Month: July 2010

My Dad sent me this video. It’s of Alley Lapointe, a musician from New Brunswick that Dad was friends with when he was growing up in Murdochville. OUTSTANDING! Can I also say how much I loved the fire effect near the end of the video? I had a good chuckle.

Another evening with a good crew of people…Mike, Trish, Ben, Krista and I went for some Asian cuisine and then headed to the Festival. Did I ever mention that Andre introduced us to the greatest staircase in the world? It’s definitely easier to get to the festival grounds using the new stairs!

We missed out on Dana Fuchs which was disappointing…the only thing I know her from is the Across the Universe film where she plays Sexy Sadie. But she can wail. And wail she did, from what I heard of in the news the next day.

Old Crow Medicine Show was another recommendation by Mike’s roommate Dave and it didn’t disappoint. A good bluegrass band is what every person needs! They were really entertaining and I had a good laugh when you had four younger guys on one side of the stage and then the older guy on the banjo to the left and every time the band would huddle, it seemed like he was left out! Kind of like an old Uncle you don’t want cramping your style!

We then headed to the Subway stage since Vero was going to meet up with us there to see Marianas Trench…some band she heard on the radio a few times. Turns out that they were rescheduled for a later time so we headed over to Matthew Good who was getting quite the crowd built up. We finally found Krista and Ben deep in the crowd but lost Dave at one point who decided to hang back.

Matthew Good always puts on a great show and this one did not disappoint. I still question why I don’t own any of his albums considering his a Canadian alt-rock classic! I shall have to rectify that situation. I really was impressed with all the songs and the band put on an excellent show. Some great alternative rock anthems from this guy.

The entire crew split up as Trish wanted to see Crowded House, Mike wanted to see Derek Trucks and Vero and I went to see Marianas Trench. So Marianas Trench is a band with a young fan base. I believe the average age was around…12. They started out very cool…dressed as ninjas coming out and kicking ass to some good techno music. That’s about all they had in them in terms of awesomeness because the rest of the 30 minutes that I stood through was some pretty grueling stuff. If you can think of some one-hit wonders, I believe this is exactly what this band would appear to be. I believe in 30 minutes, they played three songs and just yammered in between them. I couldn’t tell if they were just drunk, or just slack in their professionalism as a musical act…either way, after three songs of torture I told Vero I couldn’t take it anymore and I was going to head over to Derek Trucks to see what he was all about. Considering the guy toured with Eric Clapton, I was expecting something a little better! Interestingly enough, when writing up this review, I notice that Marianas Trench has mysteriously disappeared from the list of performers that performed at Bluesfest. Nowhere to be found on the site, I wonder if Bluesfest has adopted a policy of ‘we’ll keep you on your site if you prove to play some good tunes’.

I wasn’t disappointed. Derek Trucks was wailing away on his guitar when I got there and never let up. From what Mike told me, Susan Tedeschi is the singer of this band and Derek Trucks is her husband and tours as the guitarist. Susan wasn’t too bad on the guitar herself and she had an amazing voice. I especially liked when they ripped into Helter Skelter…wait…was that the Beatles tune they played? For the life of me I cannot remember but it was a great tune. Come Together? Man, I can’t remember! Argh.

I unfortunately couldn’t find Mike as he found a good spot next to the sound stage…with good reason! You have to make sure to have the best spot in the house when seeing a band like this shred through some good blues music. A lot of people always ask “Where’s the Blues music at Bluesfest?”. Well, there was no need to ask it at this festival. They had some class acts at the festival this year.

After that was done, I headed back to our meeting spot and found out that Crowded House wasn’t all that good, Marianas Trench wasn’t all that much better, and Derek Trucks and Susan Tedeschi turned out to be the hit of the night. Wicked!

I said farewell to Bluesfest for a few days. The Festival had taken its toll on this weary soul and Vero’s sister had decided to stay until Saturday so I decided to take that opportunity to see them one last night.

Pretty well, now that Molto hasn’t bounced back from their Sandwich 1.0 days. For $4.50, you can’t go wrong.

Monday marked the first night I would see Ben show up for the concert series and with good reason! Arcade Fire was back in action! Exciting times! Last time I saw Arcade Fire was with Mike in Montreal back in 2005 for the Neon Bible tour. I was expecting a frenetic concert and I wasn’t disappointed.

We arrived in time to check out a little Sarah Harmer action. I’m not really familiar with her stuff but she had an excellent voice and some good tunes. We then headed over to see Alexisonfire (or as I like to call them -> Alex is on Fire) and watched them for 15 minutes. Ben said this was his first time even hearing about these guys which surprised the heck out of me. They were doing what they did best…screamo-rock which I find intriguing ever since Mike and I stopped in to see my sister in North Bay that one night and they had this one guy whose only job was to scream into the mic!

The crowd was pretty heavy on the grounds so we headed over to ‘the spot’ and settled in for the night. I managed to see my friend Mike with his friend Joel again. I swear we run into each other every day.

The Arcade Fire had a really interesting stage set up…they had what looked like an old drive-in theater sign up on stage which housed the video screen. The video effects were cool in that it wasn’t a straight video feed, but one that went through a variety of vintage looking effects. I enjoyed the subtle differences.

The band did not disappoint. We got a heavy dose of the new album ‘The Suburbs’ which is coming out in a few weeks. There were some tunes that didn’t do it for me upon first listen but there were others that made me go ‘Wow!’. I love it when a band can musically do that to a person upon first listen. Forget ‘liking the song only if I know it’. I want to experience it!

It seemed like the entire band was musically involved with the new songs compared to the older hits. The older hits allowed for some players to be more action-oriented on the stage (think the percussion players going around and banging on anything on the stage). The set list was a good mix of The Suburbs and Funeral, but was severely lacking from Neon Bible which is a shame. But I must admit that Funeral still trumps Neon Bible in my opinion so maybe they just don’t care to play a lot of the Neon Bible tunes live anymore since they have a new album to play.

I give the show two enthusiastic thumbs up. If you have never seen Arcade Fire before, I’m sure the following comments will come from your mouth: “I can’t believe how many members there are!”, “What the heck is that percussion player doing?!”, “The energy from the band and the crowd is amazing!”

On a related note, when the Arcade Fire left the stage, supposedly they heard the Dubé Brothers rocking out on the street corner and went to check out these pint-sized professionals rip into Sweet Child o’ Mine. There’s a video of them checking the band out on Youtube somewhere and it’s pretty awesome. The Dubé Brothers are these ten year olds that put my guitar playing to shame. I almost feel like I was watching the Jackson 5 playing on the street because their Dad was in the back managing the sound levels and giving them encouragement. 😉

Setlist:
Ready to Start
Month of May
Neighbourhood #1 (Tunnels)
Neighbourhood #2 (Laika)
No Cars Go
Haiti
Empty Room
Rococo
Crown of Love
Suburban War
Keep the Car Running
We Used to Wait
Neighbourhood #3 (Power Out)
Rebellion (Lies)

Encore
Happy Birthday
Intervention
Wake Up

Sunday main event! Top night of the tour so far!

Trish, Mike, Andre and I watched the World Cup final during the evening and then grabbed a few sausages before heading to RUSH. Andre scored a $25 ticket to the show on our way in and he also introduced us to a new stairwell to take down to the grounds. I may not have spoken about the original stairwell on this blog before…but there is a killer long stairwell that we take down from downtown to the festival and at the end of the night, it is the bane of our existence! Little did we know that there is another less cumbersome stairwell 100 meters to the left! Doh! This made for easy walking on the way back.

I headed to the Silent Auction tent to discover that it is NEXT Sunday when the Sam Roberts picture goes up for auction! But we grabbed a few beer and headed to a good spot in the crowd. While it wasn’t our regular spot, it wasn’t too far from it back near the beer tent. I would say that there was pretty well close to the amount of people that KISS had the year before. No one was clawing our eyes out for a spot…it was pretty relaxed. Actually, at the time of writing this, I found out that RUSH played to 32,220 fans…which is the largest they have ever played to as a headliner.

RUSH came out in full force and the crowd loved it. Not knowing much RUSH (although I was indoctrinated into them with a couple of discs from Troy a few weeks back), I thoroughly enjoyed their show. They were quite intense. They had some excellent videos playing in the background as well. You know…everyone feels that Neil Peart is amazing…and I wholeheartedly agree. But I can’t get over how much each of the band members stands on their own as well. Geddy Lee ‘slapping de bass’ and his wild vocals…Alex Lifeson handling most of the other duties involving synth and guitar…it was an incredible performance. I gotta ask…if I had as many drums as Neil, would I be a decent player as well? It’s almost like I can just swing my stick and hit *something*. I’m kidding around.

We left after the new song BU2B and headed for the Swell Season. I was really disappointed that the two shows overlapped as I was really digging the RUSH concert and I knew that their second set was going to be the entire Moving Pictures set. But I figured we had to give the Swell Season a shot as they don’t’ come by that often whereas it’s almost a guarantee that I can see RUSH again in my lifetime.

As soon as we arrived at the Hard Rock Stage I knew it was going to be trouble. You couldn’t hear the RUSH concert too much from us…but Levon Helm was dominating the sound waves and it pretty well crushed the hopes of hearing a good folk act like the Swell Season. They rolled with it though…they realized that they would have to compete so they changed a few songs around and just gave it their all. Glen Hansard has one of the more powerful voices I’ve ever heard and he really touched me with his songs. I was inspired after seeing them. At first I was thinking I may just see a few songs and go around the rest of the festival but it wouldn’t have happened with this great music coming from the stage. The band made a few snide comments about RUSH (although it was pretty well the Levon Helm Band blanketing our area with music) and requested that the Bluesfest organizers should think twice between slotting a folk act in between a prog-rock and a classic rock band! I wholeheartedly agree.

I would see the Swell Season live again in a heartbeat. Like I said, I was musically inspired after the show was done and I think it is going to be my favourite set of the entire festival. It’s too bad that they were hassled by the sound bleed from the other stages, but so be it. In fact, Benoit was chatting with the pianist of the band afterward and she didn’t seem to have noticed it all that much. If she did, she didn’t make it too known which was nice of her. I did manage to snap a photo of her and Benoit after the show. I must admit that SLR cameras are a mystery to me so I practiced for about fifty pictures before the magical moment happened. I didn’t want to be that guy who takes an out of focus shot!

We headed over to see Levon Helm (who, that day, I found out was the drummer from The Band!) and we showed up for their last song where the guy from the Swell Season were up on stage with them! Sweet! Get drowned out of their own show, but get invited up to a legendary stage! That’s even-steven in my books!

We headed back over to RUSH but they were done and all they had was a little video vignette with Paul “Slappin’ De Bass” and Jason Segel (who is a huge RUSH fan). We headed home for the night and I stayed over at Mike’s that night considering I had my first day of work after a good vacation.

RUSH Setlist

SET 1

THE SPIRIT OF RADIO
TIME STAND STILL
PRESTO
STICK IT OUT
WORKIN’ THEM ANGELS
LEAVE THAT THING ALONE
FAITHLESS
BU2B
FREE WILL
MARATHON
SUBDIVISIONS

SET 2

TOM SAWYER
RED BARCHETTA
YYZ
LIMELIGHT
CAMERA EYE
WITCH HUNT
VITAL SIGNS
CARAVAN
LOVE 4 SALE
CLOSER TO THE HEART
2112 OVERTURE / TEMPLES
FAR CRY

ENCORE

LA VILLA STRANGIATO
WORKING MAN

Honestly, how many times can I say it? I love HOPE Volleyball more than Christmas. It’s fun. It’s in the sun. Sausage on a bun.

Even though I was served some piss-warm beer at one point, and I questioned whether or not I was eating an actual burger at one point, HOPE Volleyball 2010 turned out to be one of the better years in terms of weather. We were definitely feeling the heat even with the sunscreen on!

The team was quite large this year…Vero, Marie-Eve, Chantelle, Vero, Simon, Mike, Carrie, Rob, Casey, Melissa, Carrie and myself. Whew! I thought it was fun with that many people but it does make for some logistical headaches at times!

We ended up on the sand court once again which made us happy. While our playing was the best (at first) we dominated the afternoon. But is the volleyball really about the winning? I say thee nay! It’s about the refreshing swims afterward. It’s about the trek back to the beer tent. It’s about the HOPE beer chips in your pocket begging to be spent!

We spent most of the day on the hill side watching some excellent bands…LoudLove, Johnstones and Hawksley Workman. I would have to say the main attraction of the day was the DJ on top of the sound booth. He was intense…on a 40 degree day in his jeans and long sleeved shirt, he kept jumping around and loving life and pumping out some excellent tunes. Well done good sir!

I can’t say I was overly impressed with Hawksley Workman. Don’t get me wrong…excellent musician, excellent band and the crowd loved them. In fact, word on the street are that ladies LOVE the guy and their underwear drops when he walks next to them. But I was not affected by this gentleman on the stage but I enjoyed the few tunes I recognized.

Highlights of the day:
– Having them announce the beer tents were closing at 4:15, hightailing it there to stock up and then realizing that all was not lost! They were open until 6PM!
– Rob’s ‘Paisley Central’ t-shirt
– Seeing Steve and Anne-Marie marvel at the amount of bikinis on the beach!
– Taking a ball straight in the face
– Mike having eight cops question him about a rumour that he was smoking marijuana. He was quite pissed off (considering he doesn’t touch the stuff and he needed to get to his next game) and he let my cop brother-in-law know about it. Which was even more hilarious considering Steve is a) On vacation b) He isn’t even a cop in Ottawa. I had to let Mike know that he should cool off for a bit with a beer!

All in all, we had amazing weather this year compared to last year and I will take that every year from here on out!

Friday during the day I didn’t do a whole lot. It was the last day of vacation so it was spent picking up a dehumidifier from Costco (third time going and it finally pays off!) and I also did a few other errands.

The main event of the night was Bluesfest as Anne-Marie and Steve were coming out for the festival. Woohoo! As we left Evan in his screaming state with Aunt Vero, we hightailed it to Mike’s palace of beer and had a quick one before hightailing it. I was already berating him for whatever silly thing he was doing that evening and I was on fire! However, the tables quickly turned when we were halfway to the concert and I realized I had forgot our tickets in the car! Doh! I felt horrible. We were trying to hightail it there to see Gord Downie start up as it was Steve’s favourite artist in the world and we didn’t want him to miss it.

Anne-Marie and I jogged back to the car and let me tell you, huffing wind after a few beer…not easy! We made it back to Steve and Mike where Mike berated me for the rest of the night. Well-deserved good sir, well-deserved! I kept the pace going because I knew we wouldn’t make it on time if we took our time.

While walking through the festival grounds I said “Who the heck is THAT awesomeness?” and it was the John Butler Trio who Mike wanted to see. Sorry Mike! I feel bad after realizing how great they were.

Ten seconds after arriving at the beer tent at the Subway stage, Gord Downie showed up and recited a little poetry and started things off. Success! We made it in time. We grabbed a few beers and found a spot which wasn’t dwarfed by umbrellas.

***Bluesfest 101***
Upon arriving at Bluesfest, I let Steve and Anne-Marie into a few history lessons about the Bluesfest including the ‘Three Bones of Contention (which a seldomly seen fourth)’. They are as follows:

1. People with Lawn chairs
2. People with Umbrellas
3. Noise By-Law
4 (seldom seen since 2006): That guy with the freaking guitar in the air! Mike swears he saw the same guy walk by that night but I didn’t think it was the same guy. Either way, if you hoist a guitar up in my line of sight, that thing is going down!

***End Bluesfest 101***
After losing Steve and Anne-Marie to a beer run, Mike and I headed over to see Courtney Love and Hole take the stage. She opened up with Sympathy for the Devil which was an odd choice. Mike put it ever so eloquently “Who opens up with a well-known cover tune?” Hole was surprisingly awesome. I am a big fan and I was wondering if Courtney Love would come on stage all out of it considering it was her birthday. I was impressed with the screaming vocals and the general vibe given off by the band.

We did end up heading back to Gord Downie right near the end to find our two lost cohorts in crime as we realized we never had set up a meeting point of we got separated. We found them, checked out the rest of Hole’s set and meandered around Bluesfest. We stumbled into Benoit and Michael near the beer tent and we listened to Joan Jett for a bit…quite the rocker! And then headed on a tour of the entire fairgrounds and ended up sitting outside the Comedy Tent and listened to a rather crass Louis CK spew out some jokes. It was a relaxing night as we sat on the hilltop and sipping a beer.

I then topped off the evening with a trip to the Elgin Street Diner which impressed Anne-Marie and Steve. I was either really hungry or they don’t make the poutines as large as they used to! Anne-Marie then drove us home and we hit the sack. All in all, it was a great night at Bluesfest once again…especially when the rain stopped!

I didn’t attend Bluesfest Day 2 but Mike and Carrie said that they saw a band that has my doppelganger. Here is his photo: http://www.grupofantasma.com/beto They also said it was an excellent band to see.

Day Two of Bluesfest was actually spent welcoming Anne-Marie, Steve and our godson Evan to the house. The night was spent sipping beers in +40 degree weather as well as starting a fire to get rid of the mosquitoes. I marveled at the fact that only in Canada would you find two guys sitting around a campfire in +40 degree weather! He called it being ‘hard Canadian’ which is from a new Gord Downie tune we were listening to.

Day Three was a walk-around night which was fine by me. I like the nights where I have no desire to see one particular band. We walked in and saw The Bacon Brothers (home of Kevin Bacon…I have now entered the six degrees of separation) and they sounded decent enough.

I was interested in seeing Great Lake Swimmers as Mike’s roommate Dave was raving about them. We listened to a bunch of it the night before and it was decent. I would refer to it as lazy Sunday night cottage music. Very easy going stuff. We hit up the Hard Rock tent and I must admit the volume could have been a little louder considering the folk nature of their music! We stuck around for awhile and I would say that I will see them again if they ever come into town.

The Moody Blues were on the Claridge Stage and I must say that for the amount of Moody Blues music I know (nil), I was blown away by their awesomeness. Classic Rock at its best. Everyone was having a great time watching them and I definitely think they were the hit of the night when compared to the headliner B-52s. Speaking of which, I stayed for one song and said to myself “Self, I can’t waste time watching the B-52s waiting to hear Love Shack.” So we went to see Steve Hackett who is a solo artist who used to be the guitarist in Genesis and he blew our socks off! I had a good laugh when we saw one of the band members in a dress and we had an argument on whether or not the guy was a guy or not. Clearly we got on the nerves of the woman in front of us as she turns around and says “Mick is a guy! He wears a dress! And he’s amazing!” and then she proceeds to continue to rock out.

All in all, a decent night was had at Bluesfest.