Day 6. Tonight’s Headliner: The Killers Weather: Cool & Sunny. Today’s Acts: Tyler the Creator: Gloriously vulgar. Tyler the Creator is an antagonist – trolling the crowd into a frenzy. He’s unconventional on stage, but his charisma and connection with...
Day 5 – rain delay. Today’s headliner: Foreigner. Weather: Pouring rain, then a double rainbow, then a cool clear evening. Today’s acts: Tokyo Police Club: Just being honest here, saw 2 energetic songs before I took shelter in the Canadian...
Day 2. Headliner: Zedd Weather: Perfect. Today’s Acts: Darius Rucker: Former lead singer from Hootie and the Blowfish, Darius Rucker was the only pure country act on the lineup tonight. Lyrics aside, actually reminded me a bit of Toby Keith....
Day 9 – Bjork day. Austra: A band we’ve seen and loved before – they didn’t disappoint on a hot Saturday afternoon. Equal parts Vangelis and Florence Welch, Austra is haunting, yet catchy as hell. This wasn’t the tightest set...
Day 7. The day the heat broke. Tragically Hip Night. Jon Spencer Blues Explosion: Don’t be fooled by their name. The Blues Explosion is ‘blues’ like The Jesus Lizard is ‘rock’. You’re not going to hear these guys play ‘Sweet...
Day 6 – Weezer Wednesday. Killer Mike: Sometimes, technical difficulties actually make a show amazing. This has happened twice in my life: Coldplay @ Bell Centre in Montreal (guitar broke – had to re-start their biggest hit twice) and yesterday...
Sunday night @ottawabluesfest. Fun. headlining. The Joy Formidable: The show of the festival thus far. I liked this band before the day started, and now I love them. The Welsh threesome brought some serious power, noise, and beauty in a...
Day 3 – another hot one. Amadou & Mariam: The legendary blind husband and wife team were amazing. Funky west-african rhythms that have an amazing club sense… buildups, drops and continuous grooves. Pretty much the perfect band to see in...
Day 2. Friday night on Lebreton Flats. Camera Obscura: Holy crap – is this band good! Admittedly, I only caught 3 songs of this set to open the night – but they were all amazing – pitch perfect and surprisingly...
Day 1 of RBC Bluesfest is over. It was awesome. Here are our thoughts about what we saw on day 1 in easy-to-read executive summary format. There will be a quiz at the end. The Split: This band does not...
Last year, PeteHatesMusic took in many, many days of the always excellent Ottawa Bluesfest (final thoughts here). Today, the line up was announced for this July’s edition of the RBC Royal Bank Ottawa Bluesfest. Before some readers are turned off,...
We heard Charles Bradley and his Extraordinaires this past week as part of our ongoing coverage of RBC Royal Bank Bluesfest in Ottawa – and we were blown away. Not only is this guy a more gruff version of The...
Tonight’s Main Stage Headliner: Iron Maiden Band 1: The first band we saw today was an up-and-comer called ‘Alice Cooper‘. I think this guy is going to be pretty successful! Although his stage and light show would probably look a...
Tonight’s Main Stage Headliner: LMFAO Party factor: 7. Lots of people there to party. Lots of them under 15 years of age. Band 1 was: Charles Bradley and his Extraordinaires, and they are a new favourite of ours. This guy has been...
Tonight’s Main Stage Headliner: Tiësto Party factor: 6. An excellent warm-up, but not into legendary status. Band 1 was: Ottawa’s own Loon Choir. They are definitely Arcade Fire fans – and it shows (that is a compliment). Big sound and last-day-on-earth...
