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July 10th, 2010 was a big busy day at the Ottawa Bluesfest and one full of fine, fine music. It was a Saturday which meant things started early, so I did too. I made it onsite in time for probably the most interesting act of the entire festival, a Congolese conglomeration called Staff Benda Bilili. The band formed around a group of paraplegic men who would gather outside of their local zoo to play music together. One member of the group created an instrument of his own invention – basically a piece of wire connected to an oil can running through a distortion pedal – and with this meagre melodic contraption he led the others through a set of joyously unique African music that was ethereal and exultant.
After Staff Benda Bilili I paused at the Subway Stage for a dose of real blues with the wonderful Campbell Brothers. The four siblings spent the tail end of their set blurring the lines between the sacred and the profane as they flitted back and forth between soulful gospel and some truly solid blues playing.
Next up was a group called Kings Go Forth, a nine-piece funk R&B party band from Milwaukee that sounded almost like Chicago Transit Authority. But the afternoon was scorching so I bounced around looking for shade, a mostly futile search that brought me momentarily to the super-picking of Michael Jerome Browne at the River Stage and back for an electro-swing-gypsy-Euro-house percussive attack from France called Caravan Palace that picked up pretty much where Kings Go Forth had left off at the Subway Stage.
One more rebounce back to the River found me some masterful southern-fried blues courtesy of Roy Rogers and the Delta River Kings, who were being mostly drowned out by the pimple-angst power chord pop that Down With Webster was inflicting at the Hard Rock Stage. Then finally I found somewhere where I wanted to stay put: Roger Hodgson playing in the main concert field.
I have always loved Supertramp and why not? A mini-orchestra wrapped up in delicious songwriting, the band has sold over 60,000,000 records and all sixty million of them are really good albums. I don’t know how he did it, but somehow singer/pianist Roger Hodgson managed to accurately recreate ninety minutes of Supertramp’s greatest songs with only a trio of musicians behind him. From the opening strains of Long Way Home through classics like Give A Little Bit and Dreamer, to the epic Fool’s Overture, the set was a Supertramp fan’s dream come true. And like I say: I’m a Supertramp fan.
For his part, Hodgson seemed to be really enjoying himself too. He put in a fine performance, effortlessly hitting every single note in a catalogue that contains plenty of stratospheric vocal reaches. It was such a great set that I all but ran out to buy tickets when he brought the exact same show to the National Arts Centre a year or so later. Enjoyed every minute of that one too.
But back to Saturday night at the good old Bluesfest, the festival still had a home run coming with a headlining ninety-minute sensual assault from The Flaming Lips. Love ‘em or hate ‘em, The Lips are impossible to ignore. With one of the most psychedelic big-screens in the business and a pair of overzealous streamer cannons flanking the band on both sides, dozens of orange-clad stragglers dancing onstage and an audience fed with a never-ending cavalcade of enormous confetti-filled balloons, the show is visually big, all the time. In spectacle alone The Flaming Lips surpassed the 2009 Bluesfest KISS show in the first ten minutes, but then there was the music! Megaphone vocals, mega-thick distorted bass and shimmering guitars delivered a sonic punch that was loud, crisp, and glorious. With our senses properly primed the band took took the crowd on a fifteen-song romp that was at times political and at other times downright weird, like when main Lip Wayne Coyne led the most psychedelic sing-along imaginable, urging his audience to mimic everything from a helicopter to the song of a finch during their song I Can Be A Frog.
But for all his stage antics, when Coyne picks up an acoustic guitar and plays a tune like Yoshimi one is quickly reminded that the guy can really, really write a song. Never was that more evident than in the closing number, the poignant Do You Realize? (Do you realize the sun doesn’t go down?/It’s just an illusion caused by the world spinning ‘round). This was the song that first turned me on to The Flaming Lips (when I heard it in a car commercial and became enthralled), and the band wonderfully milked the number dry, even stepping a few moments over the strict 11pm curfew.
With no time left for an encore Wayne and his mates made a number of mute curtain calls before disappearing backstage for good. More spectacle than musical? Who knows, but either way the Lips put on a show that is not easily forgotten.
As this ticket memory proves.
Todd Man Out 