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July 14th, 2011 was a busy day. It was a Thursday which meant I was teaching late which further meant racing directly to the Bluesfest from work in hopes that I would be able to catch all of half of the two main headliners. And I did.
Heck, I even got there early, arriving onsite in time to catch some or all of Tim Robbins’ set, but likely just some. Yes, that Tim Robbins. I don’t remember anything about his set aside from a few silent mental snapshots but then I don’t think I could name you one of his movies either, though I’m sure I’ve seen some of them. Is he in that one about the prison with the other guy? Anyway, another famous actor trying his hand at rock & roll who finds himself playing festival mainstages all over North America on his first-ever tour and wonders why young musicians complain about having it so tough (or am I just bitter?). Who else has done this…like, Keanu Reeves, right? And that Something Someguy Jr. too, I forget his name. And that guy from the UFO show, Dechuvney…he did an album right? Anyway, these guys all got guaranteed airplay and Late Nite television slots to showcase their music and I defy you – defy you! – to hum one of their songs. Okay, okay, there’s Eddie Murphy’s My Girl Wants To Party All the Time but can you name another one?
I didn’t think so.
Anyway, once headliner time came around I had choices to make. It was the Bluesfest debut for both The Tea Party and Billy Talent and though my interest in either band was mild at best my lackadaisical enthusiasm for the two groups was precisely equal. In the end I decided bouncing between the two stages wouldn’t hurt because I wasn’t so worried about missing anything. So I bounced, starting with Billy Talent*.
Did I ever tell you this story? In my second year of university I became good friends with a guy named Nigel who lived on my floor in residence. Nigel and I ended up being roommates for a while but sometime back when we first met he and I drove in my red van to his parent’s place in Mississauga for the weekend. I remember with vivid clarity being up in Nigel’s old bedroom when his little brother came to the door. “Hey Ian,” Nigel said, “This is my friend Todd, he’s a guitar player too.” Nigel explained that his little brother – who was maybe twelve years old at the time – played guitar and had started a band with his other little friends. “Wow, that’s cool!” I said to the little tyke. “What’s your band called?”
Anyway, if you’re a Billy Talenthead you probably already know that the band changed their name from Pezz to Billy Talent a few years before getting signed to Warner and selling millions of albums. If you’re not a BThead, well, now you know.
Anywho, along the way several students had wanted to learn Billy Talent songs so I found myself stop-rewinding through some of their cd’s lifting young Ian D’sa’s guitar parts. And you know, they’re a pretty darn good band. And like I say, I started with them on this night, on the main stage. And you know, they were pretty darn good.
They opened with one I knew, Devil in a Midnight Mass, a yellodic four-minute bombast that’s driven by a machine gun pull-off guitar riff dialled into a tone that sounds like a brick. As a guy who has heard a wide cross-section of young, popular guitar-driven bands from my teaching chair in the basement of the Ottawa Folklore Centre I can report that Billy Talent has a sound that instantly stands out aside their contemporaries. The band is aggressive yet free of angst, socially conscious and unpretentious, and people dig ‘em.
A few songs into their set the lead singer saw a lady in distress and stopped the band mid-song. He called on the dense crowd to take a few steps back and reminded everyone that we were all there to enjoy ourselves and that everyone should make sure to watch out for each other. “Rule number one at a Billy Talent concert,” he proclaimed, “If someone falls down, help them up! Rule number two: Always respect the women in the audience!”
It was refreshing to see young neo-punk teen idols with such impeccable hippified manners**.
By this time I was ready to ensure that I wasn’t missing anything life-changing over at the Subway Stage so I meandered over to check out the other half of the evening’s concurrent double-bill.
Of course The Tea Party rose to fame in the 1990’s when they Greta Van Fleeted on The Doors and delivered an old, tried-and-true sound to a new, younger generation. It was basically like selling cd’s to people who already owned the cassette, except The Tea Party wrote their own lyrics. Anyway, they had just emerged from a barely-noticed hiatus and were playing to a robust crowd on a beautiful evening under a shining moon. They had a lot going for them and you know, it was a pretty darn okay time standing there sucking on beers listening to what amounted to new Doors songs. Or, as I wrote later that evening in my overly-dramatic-yet-still-Pablum-ized review for the Bluesfest:
…thousands blissed out in the breeze coming off the Ottawa River as the psychedelic retro-rock trio grazed through impressionistic, atavistic jams that induced an unquestionable ’60’s sensibility…
That said, in a nod to the festival’s namesake The Tea Party actually played a couple of straight-up original blues tunes, and they weren’t even ripping off Roadhouse Blues (though this did come on the heels of the guitarist playing his doubleneck Gibson SG with a violin bow, which rang rather familiar***). But really, while overall I am glad I dropped in on the Party I ended up finishing the evening back at the Talent.
When the shows ended and the floodlights went up all over LeBreton Flats it was curious to watch all the main stage kids meeting up with their Subway Stage parents. Good old Bluesfest, reducing the generation gap to a hundred and eighty feet.
*By the way, Billy Talent took their name from a character in an absolutely brilliant Canadian rock & roll road movie called Hard Core Logo. It’s directed by Bruce McDonald and stars Hugh Dillon and if you haven’t seen it you should. I went to the premiere at Ottawa’s favourite independent theatre The ByTowne and I walked out with a prize pack (I won a t-shirt and a cd) and a new second-favourite movie (of course Rocky I will never be unseated).
**I’ve heard it said that punk rockers pretend to be ***holes but in reality they are friendly, thoughtful people. Meanwhile (it is said), hippies pretend to be friendly, thoughtful people but in reality they are ***holes. As a neo-hippie with a bad moon rising I would gently argue that it isn’t always not easy to disagree, at least on some level. Dude.
***The Shtick Remains the Same?
Todd Man Out 