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  • Review: Jonny Lang & Buddy Guy – Bluesfest 2007

    We started off the night right by hitting up Bluesfest for some fish and chips for dinner. Let’s be honest…when you enter the gauntlet which is Bluesfest (10 days of rocking), you slowly run out of groceries at home and it’s a lot easier to eat out. But this is a bad thing people! Palmer’s advice – Pick up some groceries!

    Met Vero’s friend Chantal at the Jonny Lang concert and we were hanging with Karilee, Krista, Mike and Trish. Jonny Lang has been around for the past decade and he’s still young! He was entertaining but the cream of the crop was the guy manning the tambourine and one song brought him out in the spotlight with his spot-on impression of a train conductor (pulls the cable, Woo-Woo!). There was also this excellent dancer across the field who was into the music.

    So, back to Jonny…he was a great guitar player. He had the greatest face while pulling off his licks. Krista referred to it as his ‘sex’ face. I would hate to think that this is actually the face he has while having sex. I found there were a few too many ballads coming out of his set, but this is a premature analysis considering I thought he was only one for one hour and I think he played for 2 hours and I only caught 45 minutes of their set.

    Why did I only catch 45 minutes of the show? Because it was time to head out to Buddy Guy at the River Stage! We headed to the beer tent to stock up on beer. Please refer to a future entry which will be the latest in my Open Letter series to Bluesfest. Let’s just say that whatever happened to us is more atrocious than the lawnchair people.

    (insert the future entry on the Open Letter of the Transition between the Rogers Stage and the River Stage.)

    We show up to the River Stage and I can hear the sweet tones of Buddy Guy eminating from the stage. We couldn’t see too well as we were very far from the stage and in front of many tall individuals. This was unfortunate. But the sounds…the SOUNDS!

    Let’s talk about Buddy Guy for a moment. Yet another artist whom I don’t know anything about. All we know about him is that he’s 73 years old and can still rock. He taught Hendrix, Clapton, Jeff Beck and Stevie Ray Vaughn everything they know about the stage performance and guitar playing. Who invented playing the guitar with their teeth? Buddy Guy. That’s right.

    The fascinating aspect of Buddy Guy is that he was very erratic with his show. He would be in the middle of a song, get bored of it, yell out “Wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute!”, end the song, talk about how he taught some guitar player a song, then rip into some Hendrix for us. Then he would get tired of it and move onto something else. At least he made it seamless and the band knew he was like this. It is almost like it was planned.

    There was also a moment where he left the stage and kept playing. I had read about this and realized that he was probably going to get a drink or go to the washroom! Sure enough, he stops playing for 90 seconds and then starts up again and shows up on the stage about 4 minutes later! Ha ha! I had these visions of him walking back to the porta-potty, doing his business and then heading back to the stage.

    The abrupt nature of the show didn’t stop as he started a song and as soon as he was done the first verse he abruptly left the stage and that was the show! Very odd! But it didn’t matter. We were witness to a legend. This man could play. REALLY PLAY. He didn’t slow down at all and he was a great showman. I am definitely going to open up my knowledge of music to include Buddy Guy. If you have the opportunity to check him out, do so. Two enthusiastic thumbs up.

  • Review: Zeitgeist (The Smashing Pumpkins)

    I’ve had this album for the past 10 days which allows me to give its proper review.

    The last time The Smashing Pumpkin offered up an album was in 2000 with their release of Machina II – The Friends and Enemies of Modern Music. This was a very limited vinyl only release (25 copies made) with instructions to rip it and release it for free on the web. This was definitely a better album than Machina – The Machines of God but in the end, it didn’t matter because the Pumpkins broke up in 2000.

    Enter seven years later with the Pumpkins reformed (with Billy Corgan and Jimmy Chamberlain) and they have released their new album – Zeitgeist – today.

    Zeitgeist is a return to form of hard hitting tunes. Reminiscent of Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness (which is an excellent move) but it seems more modern. Billy’s tricks of the trade from Adore to The Future Embrace are scattered around the album. There are definitely some heavy hitters for the first half of the album and then the more laid back Future Embrace style rockers.

    At first listen, I was thrown aback by the layering of vocals done of the majority of the album. It took away from the rawness of the tracks, which I witnessed while listening to several bootlegs from the Europe tour for the past month. After awhile, the vocal layering grows on me although there are a few tracks where I would prefer it not to appear.

    In the end, the album is killer. A true return to form for the Pumpkins. If Mellon Collie was a fork in the road which created Adore and Machina, then Zeitgeist is a return to that fork in the road and taking the other path. I am enjoying this path so far and look forward to the next few years with this album.

    Fave tracks at the Moment: Bleeding the Orchid, Tarantula, Starz, United States

  • The Trek to Deep River


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    Originally uploaded by palm0014

    Saturday Morning we picked up Duncan and Krista and headed out to Deep River to visit Shannon and Maureen. It is only 2 hours away from Ottawa but I never managed to get some time to visit them. Unfortunately I could only slot one day in as I had to work on my mid-term project, but one day is fine as it’s only a quick jaunt.

    After some an amusing game of Highway Hypotheticals (in which Duncan thought that we should market this idea), we arrived to find everyone arising from their slumber. Nichelle, Adam, John and Margaret had driven up the night before from Sault Ste. Marie.

    We headed down to the local watering hole and ordered some food and drink. Not bad, not bad at all! At the pub, we had some great news from a good friend. This is where the mystery sets in and it’s up to you to figure out what the heck happened as I won’t be the one to come out and say it.

    The fries were delish! Then we toured the main strip of Deep River which was nice enough. Loading up on food and drinks for the evening, we headed back into the house and loaded up the boat. Shannon brought us for a tour of the river and headed out towards Chalk River where he showed us where he works. It was interesting to find out that the nuclear reactors had been around since the late 1950s. I never knew that nuclear reactors have been around for that long. Let me also point out that Shannon has a sweet view outside his office.

    During the trip, Adam was trying to spray me with water so I grabbed the bailer bucket and launched it at him. However, I mis-shot and ended up getting the majority of it on Melissa’s friend Sabrina! Woops! She wasn’t too impressed but she was good natured about it. Although she did spew out some legal talk on me about misplaced malice (never do anything bad to a lawyer!)

    We then retired to the homestead where we played some excelelnt games of euchre (Krista and I won 2-1 through the entire night), some bocce ball and cooked up some steaks. There was a nice campfire and fireworks to watch also and once the rain started pouring, we headed inside where Adam managed to spray Shannon with the hose so Shannon retaliated with a pitcher of water of his head. Beautiful.

    I have no idea how long we stayed up playing euchre but it was good times and we passed out in Shannon’s living room for the night. We had a great time and it was good to see everyone! Deep River is a pretty nice spot to live….right on the river, lots of privacy. I think to be ideal, it would have to be the size of Kapuskasing, but that’s a minor point. Very nice spot!

  • Review: Bela Fleck and the Flecktones – Bluesfest 2007

    We headed back down to Bluesfest on Friday night to check out Bela Fleck and the Flecktones on the Rogers Stage. All I know about them is that Mike loves these guys and he plays a mean banjo. With that information in hand, we headed out, found an excellent spot in front of the stage (look more room over at the Rogers stage!) and settled in.

    Bela Fleck and the Flecktones were amazing. I definitely had them as the best show of the Bluesfest (and it’s only the second night!) after watching them. They had Bela who is this amazing banjo player…then they have Victor Wooten who plays a mean bass.

    The cream of the crop is Future Man who plays his own invention – the Synthaxe Drumitar which is a MIDI controller shaped like a guitar. It was amazing! The fact that he came out in a pirate outfit doesn’t hurt either. Actually, I am having a good laugh now after reading Wikipedia for this information and find out the guy’s name is Future Man.

    Let’s not forget Jeff Coffin on horns, more specifically playing two saxaphones at the same time!

    Honestly, they put on an amazing show of their talents. Mostly instrumental, it kept me grooving all night long.

  • Review: The White Stripes – Bluesfest

    Sunday night we headed down to see The White Stripes. We got there a bit early and didn’t feel like checking out the other acts so we just found a great spot to stand around in which wasn’t too far off from our spot where we watched George Thorogood.

    There was this small fellow in front of me taking pictures with his nice Nikon camera. He was getting some good shots during the night. At one point this one guy offered to get him up on his back to get a better view so I hoisted the guy up and held him up on this guy’s back while he snapped some shots. I should have asked him to send me some!

    I don’t know much about The White Stripes. All I know is that Jack and Meg White consist of the band so I wondered how amazing that would be. I also don’t own any albums.

    They put on one of the more energetic shows that I’ve seen! Jack White can wail on that guitar and Meg pounds the drums like a human metronome. I enjoy their stage decor also – the white and red theme plays well in a stage setting. They had a red cloth draped from the top to the bottom and they had multiple microphones positioned around the stage which made it interesting to watch. I especially liked when Jack sauntered up some steps to an upper platform and performed his Godzilla walk. The shadows played well throughout the set also. Very well thought out.

    Even though I didn’t know any of their songs, I was impressed by the sheer rock of the show. Two thumbs up.

    Setlist

    Stop Breakin’ Down Blues [Robert Johnson]
    When I Hear My Name
    Cannon
    John the Revelator [Traditional]
    Death Letter [Son House]
    300 M.P.H. Torrential Outpour Blues
    Lord, Send Me an Angel [Blind Willie McTell]
    Wasting My Time
    Instinct Blues
    I Fought Piranhas
    Let’s Build a Home
    Give Me Back My Wig [Hound Dog Taylor]
    Catch Hell Blues
    Astro
    Cool Drink of Water Blues [Tommy Johnson]
    Ball and Biscuit

     

    Icky Thump
    In the Cold, Cold Night
    Hotel Yorba
    Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground
    Black Math
    I’m Slowly Turning Into You
    Seven Nation Army
    Boll Weevil [Lead Belly]

    iplaying: Neverlost – The Smashing Pumpkins (Zeitgeist)

  • 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.

  • 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

  • An Open Letter to the People Bringing Lawn Chairs to Bluesfest

    Don’t.

    Signed – Palmer

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


    P1040535
    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

  • Review: Bob Dylan – Bluesfest

    Onto some important stuff…like the actual show!

    I don’t know much Bob Dylan songs…just the hits really. We all were pretty worried about the set as we had heard he tends to mumble and doesn’t have much stage presence at all.

    After navigating the gauntlet which was the crowd of lawn chairs, we ended up losing the entire crew and Karilee and I made our way through the crowd. This required some ingenuity on our part – her leading the pack as I had my giant backpack with me and when I got to a point where people wouldn’t let me go by, I would just point her out and said that she was my girlfriend. A little fib here and there brings me a long way through a crowd.

    On my way there, there was a taller fellow who had stopped in front of me and we were trying to figure out how to get a little further.

    Lady with her lawn chair (to the tall guy): Hey! I’ve been here 5 hours and now you’re blocking my perfectly good view!
    Tall Guy: Sorry! We’ll be on our way.

    Because there was a holdup of people in front of us, we couldn’t walk ahead yet…

    Lady with the lawn chair: Hey, come on! I paid good money for these tickets! Get the hell out of my view!
    Tall Guy (who was trying to be polite and finally lost it): Hey lady! Guess what? You’ve been here 5 hours but I showed up 30 minutes ago and look who has the better view!

    I had a good laugh at this and at that point the crowd got moving again so we could go on our merry way.

    We ended in the middle of the crowd after 45 minutes of navigating through the crowd. It was a nice spot we found – one with some room to move around in (surprisingly).

    I was impressed with the show. Whoever said anything bad about Bob Dylan was wrong. He sang clearly but there wasn’t much stage banter going on. I recognized the classics – Like a Rolling Stone, Masters of War (!!!) and All Along the Watchtower as the closing track.

    Setlist: (taken from this site):

    Rainy Day Women #12 & 35
    Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right
    Watching The River Flow
    It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding)
    Girl of the North Country
    Rollin’ and Tumblin’
    When The Deal Goes Down
    Honest With Me
    Spirit on the Water
    Tangled Up in Blue
    Masters of War
    Highway 61 Revisited
    Like a Rolling Stone
    —-
    Thunder on the Mountain
    All Along The Watchtower