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On July 8th, 2010 Ottawa was experiencing the peak of one of the regular summer heatwaves that scorch the city. As a guy who exists in a world without air conditioning this was no reason to stay home so I zipped down to a little chunk of the city called LeBreton Flats – a span of Ottawa acreage that bridges Ontario and Quebec and is home to the gracefully lumbering War Museum – for a taste of my outdoor mid-summer hobby: the good old Bluesfest. I only had one offering on the table for the evening, a sweaty dance-date with probably the quirkiest quintet of the new wave era, The B-52’s.
Being a retro-before-retro-was-cool ’80’s American party band with a smattering of hits familiar to even the most proletariat of music fans, of course The B-52’s were nothing short of apropos for a swaying-in-front-of-your-lawnchair kind of festival like the Ottawa Bluesfest. But as I strolled past the tall windows behind which stood the museum’s extensive collection of military vehicles including tanks, jeeps, submarines, and yes, several monstrous aircraft it occurred to me that it was that much more poignant to be seeing a band named after the world’s most famous bomber in such a locale.
Okay, maybe “poignant” isn’t the right word. Let’s just say they were glaringly suited for the gig.
Though time had dulled much of the quirk of The B-52’s it was still a rather fun show. There’s a certain quirkiness inherent in the call-and-response between pre-rap quasi-singer Fred Schneider and the harmonious pair of Kate Pierson and Cindy Wilson that permeates the B-52s sound. And while the ultra-distinctive vocal stylings have always set the band apart from the rest of the New Wave scene, it was the jangly open-tuned guitars and some remarkably tight drumming that kept things moving through hits like Deadbeat Club, Roam, and the ultra-lounge party smash, Love Shack.
The quirk kept coming with a live glockenspiel solo from Schneider and his never-ending string of random banter between songs, and the crowd seemed to eat up every bit of it.
Everyone knew the encore had to include the ubiquitous Rock Lobster, but like a Shakespearian tragedy it’s how you get there that keeps it interesting, and out of a little Jimi Hendrix tease came the Peter Gunn theme and finally the crowd cheered for that perfect, unforgettable proto-punk guitar riff that launched the band’s career. The B-52s tore through an epic arrangement of one of the greatest, most mindless hits of the last fifty years, and sated, 15,000 music fans flooded out into the sweltering streets, homeward bound to rest up for a coming weekend of music as the Bluesfest continued.
Curiously, for such a clearly apathetic The B-52’s fan as myself I ended up with a fairly impressive souvenir of this concert. Somehow it took me all the way until then to notice that the Bluesfest held nightly silent auctions during the festival, and the day after this show I popped into the tent for my first-ever look-see. And whattya know, I look-see’d a microphone signed by The B-52’s that was professionally presented in a shadowbox backed by a photo from their set. Now why would I want to bid on such a thing? Because it was a Shure SM58 mic – which is the industry standard professional vocal mic and one that retailed for $168+tax – and the opening bid was $100. Signatures bedamned, any working musician could always use another SM58 and if I threw away the photo and the shadowbox I’d have me a great mic for almost half price. Mine was the only bid*.
The only question is: is it ironic or obvious that here it is a decade later and I’ve never taken the mic out of the shadowbox?
*Soon after my purchase the festival upped their starting bids on signed microphones to $170.
Todd Man Out 