Day: July 6, 2007

Categories
Concert Reviews

Review: George Thorogood and the Destroyers

After Bela Fleck and the Flecktones left the stage we headed over to the beer and refresher stations. We managed to become masters of the peeing relay race. We had Sara, Krista, Matt, Mike and myself all with beer in our hands. Not wanting to bring it into the porta-potty, we managed to send Mike and Sara into the porta-pottys while we held onto the other beer. Because they weren’t out by the time a stall became open, we let one of the guys (who was complaining about his bladder bursting five minutes before) go ahead of us. He was so ecstatic that he ran into Sara’s stall and we heard a yelp! We all had a good laugh at that. Mike emerged and grabbed some beer and we got Krista into the washroom. It was a great example of logistics at a festival.

May I point out that the beer lines were stellar this evening but the washrooms weren’t not as good. May I also point out that some guy gave us a great deal (unknowingly) on beer…2 for $6 instead of 2 for $11! Mike and I both walked away with this great deal with smiles on our faces.

We managed to follow the crowd in and find an excellent spot to check out George Thorogood. It’s all about going with the flow of the crowd. When we settled in, we noticed that the big screen had a ticker tape running on the bottom of it so that you can text message a message onto the screen. Knowing this, I borrowed Krista’s cellphone and text messaged “Mike, will you marry me? – Ryan” and it showed up 20 minutes later! It was hilarious. I am hoping that someone in the crowd read that and knew Mike.

I must admit that I found the text messaging to be highly distracting though. Half the time you want to watch the stage and see what’s going on but there is this carrot dangling in front of you called ‘text messages’ and you are always interested in seeing what’s going to be displayed.

Once again (as with most of the Bluesfest 2007 artists), I don’t really know a lot of George Thorogood’s music. But they put on a rockin’ good time. Mike mentioned to me that there were a lot of songs he recognized but never knew it was George Thorogood who played it. We had some Bad to the Bone, Who Do You Love and the classic – One Bourbon, One Scotch and One Beer. Great sing along tune.

At the end, George pretended to pass out from the sheer crowd noise and his band had to revive him. They then ended the night with O Canada playing with some videos of flags waving. Oh George, how patriotic art thou?

All in all, they put a good time and everyone came out of there happy for the good Friday night of rock.

We then decided to head out to the new Heart and Crown up on Preston Street for a beer. I jogged ahead to Sara’s place to find Chris and his buddy hanging out. Later on, Krista was complaining about her shoulder being sore so I was demonstrating that she should swing it like Pete Townshend plays his guitar – like a windmill. So I rev up my arm into windmill swinging action but fail to realize that there is a doorway directly above me. My arm swings once, twice, CRACK! Oh man, I busted up my hand pretty good. My thumb is pretty good three days later but it was hard on me for the first bit! Mental note in life – While performing any Pete Townshend impressions, be aware of your surroundings!

We then headed out to the Heart and Crown and I saw a rockshaw, a rickshaw with a booming sound system and crazy lights.

The new Heart and Crown was decent. The service there was a little insane and we found out from Mike’s friend who works there that they were severely understaffed that night – no bouncers, no waiters, etc. I even had to grab a broom from the backroom and clean up some broken glass in the washroom (Palmer did not break any glass. It was there when I got there.) So at first glance I would say that the new Heart and Crown has some potential to be a great place, but I would have to say I prefer the original so far.

Update: Judging from the comments section a few posts below this one, a ‘Kim’ said she was at the show. The only Kim I know is my cousin Kim and I am shocked that you were in town and didn’t hook up with the Palmer. Here’s an open notice to anyone coming into town for a good time – you’re always welcome at my home, and I always accept a Bluesfest beer.

Categories
Uncategorized

An Open Letter to the Bluesfest Organizers

(I actually will send this one in to the organizers)

Hello,

I started off my Blues fest with a great concert by Bob Dylan and I have to thank you ahead of time for what looks like a killer lineup this year!

While on the concert grounds last night, there was a minor irritation that I thought I would offer a solution to.

It is very difficult for all parties involved to navigate through the concert grounds when people have their lawn chairs set up. It is inconvenient on both sides of the equation – we are irritated that it takes us so long to move anywhere remotely close to the stage from Gate 1 and the persons bringing their lawn chairs are irritated by us trying to move through them.

I remember last year’s Blues fest had an amazing setup where persons with lawn chairs had their own section set up. This made everybody happy – we didn’t have to worry about tripping over a lawn chair, and they didn’t have to worry about some people pushing their way through all night long.

If there is any way the organizers of Blues fest 2007 can quickly fix this problem (perhaps creating a section for standing room only and lawn chairs only) before the week is over, I assure you that everyone involved will have a better experience. I have heard the same comment on the radio stations for the past two days and many people at work have said the same thing.

That being said, I understand that organizing an event of this high caliber is difficult and you cannot foresee every possible outcome. I just wanted to pass on a suggestion and say that so far everything else looks great!

Palmer

Categories
Uncategorized

An Open Letter to the People Bringing Lawn Chairs to Bluesfest

Don’t.

Signed – Palmer

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Uncategorized

An Open Letter to the Person Holding the Guitar Up At Bluesfest


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Originally uploaded by palm0014

Hi, I believe we met face to face last year. You know, during the Sam Roberts Band concert at Bluesfest when everyone was having a great time and the band was rocking and we were getting poured on but it was still a good time. Remember that night? Yes, I remember it well.

I remember it because about 20 feet in front of me, there you were, with your acoustic guitar held up high in front of a bunch of us and we couldn’t see a good portion of the stage. Yes, yes, I understand it’s not that wide of an item but depending on how far you are from the stage, it becomes a wall.

I know you remember me because I finally made my way through the crowd to tap you on the shoulder and we had that polite conversation about how the people behind you would appreciate it if you left your guitar down and you proclaimed “Hey man, I’m just here having a great time with my guitar.” and I felt your pain because as a guitarist myself, I like to rock. But I reasoned with you and said “That’s fine and all, but at the same time you are preventing others to rock.” At this point, my reasoning hit home and you lowered your guitar to let us all have a good time. I thank you for that. Let’s also note that because of you, I felt like a God for 7 seconds as the people behind you cheered for my actions. It was a beautiful moment and no one could tell because of the rain on my face, but I shed a tear.

Now…fast forward a year from that point and I’m standing at the Bob Dylan concert last night and lo and behold, 50 meters in front of me I see your acoustic guitar being raised from the crowd in front of the stage. Here I thought this was a random occurrence, but now I realize this is your ‘thing’ at concerts!

The following questions popped into my head while listening to some excellent Dylan tunes:

1) What is the purpose of the guitar being held up? Do you wish for the band to acknowledge that there is a fellow guitarist out there in the crowd? Off-note: To the band who acknowledged this chap at a concert years ago, look what you have created.

2) If you are going to hold up your guitar so that the band can see it, don’t you think it’s a good idea if you’re a little closer to the stage? You’re still at least 200 feet from the stage from what I can see. Considering the Bob Dylan show doesn’t have any pyrotechnics and the lighthing is pretty sparse, the best the boys on the stage can see is about 10 feet from the stage. That’s probably to the security barrier (or the row of lawn chairs forming a security barrier – many of which I stumbled into last night)! Let’s not point out that their eyesight is probably failing also and it’s pretty hard to look at the instruments on their own stage.

3) Perhaps you’re just an avid guitarist who lugs his guitar around with him everywhere which is awesome. But then we get back into the whole ‘You’re blocking my view.” Now, last night you were too far to affect me, but I’m sure the people behind you didn’t appreciate 10 minutes of it being raised in the air right in the line of view of Bob Dylan. This also goes for those people insisting on bringing umbrellas to a concert. My colleague reported that the Nickelback concert last night requested ‘No Umbrellas’ which was amazing. She said there were so many umbrellas in the trash cans that she could have made a fortune. But at Bluesfest last year, the umbrellas were quite the pain. In fact, I remember Mike pulling on an umbrella to piss the guy off so much that he finally left. Or did he? I forget. Nonetheless, if you have something obstructing the view of others, that isn’t cool. This doesn’t apply to tall people in front of short people. You can’t help being tall, you can blame your parents for that. If you’re nice enough, you’ll let the short person in front of you.

Now, if none of these above questions apply, then I’ll have to assume that the only reason that you bring the acoustic guitar to hoist it up in the air, is for the sole reason of being unique. Well good sir, while you are unique and you have me now writing you a letter, you still are upsetting some people directly behind you. Heck, this open letter also goes out to the person(s) holding the sign up at the U2 concert back in November 2005. I’ll let you both know that I think it’s fine to hold up something for a maximum of 5-10 seconds. But holding a large item up for an entire song is uncalled for.

Am I old and cranky? No. But I understand how the crowd needs to be a collective in terms of having a good time. Sometimes you gotta give up something so someone else can have a good time. However, I am also at fault for not really giving a damn and just wishing to rock. I expect an open letter being written about me in someone’s blog around the Net which I will never read because I just don’t know who they are and they don’t know me.

Keep on rocking!

Palmer