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Ottawa Bluesfest


Velvet

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You are right in a sense Booche. I just have a hard time with people at the fest going: " I love Ben Harper. He's my favourite bluesman. Mark Knoffler is great too. Is he from Mississippi? I've never heard of this black dude R.L. Burnside. Does he play blues"? Bluesmen are always over-looked.

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With the Montreal Jazz fest right there, you can't expect anybody to care about the Ottawa Jazz Fest. Calling it the Ottawa Rock Fest is too alienating, and there is already a hugely popular Ottawa folk fest. The Ottawa Music Fest is a good thought, but too generic. So, though Blues Fest is innaccurate, at least it gives the organisers a subtle direction, while still allowing them to book pretty much anything they want. Most popular music is directly or indirectly blues based. Sure it's loose, but who cares, they do an awesome job. Purists only wanna hear dead people anyway.

Everybody bitched when Sting played, but guess what, the place was packed. Knopfler is one of my all-time favourite guitar players, so I'm a happy camper.

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Actually, I just checked the Ottawa Bluesfest's line-up from last year and it was impressive. I'll rescind what I said earlier... somewhat. I guess I'd like to see some big blues guys headline instead of blues influenced artists. Buddy Guy, Taj Mahal, B.B. King and Son Seals come to mind. Still, Otis Rush played the fest last year and I'd kill to see that guitar legend.

What I'd like to see both Limestone and Ottawa's bluesfests do, is book some serious " hip " young bluesy acts like The North Mississippi Allstars, Derek Trucks, Gov't Mule and The White Stripes. This would bring in a whole new demographic to the blues community in both cities. Hey Velvet, what about nero doing some trippy blues at the Ottawa festival this year?

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I don't know if it has been confirmed yet but I have heard that Peter Green will be playing this year ... that is my attendance confirmed right there. Re : is it really a blues festival question, well there is always plentiful blues on the undercard, but there is usually more further afield stuff in the headliners ... let's face it, there aren't a huge amount of original blues masters still alive who could really headline ... I don't know about Son Seals, but Buddy Guy and BB King have all played in the past few years. Also, my favorite performances from the past couple of years when I started going have not been blues based : California Guitar Trio with Tony Levin in 01 and Down From The Mountain (Emmylou Harris ... sigh!) in 02. It just seems that the people who spend all their time bitching about the supposed lack of blues don't look any further than the headliners on the main stage.

Rob Not Bob

Bitchin' again ...

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