11:53 PM

Day two at the 2003 Ottawa Bluesfest.

I've always suspected that what brings you to a festival is the headliners, and what keeps you is the unexpected surprises. That was certainly the case today, where semirandom sampling proved far more successful than safe bets.

I arrived solo in the afternoon, my stated intention to hear Ottawa's Golden Famile. The program described them like so:

Their sound is distinctly Canadian, mixing porch tales and folk tradition with guitar dramatics. At times soft and soothing and at others hard and storming, this music falls like rain making everything shiny and wet. The tools are various as the group collaborates to set the GOLDEN Famile's dark-woods mood.

In essence, it said: "This band's Canadian, but it sounds like Okkervil River." At least to my eye.

Unfortunately, they didn't. The group was capable, certainly, at playing its
shy, country-tinged rock. What they lacked, however, was the lovesick intimacy of a band like Royal City, and the wildness, passion and experimentalism of someone like Okkervil River. The so-called "guitar dramatics" were noteworthy - the best part of the show - but Golden Famile was in the habit of ceasing them almost as soon as they began. It was as if they had stumbled across this great, feedbacky, rave-up sound, but weren't aware of the way it could rise into a bona fide climax, drums in tow. Someone should lend them some Sonic Youth, Mogwai and Velvet Underground records.

Since the program had guided me so well before (he rolls his eyes sarcastically), I decided to follow its advice again. Reverend Glasseye and his Wooden Legs was described as

Carnivalesque country-western music from the concrete jungle called New York. Hard to describe—weird but wonderful!

The Sean translation? "They sound like Tom Waits."

And you know what? They did.

Part of me wonders why the "evil circus music" subgenre is so small - Tom Waits, Mr Bungle, Squirrel Nut Zippers, are there any others?... - but then I realized it's really kinda because Tom Waits has it well in hand. Hearing another band "do" the Tom Waits thing sounds mostly excruciating, so it's to Reverend Glasseye's credit that their act was pretty darn terrific. Decked out in blood-red shirt and night-black suit, the Reverend was joined by the newsie-meets-sailor Wooden Legs on upright bass, trumpet, organ and drums. The singing was warbly and schizoid: Tom Waits, yes, but with a good dash of Jack White. It was polka with stomp and bite and whirling organ-lines, the lyrics a delicious mix of blood, threats, and spitfire ranting.

I also saw the Torture King sideshow act. Though he looked a little past his sell-by-date, the guy lived up to his name. In a good way. I watched as this pudgy grey-haired ponytailed man chewed on a lightbulb; swallowed a sword; walked, jumped and lay on broken glass (and was in turn walked and jumped upon as he lay there); and, finally, drove bicycle spokes through the middle of his bicep, and through the bottom of his head, from the soft palate to under the chin. No trickery, just madness. I won't try his stunts at home.

I went home for dinner, and showed up later to catch (in theory) Elvis Costello. After hunting for parking forever, Julian and I went in to the show ten minutes late. The whole mainstage area was already packed. Neither of us knew Costello's oeuvre, so we hung around in the far rear, squinting at the stage, and mildly nodding along. I wasn't exactly blown away. With very little discussion, we agreed to go wander over to the Birdman Stage, to check out the Deadly Snakes. I had heard a lot about them, but I was nervous that they were going to be boringly screechy garage-blues-punk, something hardcore and hollow.

Thankfully, I was dead wrong - the Snakes are the highlight of the festival thus far: a rearing, frenzied, soulful blast. Guitar, bass, organ, drums, trumpet, sax, and a heckload of tamborine, bleed together to lift garage bluesy rock'n'roll into something nearly transcendent. The chorus of sounds, of passionate yelling and genuine singing, even hints at gospel. The Who meets the White Stripes; Clinic tries to sing down the angels. And they're from Toronto!

The other Toronto act for the evening was the Sadies. I didn't stick around for the whole set - though I had heard a lot about the band's "psych-country," I found it disappointingly low on the psych, disappointingly high on the cheeseball Merle Haggard country. They played two types of songs: authentic country-western in the vein of early Johnny Cash, and crazy 40-second country-surf instrumentals. The latter were fresh and fun - exquisitely played, gnashingly delivered - but the former had me nodding off. As much as I enjoy the last few Johnny Cash albums - and as much as I'm loving a lot of twangy music, these days - that kind of thing remains hokey and stale, and it only seems to be able to connect with me on an ironic level.

Tomorrow: Gordon Downie and Cesaria Evora.

01:28 AM

Day One at the 2003 Ottawa Bluesfest.

I met Julian at 6 and sat down on the grass outside the grounds with a "vegetarian noodle bowl to-go". I had assumed that this would be a bowl of noodles (to go), but instead found it to be, to put it glibly, soup. The soup tasted like miso, I suppose, if miso was a brand of cardboard, but the bigger problem was the whole hot-thick-liquid thing. The air in Ottawa, you see, is going through a hot, thick and liquid phase. Muggy doesn't begin to describe it: so humid that the slightest breeze feels like a terrifically frosty blast of winter.

Anyway, you don't care about soup, I suppose, and I'm not going to turn into one of those bloggers who rambles on and on about what they had for lunch (or for dinner, in this case). Allow me to make a quick segue, then: After finishing some small portion of my dinner, Julian and I entered the City Hall/Bluesfest grounds, collected our bracelet passes, and sat down on the grass in front of the Main Stage.

There, we waited, and sooner or later, a man named K-OS came out, accompanied by the typical white, sunglasses-wearing guitar-player, and the typical black, po-faced percussionist. After years of going to shows, I think it must be impossible to have a white percussionist and still maintain your street-cred. Witness Kinnie Starr (who had a white guy on djembe when she visited Montreal in 2001) - she is now ululating as part of Cirque du Soleil.

But please don't let me start racially profiling the musicians who I see perform. Suffice it to say - both of K-os' sidemen were superb, by far the best part of the show. Though K-os rhymes aren't particularly electric, the backup instrumentation is - the guitarist suprised me by coaxing out bar after bar of Indian and flamenco-tinged thrum, while the percussionist did genuinely exciting things with his tablas, snare (and everything else). K-os performs what the kids call "conscious" hip-hop: this means that he writes songs that insult bling-blinging MCs, that he does a lot of Buddhist name-dropping, and that he feels the need to do a barely passable adaptation of McCartney's "Yesterday." K-os' version, rather than mourning love lost, mourns the death of, well, other "conscious" hip-hop.

I shouldn't be so hard on him - K-os seemed an intelligent guy, the music was good, but the songs lacked any genuine insight. When I listen to hip-hop, as with jazz, I expect the MC to surprise me with a deft turn-of-phrase; a sharp, wise or funny rhyme. K-os kept throwing out references to oneness, love, struggling, revolution, but not in words that made the ideas seem fresh, or even powerful. It didn't help that all of his tunes followed the same pattern: upbeat rapping (and his flow was a real letdown - it rarely followed the beat, the syllables always seemed to be racing to catch up [and I say this as someone who enjoys the rhythm-ignoring flow of The Streets]), followed by a melodic, soul-singer chorus. K-os had a great voice - somewhere between dancehall and Marvin Gaye - but he kept using it in precisely the same ways, at precisely the same part of each song.

After K-os, Ben Harper and the Innocent Criminals. A few years ago, I was an enormous fan of Mr. Harper. The guy could write, sing, and play guitar in songs that ran from folk to blues to pop, rock and back. Beauties like "Glory and Consequence" or the inimitable "Steal Your Kisses" made a real impact.

His new album, however, sucked. Diamonds on the Inside is boring, scattered, and self-indulgent. Vapid electric funk tracks, lacklustre ballads. Better/Worse still, it caused me to reevaluate Harper's back-catalog, and seeing the show today, I couldn't help but accept how little I care about the man's work any more. Though it's still skillful and passionate and appealingly romantic, Harper's running on fumes. The skill is certainly there, but Ben Harper always seems to be passionate about precisely the same things; he's always appealingly romantic in precisely the same ways. His vocabulary is small, and he challenges himself (or more importantly, the listener) very rarely. I've heard enough slow-cresting songs about worshipping a perfect, bejewelled lover, or calling for strength from the Lord.

The Ben Harper show was enjoyable - his band is tight, the sweaty-and-enormous crowd was in love, the set-list was superb (70% older material). Still, Julian and I both grew bored well before the encore. I could only bop my knees to so many earnest reggae tunes, or listen to so many seems-political-but-actually-isn't speeches. Please, Ben: prove that you can make new, fearsome art.

We stripped off from the megacrowd and caught the second two-thirds of Oh Susanna's set. She's a twangy singer from Vancouver, with a voice as thick as resin. Country-blues, folk, open-hearted ache - I have her first, self-titled EP, which is lovely. In concert, though, she let me down a bit. Accompanied by an additional electric guitar, electric piano and drums, her acoustic strum lost its urgency - the songs came out as country&western yawners, slight cliches. The set was very short - though Ben Harper started 90 minutes earlier, both acts finished at around the same time - but Susanna redeemed herself by closing with a haunting rendition of "Roll Me On Home," which left me yearning for some stars overhead and a hand in mine.

It wasn't exactly an auspicious beginning to a week of music, but it wasn't bad, either. I have high hopes for some of the next couple of days' acts.