“Thumbing your way to Vegas, dirty 
And dreaming of the other side 
Save your tears and laughter 
Because it doesn't matter what you find 

It ain't pretty 
After the show 
It ain't pretty when the pretty leaves you 
With no place to go 
If you think you need it 
Here's the place to feed it 
But it ain't pretty”  - INXS

I can’t stop singing this song!!! 

On Friday, July 13, 2007, my best friend Jen (who came all the way from Perth, Western Australia) treated me to a magnificent evening in Ottawa at the Cisco Bluesfest (www.ottawa-bluesfest.ca) that  I won’t soon forget.  She bought us Gold Circle tickets for the evening and booked us a room at the Chateau Laurier which is only a five minute cab ride to the grounds where the Bluesfest is now held in LeBreton, beside the new Canadian War Museum on the Ottawa River.  Bluesfest is actually a misnomer now as this world class festival features music of every genre from artists all over the globe.  This year it was called Attack of the Killer Bluesfest and with legends like Van Morrison, Bob Dylan, George Clinton, Buddy Guy, Gary U.S. Bonds, George Thorogood & The Destroyers, Los Lobos, Jimmie Vaughan, Randy Newman, Robert Cray, Ruthie Foster, Steve Miller Band, Ten Years After, The White Stripes, INXS and Kanye West not to mention Canadian favourites Blue Rodeo, Hawksley Workman, In-Flight Safety, Joel Plaskett Emergency, Alexisonfire, Blackie & The Rodeo Kings, Colin Linden, Leahy, Patrick Watson, Sam Roberts Band, Sarah Harmer, Suzie McNeil and Tom Wilson - it was indeed a Killer Bluesfest!

We arrived in Ottawa and checked into our room at the Chateau Laurier that overlooked the Parliament Buildings and the Rideau Canal by 4:00 pm and proceeded to have some drinks while we changed our clothes and made ourselves pretty to go out for the evening.  I drank four glasses of Cat’s Pee on a Gooseberry Bush and was feeling more than fine while Jen imbibed a couple Mott’s Clamato Caesar’s.

At around 6:00 pm we took a taxi to the grounds of the Bluesfest and got in line at the ticket office to pick up ours.  After Jen got them we turned around to descend the stairs and I noticed a joint lying on a stair.  Someone was going to be bummed out that they lost it!  I told Jen to pick it up and she congratulated me on having a good eye!  We howled with laughter, high-fived each other and proceeded into the grounds.  With six stages situated around the site, food stands, merchandise and booze tents, and an army of porta-a-potties, the Cisco Bluesfest was ready for anything.

We found our seats in the Gold Circle by the MBNA main stage that were totally worth the extra money as they are situated right next door to a booze tent and a row of toilets and are directly in front of stage right.  We bought some lime vodka coolers and made our way over to the Rogers Stage to watch a Ukrainian punk/gypsy band called Gogol Bordello who were manically rocking out and getting the ear-to-ear grinning crowd going with them.  Lead singer Eugene Hütz wore only yellow track pants (to better show off his Ukrainian bulges, I’m sure!) and a scarf tied around his head and he had more energy than a mad hatter at an absinthe tea party!  Taken from the Cisco Ottawa Bluesfest website, here is a description of Gogol Bordello:
Combining elements of punk, gypsy music, and Brecht-ian cabaret, Gogol Bordello tells the story of New York's immigrant diaspora through debauchery, humor, and surreal costumes. Leader and singer Eugene Hütz's taste in music was spun out of black-market tapes in his native Ukraine. After being evacuated to western Ukraine in 1986 following the Chernobyl disaster, Hütz became enamored of the mystical, outsider qualities of gypsy music. Living as a refugee in Poland, Hungary, Austria, and Italy before moving to the United States in 1993, he experienced life as an outsider himself. After arriving in New York, he teamed up with guitarist Vlad Solofar and squeezebox player Sasha Kazatchkoff. American Eliot Fergusen added a strong rock sound on the drums, and the band was also augmented by fiddler Sergey Rjabtzev—a former theater director from Moscow whose past experience would prove helpful in the future in crafting Gogol Bordello's bizarre stage shows. 

The group's early gigs involved playing straight gypsy music at Russian weddings, but their music soon evolved into the hyper-kinetic explosions that earned them a solid following among New York's downtown hipsters.

Be sure to check them out at www.gogolbordello.com.

After Gogol Bordello’s encore, Jen and I walked back over to the MBNA stage, bought another cooler and from 7:00-8:00 pm we danced to the rock, soul, hip hop, funk, jazz, Cuban, reggae, pop sounds of Melbourne, Australia’s The Cat Empire.  I had seen them perform their hit song “Sly” several months ago on The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson and was immediately mesmerized by them.  Jen was immediately mesmerized by lead singer and percussionist Felix Riebl who totally jammed her radar.  I will admit that he’s pretty darn cute and I got busy taking photographs.  The band has two lead vocalists, the other being trumpet player Harry James Angus (I prefer Felix’s vocals) and the band also includes keyboardist Oliver McGill, double bassist Ryan Monro, drummer Will Hull-Brown and DJ Jamshid Khadiwala.  Ross Irwin, Kieran Conrau and Carlo Barbaro provide additional horns.  The best thing about The Cat Empire is that there really isn’t another band out there (that comes to mind) that mixes so many genres, making them extremely unique, vivacious and fresh.  They didn’t play one ballad throughout their entire set but rather kept everyone dancing from start to finish.  After their set, The Cat Empire autographed their CDs, which were available at the merchandise tent, for a long line of adoring fans including us.  I bought their second album, Two Shoes, which was recorded in Havana, Cuba and released in 2005 (including a DVD of their performances) and had all the guys sign the cover of it.  I’ve since played it a couple of times and I’ve got to tell you, it’s fantastic!  Listen to their original songs at www.myspace.com/thecatempire and learn more about the band at their official website at www.thecatempire.com.

After the complete satisfaction of The Cat Empire experience, Jen and I decided that we were getting a little pie-eyed and should probably have something to eat so we made a bad choice, bought some crappy poutine (no match for Bubba’s, that’s for sure!), and headed back over to the Rogers Stage to listen to Edie Brickell & New Bohemians who were mellow yellow and rather bland after the previous two bands we’d heard.  Edie did sound great vocally, hasn’t aged a bit since her Texas jam band days and she performed many memorable songs including “Circle”,  “Little Miss S”, “Love Like We Do” and their biggest hit, “What I Am”.

We had to be sure to be back at our Gold Circle seats for the 9:30 pm headliner set by Australia’s own INXS!  Jen and I have been fans of INXS since their early days (they started out in the pubs of Perth) and were both skeptical that anyone could ever fill Michael Hutchence’s shoes but after witnessing the blisteringly sexy, consummate professional performance of Rock Star: INXS winner, Canada’s J.D. Fortune, we agreed that he’s the perfect man for the job!  J.D. sounds hauntingly like Michael but has his own style which although might not be the sex on toast wiles of Hutchence, is certainly no where near burnt toast!  The women in the audience were absolutely CRAZY about him (especially that young lady in the pink scarf and black beret carrying the inflatable doll who had high hopes of meeting him)!  J.D., now sporting a bit longer hair and a beard and wearing a black CASH t-shirt and black jeans, was on fire throughout the show, obviously proud to be a Canadian and grateful to the adoring masses who danced, sang and waved their arms in the air throughout making the concert a fucking brilliant success!  J.D. couldn’t have done it without the Farriss brothers who were all in top form too including Andrew Farriss on keyboards, Tim Farriss on guitars and Jon Farriss on drums as well as Gary Beers on bass and Kirk Pengilly on guitar and saxophone.  This band is as tight as a band can get and it blew us away all over again to remember just how many superb songs INXS have in their repertoire.  From “Original Sin” to “Pretty Vegas” and everything in between, INXS gave us more than our money’s worth for the entire evening.  The set list pretty much consisted of:

Suicide Blonde 
Devil's Party 
Mystify 
Disappear 
By My Side 
Afterglow 
Taste It 
Hungry 
Original Sin 
Need You Tonight 
What You Need
Folsom Prison Blues 
Devil Inside 
Pretty Vegas 
-------------------- 
New Sensation 
Never Tear Us Apart 
Don't Change

After the show, we made our way back to the Chateau Laurier via taxi and reclined on our beds, enjoyed the treat we found much earlier and watched my beloved Craig Ferguson (who was exceptionally funny that night!) on The Late Late Show… a perfect ending to an absolutely perfect day! 

Christine Bode
c.bode@partyinkingston.com
 

photos by Christine Bode

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