in a procession....

That was a great intro to a fantastic set.

[darth_taiter]

I rarely log in but I have to say every minute of the Crowes was pure gold for me , I mean how good are they, like fuck, they are a polished band probably in their pure prime, every song sounds like rock and roll. I guess I am a fan but if you happened on the other stage (I heard it was awesome by many people) and missed the 15 minute Thorn In My Pride I am sorry. Where as the Panic having the chance to win new fans 4 nights previous couldn't draw the people because they lacked the requisite 2 radio hits, the Crowes drew over 20,000 for She Talks To Angels (which wasn't played) but introduced the 18,000 that weren't at the Congress Centre to REAL music, real blues, real rock, unlike the 60% of new wave, old wave, bad wave headline acts that fill up the schedule based on notoriety. Very memorable for me tonight , can't wait to see those guys again . Love you all... Peace Out

[darth_taiter]

nice pics Booche

[Booche]

Best.Percentages.Ever.

[bradm]

What are people excited about for Friday? Acres (6:00pm, River Stage) should be fun (as should Brothers Chaffey on the Rogers Stage, also at 6:00pm), and I definitely want to check out Balkan Beat Box (7:00pm, Bank of America Stage). 9:30pm is a conflict for me, though: Budos Band (Roots Stage) and Ray Davies (Black Sheep Stage). I'm a big Kinks fan (esp. the Arista records, from about Misfits through Word Of Mouth), so I think I'll be at Ray Davies.

Aloha,

Brad

[AD]

nobody except ray davies excites me tonight. so i'm gonna stay home and cook a real meal and relax before bluesfest for a change. looking forward to it.

the crowes were wicked. plants and animals were very good as well. looking forward to seeing them again, wolfe island will be their next show for me

[AD]

Apparently the Crowes were sleazy and raunchy.

More sleaze please

The Black Crowes deliver raunchiest show Bluesfest has ever seen to mob of 25,000 fans

Last night, The Black Crowes reclaimed Bluesfest for all those blues fans who have been patiently waiting a long time to hear some raunchy rock on the big stage.

And The Crowes made the wait worthwhile, with one of the sleaziest, sexiest, and nastiest shows seen so far this year at LeBreton Flats.

And you didn't have to sneak to a small stage to hear it.

Chris and Rich Robinson and the rest of the band were in superb form, opening with Moving on Down the Line, the band put most of the 25,000 fans around the Bank of America stage in the mood to party hard.

Wearing a floppy hat and garnished with honking big rhinestone in the middle of his forehead, that long-haired hippie singer Chris was a vision from the 1960s, reminiscent of Janis Joplin and Mick Jagger as he strutted and pranced while his brother Rich, dressed in more workman-like jeans, was dazzling on the guitar alternating scorching solos with Luther Dickinson while Adam MacDougall played organ and keyboards on Goodbye Daughters of the Revolution, Jealous Again and God's Got It with drummer Sean Gorman banging on a bass drum with American president George W. Bush's bruised face on it.

"That's rock and roll music and that's what this is about," Robinson said defiantly between songs to a cheering mob of fans.

It's been 18 years since the band's debut release Shake Your Money Maker.

Happily, the band's sound hasn't changed much since, which is why Melody Maker magazine hailed them as "the most rock and roll rock and roll band in the world".

With psychedelic lighting and great sound, the band jammed on Cold Hearted and Remedy.

Brash, bold and ballsy, last night's concert with The Black Crowes was just about everything a Bluesfest gig is supposed to be.

Earlier I caught one of Canada's hot new bands. Even in Montreal's scorching music scene, quirky folk-rock trio Plants and Animals are making a name for themselves for doing something the city's best-known bands -- Besnard Lakes, Arcade Fire, The Dears and Patrick Watson -- don't do.

Rock.

Indeed, we've seen so many theatrical and musically adventurous bands come out of Hab-land over the last decade, that sometimes it seems that they've forgotten to rock and roll.

Not Plants and Animals, who cite '60s rock and roll, Led Zeppelin and West African jazz as their biggest influences.

These guys -- Nicolas Basque, Matthew Woodley and Warren Spicer -- are classic post-modernists, quoting their favourite musicians while changing their musical direction entirely.

Rock, jazz, Gospel, you'd be hard-pressed to say precisely what they sound like, other than they play rock and roll as if it was jazz.

Not surprisingly, Basque, Woodley and Spicer, all in their mid-20s, met at Concordia when they were taking jazz. After graduating, they formed a jazzy trio.

Not wanting to be pinned down to any one genre, they went pop and released Parc Avenue, their sensational first album in 2007. Something about their instrumentally-sophisticated pop clicked with listeners. Sales for the album took off and on Wednesday they was nominated for a Polaris Prize.

Much of that same improvisational personality shone through their dinner-hour set of '60's-inspired beatnik pop with an arty twist beginning with New Kind of Love, which despite annoying sound issues, they managed to cover with two-part harmonies.

Woodley later admitted that they found the open-air setting on the Black Sheep stage initially disorienting.

The rest of the set was faultless, and showed that the boys like to jam as much music out of a song as they can for the 300-400 fans, and still left them wanting more.

[rubberdinghy]

Could not tear myself away from KUTI!

[bagochips]

I had a great time at Egypt 80 last night. Looking forward to Balkan Beat Box and Budos Band. I might pop my head in at Ray Davies, but Budos are going to rock out hard. I've been listening to their last album so much lately I'm really excited for this.

[Velvet]

"The Black Crowes deliver raunchiest show Bluesfest has ever seen to mob of 25,000 fans"

Somebody missed the Snoop Dogg show I guess.

[Velvet]

I'm gonna try and catch Ball & Chain tonight. Old-style country yodel music.

[Northern Wish]

Yeah, I wouldn't say it was raunchy- but finally a headliner that was both satisfying and blues based.

I can't wait for Budos Band, Acres and of course Ray Davies tonight....

[rubberdinghy]

The guy in Egypt 80 playing the block was the shit!

Bradm...caught a glimpse of the t-shirts up close.

"Afrobeat Rules" is what it said.

I WAS RIGHT....NA NA NA NA NA!!!

[ollie]

Special thanks to Ollie for making a mid set beer run and giving me a little more room to boogie.

How the fuck did I pull that off?

Wicked show. I'm spent.

[Big Wooly Mammoth]

RAY DAVIES!

I'm super excited about tonight's show. He's playing acoustic accompanied by another guitar player. Never seen him that way before.

The man is a legend. One of the BEST songwriters to come out of the UK 60's scene. The music of the Kinks was very influential - You can hear their influence in the Beatles, Stones, and even punk music.

fwiw, he basically invented that whole storytellers thing. this should be one of the highlights of bluesfest.

He is an incredible live performer. if you are at all on the fence go to this one.

We'll be also checking out Shelby Lynne b4 Ray, also on the Black Sheep Stage.

[thomson]

...caught a glimpse of the t-shirts up close.

"Afrobeat Rules" is what it said.

I found those shirts to be rather ironic after Kuti's politicized banter about the difference between a "Leader" and a "Ruler".

I really enjoyed Kuti's set but my plan for the night got bungled by the Crows' lack of encore. I caught as much of Kuti as possible and then headed to the Crows to catch the tail end of their set plus the encore. I caught their final two songs and then stood in stunned-disbelief when the house music came on.

[boiler]

I really enjoyed Kuti's set but my plan for the night got bungled by the Crows' lack of encore. I caught as much of Kuti as possible and then headed to the Crows to catch the tail end of their set plus the encore. I caught their final two songs and then stood in stunned-disbelief when the house music came on.

ditto

[bradm]

...caught a glimpse of the t-shirts up close.

"Afrobeat Rules" is what it said.

I found those shirts to be rather ironic after Kuti's politicized banter about the difference between a "Leader" and a "Ruler".

I interpret the phrase "Afrobeat Rules" similarly to one interpration of the phrase Moscow Rules: not a statement that a particular thing (Afrobeat, Moscow) is a/the ruler, but a statement of which particular set of rules (Afrobeat, Moscow) is to be followed.

Aloha,

Brad

[ollie]

Ray Davies was awesome tonight but why no Lola?

[Velvet]

I was screaming exactly the same thing.

[bradm]

Acres was really good last night. As with The John Henrys' performance from a couple of days earlier, it's nice to see a band you've only seen in clubs set up and play on a big stage, with a big, clear PA and an open space to let the massive sound out. For Acres, the biggest difference in the sound was in the vocals: Matt's voice came through, loud, clear, and strong.

Shelby Lynne wasn't too bad, but it was tough to hear her back where we were, especially with the bleed from the Roots Stage.

Ray Davies was great. "Sunny Afternoon" was the highlight for me, with him and Shelby Lynne's band rocking out to the Kink classics at the end of the set a close second.

Aloha,

Brad

[AD]

holy fack

I can hardly hear myself think

Robert Sibley, The Ottawa Citizen

Published: Saturday, July 12, 2008

Arthur Schopenhauer was one of your crankier philosophers. Famously pessimistic, the 19th-century German thought men were generally selfish and that life was often painful and boring. But what really ticked him off was noise.

"Knocking, hammering and general noise-making have made the whole of my life a daily torment," he wrote. "The barking of dogs and the screaming of children are abominable."

I have some sympathy for Arthur after being an unwilling Bluesfest attendee for the past week and a half. I'm fond of the blues, but I'd rather not hear it for hours on end, especially late at night when I'm trying to sleep. To be sure, I live in Centretown, so if the wind is blowing in the right direction there is some respite. (From a distance, even the Tragically Hip and Steely Dan are a blur of noise.) I can only imagine what it's like for those who live in the LeBreton Flats area, near the festival site, although I suspect they'd agree with Schopenhauer's judgment that excessive noise "deprives life of all peace and sensibility."

The city grants an exemption allowing the festival to exceed by 10 decibels the regular noise limit of 55 decibels. On some occasions, according to reports, the sound exceeded the

65-decibel exemption despite the efforts of festival officials to stay within the limit. "The noise is unacceptable to quite a few people," says Somerset Councillor Diane Holmes, who has heard many of the complaints.

Indeed, one area resident, in a letter to the Citizen, said a bylaw officer tested the noise level inside his house at 55 decibels even though he lived "more than a kilometre from LeBreton Flats." Another complained "the 'music' starts as early as noon and goes on until at least 11 p.m., 10 to 11 hours a day for 11 days. Over 100 hours of exposure to a high decibel level." (In fact, the music starts at 6 p.m. most days and at noon only on Saturdays and Sunday, but the writer's complaint remains valid.)Why, the writer asked, does the city "encourage such abuse?"

Good question. Yet it seems some festival enthusiasts couldn't care less, judging by the contempt toward such complaints. One festival supporter wrote the Citizen to say he had a "right to celebrate" and "make a little noise." Another even denied area residents had any reason to expect quiet: "If you don't like noise, move to the country."

You wouldn't want to live next door to these guys. They clearly don't accept the notion that one man's rights stop at the end of another man's nose, or, in this case, at the edge of someone's ears.

To adopt this attitude is to assert that your pleasure in something takes precedence over the distress it may cause others. This is the morality of narcissists, and violates the "harm principle," one of the central notions of civil society: You can do what you want so long as it doesn't harm others.

Consider the circumstances of Bluesfest. The festival brings pleasure to thousands of people over 11 days. How nice for them. But how distressing for those area residents, who, possibly, outnumber festival-goers, and, arguably, lose sleep or rest during that period. Anyone who works a late shift and needs to sleep during the day or evening, those who go to bed early so as to get up early for work, or children who need regular nap times, is likely to be sleep deprived.

Even more problematic is the attitude, implicit or otherwise, that those who object to the bombardment of noise expect too much in wanting to enjoy Ottawa's short summers in the quiet of their backyards. How did we get to the point where the desire for quiet, even silence, is regarded as abnormal?

You can't go anywhere nowadays without being assaulted by sound. The canned narcotic of shopping-mall muzak, the tinny scratches that stab your ear as you wait for some corporation that really cares about you to answer the phone, the indecipherable blare from passing cars and, most irritating, the intrusion of others' supposedly private cellphone conversations as you walk down the street; such is the aural vandalism plaguing our lives. Those who blithely dismiss complaints about Bluesfest's "noise," or suggest area residents just have to put up with it, betray the coarsened sensibility of those who've been numbed by the soundscape.

I concede a place for "celebrations" such as Bluesfest. But surely in deciding its location and hours of operation the preponderance of determination should rest with those most adversely affected, not with those who put their pleasure ahead of their neighbours' welfare.

But perhaps empathy for others -- civic mindedness, it used to be called -- is a forlorn hope in these self-obsessed times. Or maybe Schopenhauer was right: "I have long held the opinion that the amount of noise that anyone can bear undisturbed stands in inverse proportion to his mental capacity and can therefore be regarded as pretty fair measure of it."

[bradm]

OK, it's a bit late in the day, but what are people's plans for tonight? Sauce Boss (6:45pm, Black Sheep Stage) looks fun, and I want to see JJ Grey & Mofro (8:00pm, Black Sheep Stage). Joan Armatrading (9:15pm, River Stage) looks like a cool way to end the night.

Aloha,

Brad