Northern-fried blues

Take Yoko Ono on a bad crack jag, the possessed chick in The Exorcist and one of them sea lions from the San Francisco pier and you've got a rough sense of the sound Tanya "Tagaq" Gillis gave birth to on the Bete Noir stage Wednesday night.

Part Cambridge Bay ingenue, part grand mal seizure, Tagaq held onlookers spellbound with the help of her DJ partner's Apple notebook-created soundscapes. In the delightfully harrowing process, she dragged Inuit throat singing -- screaming, groaning and ululating -- into the 21st century.

When a couple of beatbox homeboys joined her on stage, she taunted one with: "You better be good, or I'm going to hurt you."

And when her voice jammed up, she quipped: "Throat singing doesn't work when you've got a ball of phlegm in your throat. You need water -- or whiskey."

The highlight was an extended duet with her cousin Celina Kalluk that showcased their northern hypno-trance to mesmerizing effect.

A night earlier, Alejandro Escovedo dedicated a song to Joe Strummer on the same stage. Joe would've approved of Tagaq.

Busy, bluesy...

Uh, yeah, really busy last night. Clockwise from top left: local hero John Allaire; 'just another' Tex-Mex band from East LA, aka Los Lobos; legendary Texas 'folk-blues-classicist-unclassifiable-incredible' Alejandro Escovedo, with half of his completely rocking string section; and the incomparably wry and funny observational folkie, Todd Snider.

The Independent Observer, Aggie and I also stumbled across a Motley Assortment Of Random Friends trekking through Randy Newman and George Clinton and the P-Funk All-Stars as we migrated from stage to stage. Reviews of Newman were polarized; the Motleys were uniformly high on him, but the IO (we don't call him "Independent" for nuthin') suggested that watching him was like entering the Eighth Circle of Hell. P-Funk fascinated us all: Diaper Guy, Feather Pants Guy and Neon Rasta Guy (George?), physiques showing a full range of buff-ness and seminudity, leaning toward large bellies, drew us to the Jumbotron like rubberneckers to a trainwreck. The musical funk was fun, though.

In further fashion news, Aggie was smashing in her new metallic Bermudas! Eat your heart out, Short Guy! You could have had all this and more, instead of getting dazed and confused in Rockliffe...

Wedding Tips

Rather than get annoyed by people smoking cigars and standing in front of my chairs at the Blues Festival, I went to some weddings this past weekend. Lovely affairs, they were, but I have thoughts on how things could be more efficient:

• The Rockcliffe Park Gazebo is a beautiful place for a wedding ceremony, but if you want the Fourth Dwarf to actually get there and not wander around Rockcliffe for an hour and a half, have your wedding in a facility that is served by a bus route.


• If the 3-year-old son of the bride and groom couldn't manage to keep his clothing on during the rehearsal dinner, it is probably a bad idea to give him a baseball bat and ball to play with during the reception.


• You may not really need a photo of the bride and groom with every possible permutation and combination of the wedding guests. But once you have every possible photo shot at the wedding site, you definitely do not need to go to a public garden to get more photos.


• If you're inviting the Fourth Dwarf and he's going to be wandering Rockcliffe for an hour and a half, do not have an open bar.
  

Blisterin' Blooz

Ottawa loves Buddy Guy, and Buddy Guy loves Ottawa right back. Guy is gettin' up there - he's alleged to have taught Hendrix & Clapton a thing or three - but as the saying goes, "Age and guile beat youth and speed every time". Specially when the old guy can still (selectively) play about six times faster than any of the hot young gunslingers in his band. He pretty much blistered the Tolex right off the amps and stacks. And if his playing hadn't, his patter surely would have. In addition to being the kind of soulful gutbucket blues player you won't hear every month, Guy is a veritable poet laureate of the profane anglosaxon monosyllable. I think his first word onstage was "Shit". I stand in dropjawed awe and admiration.

And speakin' of profanity, I have this to say to that ovine herd of smirking Junior Chamber of Commerce fuckwits who decided to celebrate their coming inheritance of society by firing up large stogies in the midst of a packed and gridlocked crowd, gassing about an acre of 'em just before the music started: You're inconsiderate, foul, (ob)noxious jerks. And your Stepford wives and girlfriends, who giggled at how cute you all looked, suckin' on reeking replacement dicks? Uglier'n bucketsful of smashed assholes. Every last one of 'em. Ummm, I think that pretty much covers it....

Woulda liked to have seen that orgy...

Sunday Bluesfest was joyous noise; musical hipsters and poseurs Dame Aggie, her visiting friend Lady Penelope, the Dishevelled Waiter, and I decided that all four hairdo-matched members of Spiral Beach (vocalist/keyboardist Maddy Wilde, top left; vocalist/guitarist Airick Woodhead, centre) were love-children spawned after a messy orgy attended by Devo, Blondie, Talking Heads and the B-52s sometime in the very late 80s. In other words, the kind of self-referential wankers we totally appreciate. An exercise in total 'tude, backed more than enough muscial skill to make it work. They were a hoot!

Ruthie Foster (top right) sang joyously infectious gospel/reggae-tinged Texas blues -- the Barney Danson theatre's seating section was totally bouncin'. She was my personal favourite for the day...

Halifax songwriter/rocker Joel Plaskett (bottom left) played a rare solo acoustic 12-string version ("This thing's a little off -- but fat chance I'm gonna tune it now") of one of his electric tunes, Fashionable People, in the same theatre, then headed straight out to the Rogers Stage to crank it up with his amplified band, The Emergency. It was all about intelligent wry, sly lyrics, not taken too seriously, with musicianship that is.

And the Independent Observer and the Amazon sent in late reports confirming that the night's headliner, White Stripes, were big crunchy fun. And hey: it didn't rain!