A month spent volunteering and campaigning

Hello all! So, this month I will be writing about the Bluesfest.

The line-up this year was really good and a lot of my favorite bands were there: like Passion Pit, City and Colour, Stars, Great Big Sea, Down with Webster, Weezer, and Metric.

On the downside, a lot of my friends weren't around so it was difficult finding someone to go with every night that I wanted to go.

During Bluesfest I spent most of my time at my friend’s house, but that caused some more problems, because she kept leaving to go to her friend’s cottage, so I had to find other places to stay. This also caused problems when it came to seeing shows, because I only ended up seeing four of the acts I just listed, although I did end up seeing others like Steel Pulse, Santana and the lead singer from Supertramp which were all really good.

So, now on to what I liked about the shows.

By far, my favorite show was Passion Pit because it was full of energy and great songs. In the middle of it my Dad and I left to go check out the Flaming Lips but as soon as we got there we decided to go back to see Passion Play. Also, because of the show, I have both of their albums on my iPod and some of the songs, like Sleepyhead and Better Things, are now among my favourites

The B-52's were my second favorite act. This is because they just had so much energy and were really having fun up on the stage. I went with my Aunt Pat and Uncle Steve that night and we got up to the very front of the stage, and at the end I got a drum stick, which I thought was pretty cool.

Santana was also a really good. I went that night with my Dad and we got pretty close, but the entire place was packed with people just there to see Santana. The best part of the show was by far the drummer.

This is because at one point the rest of the band left the stage except for him and he began drumming. The actual stick work wasn’t all that amazing, but the remarkable part was that on the base drum, he had one foot doing eighth beats and the other was doing fourths. The best part about this was that he kept it up for about 15 minutes and during the middle of it, even took a water break, while still pounding away on the bass drums with his feet.

One band that I heard for the first time during the Bluesfest was Steel Pulse, which is a reggae/dub band that apparently has been around for awhile. My friend and I went that day so we were alone and we had a really good time. At one point we saw my old pre-school teacher, and my friend’s mother’s friend, who was there to also see the band for her birthday.

The biggest bummer about this year was that on the one day that I really, really wanted to go see The Stars, Great Big Sea and Drake. So this meant that my friend who was going to go with me and my mum couldn’t get a student rush ticket, because they were all sold out to squealy tweens. So instead my friend, my mum and I went to see "Despicable Me" which was a really good movie, but I’m still bummed out about missing Stars.

I apologize for the shortness of this column, but not that much happened in July besides Bluesfest. In my next column I'll tell you all about summer camp which was a real blast.

ttfn.

(Maggie Sherwin is 14-years-old and is in Grade 9 at St. Peter High School. To contact the Magster e-mail maggie@orleansonline.ca.)

Return to Top

Return to Front Page