So I think when last we spoke I was recovering from the late season overflowing river shit storm at the Forks. Well, had a few days off and the next weekend found myself at the base of the Legislative grounds setting up for the annual ManyFest on Broadway, a four day festival that sees Broadway shut down and filled with all sorts of Art's & Crafts, Live Music, and Food truck wars. Given the propensity for new food trucks in Winnipeg this was kinda exciting, I know they have other Food Fests like Taste of Manitoba and whatnot in the same Memorial Park setting but this was kinda cool seeing all these little guy entrepreneurs showing their stuff-some pretty great food out there and I can't help but feel a kinship with these small businesses that kick ass for 3 or 4 months of the summer season to make the bulk of their yearly income.... hats off to the gals with the Healthy Eats Truck and Marky Stretchmarks Taco Truck.... my favs
So on to the music, Saturday morning we pulled in with the rig from the Brandon Show from the previous evening, we've got numerous crews going this weekend, drivers getting the rig there ontime while crew 1 is sleeping and us at ManyFest starting at 8am. We're setting setting up on a portable stage that's just come in with our friend Kevin from Regina and it's a pretty cool piece of technology in itself, basically a trailer pulls up, and not unlike a Transformer character slowly turns into a 40 by 30 Ft stage complete with rigging for lights and for hanging the PA (8 QSC wide line arrays per side with 8 18" subs per with 2500 watts into each box....sweeeeet) Setup actually goes pretty smooth and we're up and PA is talking on both ends (FOH & Monitors) within a couple of hours.
Friday night starts with Marco Castille fronting a crack band with South American stylings followed by Katie Murphy and then the Latin sounds of Trio Bembe with my pal Rodrigo Munez showing off his pretty serious gtr chops. See fuzzy photo above. I'm guessing, speculating that the organizers choose the next two DJ acts for the "kids" but the night was finished off by Electric Donkey Dance Party and then Nathan Zahn. More on this later but I'll move on to the actual music first.
Sunday started very early for me, I drew the short straw and had to be there to turn on the PA and 1 microphone for announcements for the marathon taking place first thing in the morning. So 7am, I arrive and notice the marathon guys have a PA on sticks and really don't need me or my stuff till 1030am when the marathon is all done to announce the winners! This is why I am so well read, I always have a book or 5 on the go cause yah, despite all the glory and riches of my chosen field, I sure seem to do a lot of hurrying up and waiting in my job. Ace Burpee, great human that he is, after running the marathon himself, MC's the announcements which lead into the days music.
Started off with Dirty Catfish Brass Band, my pal Lloyd Peterson has just finished a record with these guys so I'm intrigued by the idea of mixing a contemporary brass band and they certainly didn't disappoint. Great Bass playing with whatever you call that thing...hmmm Sousaphone? Nice rhythm section and piano/organ playing, cool tunes with an impressive singer, yay thumbs up, pretty good start for the day. Curtis Newton Band, not at their first rodeo, play a set of R&Bish rawk with that slick but minimalist thing he does with his gtr, cool...and next the Windups get up and, holy crap! these guys, who have been around at least as long as my current Telecaster, get up and rock their way thru an intense set that encompassed somehow Joe Jackson and Motorhead tunes all insanely tied together by some wicked wicked Surf/Rockabilly guitar riffing, courtesy of Rob Pachol. Funny tho, the crowd is not reacting to anything. So up next is Eagle and Hawk, a verified institution in Winnipeg, a band that is inspiring an entire generation in it's wake, and they sound great even tho I'm aware they've lost their good friend and long time drummer. The crowd is flat, the band can feel it and Jay Bodner is making mockery of themselves and I'm kinda pissed that the crowd is completely passive to the point of insult. These are my pals, they're great musicians, and deserve better. More later....
Ending the night is a revamped, retooled Moses Mayes, gone are the turntables and the kinda silly party mentality, replaced by a slightly matured Maiko Watson, onetime Popstars Canada contestant and Remi Shand background singer, with a cool soulful voice and it's a little hard to wrap one's head around it because this is a band that has always been almost totally instrumental that now has a considerable voice and apparently the band has something to say... I always liked the sheer musicality of this band, the jazz school chops paired with great grooves, poppin horns and Rawk guitars and Nathan Reimer I've always considered a kinda nerdy genius behind the ivorys or the macintosh. So cool to see a band reinvent themselves, good luck to them!
So lets wind back to Saturday night and I just wanna mention this Winnipeg crowd passivity again and here's what I'll never understand, after Rod and Trio Membe play their set of sophisticated Latin music to a rather lukewarm reception, the promoters bring on the first of 2 DJ acts for the evening, Electric Donkey Dance Party, and all of a sudden the avenue fills up with young people crowding the stage, IPhones all out, all agog staring at the stage as if they couldn't bear to miss a thing, and I have to ask myself, what is it that is so captivating about all of this? Near as I can tell, there's a guy up on stage with bright red headphones and the typical DJ rig which consists of a 2 channel mixer and the requisite laptop whereby these artists constitute and create their "ART". And by ART I mean, playing someone else's music thru a typically downgraded Mp3 file, occasionally adding an insipid 4 on the floor Disco beat that has no relationship with the originally stolen piece of music, and if they are especially inventive, once in a while they will use the SMPTE code record on their otherwise useless "turntable" in their rig to trigger or scratch out the occasional WhooWhoop sample or better yet, a sample of old schoolers actually scratching for real.... remember when a turntablist actually used real records? Whada buncha hogwash. I call shenanigans on this entire culture of hero worshiping of peeps that play other peoples recordings. I call shenanigans on a crowd of people that ignore the live music at a show to the point of insulting the creators of new and original music, but somehow consider it more important to show the luv to a DJ spinning and manipulating someone else's music. It's Fucked up and disrespectful - makes me wanna just quit the music biz. I don't wanna be all shitting on someones Genre and admittedly there are talented artists in the Electronica world but this whole culture of hero worship and glorification of a secondary spin of stolen artwork is nonsense. Especially when there are so many deserving artists that could benefit from this MP3 starved generation's fresh virgin ears....
So on to the music, Saturday morning we pulled in with the rig from the Brandon Show from the previous evening, we've got numerous crews going this weekend, drivers getting the rig there ontime while crew 1 is sleeping and us at ManyFest starting at 8am. We're setting setting up on a portable stage that's just come in with our friend Kevin from Regina and it's a pretty cool piece of technology in itself, basically a trailer pulls up, and not unlike a Transformer character slowly turns into a 40 by 30 Ft stage complete with rigging for lights and for hanging the PA (8 QSC wide line arrays per side with 8 18" subs per with 2500 watts into each box....sweeeeet) Setup actually goes pretty smooth and we're up and PA is talking on both ends (FOH & Monitors) within a couple of hours.
Friday night starts with Marco Castille fronting a crack band with South American stylings followed by Katie Murphy and then the Latin sounds of Trio Bembe with my pal Rodrigo Munez showing off his pretty serious gtr chops. See fuzzy photo above. I'm guessing, speculating that the organizers choose the next two DJ acts for the "kids" but the night was finished off by Electric Donkey Dance Party and then Nathan Zahn. More on this later but I'll move on to the actual music first.
Sunday started very early for me, I drew the short straw and had to be there to turn on the PA and 1 microphone for announcements for the marathon taking place first thing in the morning. So 7am, I arrive and notice the marathon guys have a PA on sticks and really don't need me or my stuff till 1030am when the marathon is all done to announce the winners! This is why I am so well read, I always have a book or 5 on the go cause yah, despite all the glory and riches of my chosen field, I sure seem to do a lot of hurrying up and waiting in my job. Ace Burpee, great human that he is, after running the marathon himself, MC's the announcements which lead into the days music.
Started off with Dirty Catfish Brass Band, my pal Lloyd Peterson has just finished a record with these guys so I'm intrigued by the idea of mixing a contemporary brass band and they certainly didn't disappoint. Great Bass playing with whatever you call that thing...hmmm Sousaphone? Nice rhythm section and piano/organ playing, cool tunes with an impressive singer, yay thumbs up, pretty good start for the day. Curtis Newton Band, not at their first rodeo, play a set of R&Bish rawk with that slick but minimalist thing he does with his gtr, cool...and next the Windups get up and, holy crap! these guys, who have been around at least as long as my current Telecaster, get up and rock their way thru an intense set that encompassed somehow Joe Jackson and Motorhead tunes all insanely tied together by some wicked wicked Surf/Rockabilly guitar riffing, courtesy of Rob Pachol. Funny tho, the crowd is not reacting to anything. So up next is Eagle and Hawk, a verified institution in Winnipeg, a band that is inspiring an entire generation in it's wake, and they sound great even tho I'm aware they've lost their good friend and long time drummer. The crowd is flat, the band can feel it and Jay Bodner is making mockery of themselves and I'm kinda pissed that the crowd is completely passive to the point of insult. These are my pals, they're great musicians, and deserve better. More later....
Ending the night is a revamped, retooled Moses Mayes, gone are the turntables and the kinda silly party mentality, replaced by a slightly matured Maiko Watson, onetime Popstars Canada contestant and Remi Shand background singer, with a cool soulful voice and it's a little hard to wrap one's head around it because this is a band that has always been almost totally instrumental that now has a considerable voice and apparently the band has something to say... I always liked the sheer musicality of this band, the jazz school chops paired with great grooves, poppin horns and Rawk guitars and Nathan Reimer I've always considered a kinda nerdy genius behind the ivorys or the macintosh. So cool to see a band reinvent themselves, good luck to them!
So lets wind back to Saturday night and I just wanna mention this Winnipeg crowd passivity again and here's what I'll never understand, after Rod and Trio Membe play their set of sophisticated Latin music to a rather lukewarm reception, the promoters bring on the first of 2 DJ acts for the evening, Electric Donkey Dance Party, and all of a sudden the avenue fills up with young people crowding the stage, IPhones all out, all agog staring at the stage as if they couldn't bear to miss a thing, and I have to ask myself, what is it that is so captivating about all of this? Near as I can tell, there's a guy up on stage with bright red headphones and the typical DJ rig which consists of a 2 channel mixer and the requisite laptop whereby these artists constitute and create their "ART". And by ART I mean, playing someone else's music thru a typically downgraded Mp3 file, occasionally adding an insipid 4 on the floor Disco beat that has no relationship with the originally stolen piece of music, and if they are especially inventive, once in a while they will use the SMPTE code record on their otherwise useless "turntable" in their rig to trigger or scratch out the occasional WhooWhoop sample or better yet, a sample of old schoolers actually scratching for real.... remember when a turntablist actually used real records? Whada buncha hogwash. I call shenanigans on this entire culture of hero worshiping of peeps that play other peoples recordings. I call shenanigans on a crowd of people that ignore the live music at a show to the point of insulting the creators of new and original music, but somehow consider it more important to show the luv to a DJ spinning and manipulating someone else's music. It's Fucked up and disrespectful - makes me wanna just quit the music biz. I don't wanna be all shitting on someones Genre and admittedly there are talented artists in the Electronica world but this whole culture of hero worship and glorification of a secondary spin of stolen artwork is nonsense. Especially when there are so many deserving artists that could benefit from this MP3 starved generation's fresh virgin ears....