East Coast Blues & RootsFestival @ Belongil Fields,Byron Bay (13/04/09)

Tue 21st Apr, 2009 in Gig Reviews

It’s taken a full week to recover from the monolith that was Bluesfest 2009 but these technicolour memories won’t be fading anytime soon.

Apra stage hosts Bob Log III, his motorbike helmet (with in-built microphone of course!) and his shiny gold open-chest spandex body suit. Bob’s knees host a volunteer girl to jiggle on each while he plays jangly guitar, stomps a kick drum and sings his quirky tunes – at the same time. This guy (Melbourne, Australia via Tucson, Arizona) is entertaining before he even makes a noise, but when he does the irreverent one man band is impressive. The set isn’t truly complete without some drunken buffoon thinking His Shit Is Perfect and heckling for the entire duration until Bob obliges with the awesome Boob Scotch as a finale.

Ngaiire has brought a six piece to the InDIG stage to set off some slowburning hiphop and nu-soul grooves. If you’re into this sort of thing you’ll want to catch this lady when she emerges with a long awaited debut towards year’s end. Erykah Badu’s influence here extends not only to her music but oversized – œfro as well.

Missy Higgins is absolutely chockablock – the single most packed gig I’ve come across all weekend. Again the Mojo relay lets us watch Missy on the big screen and in mute, but the few minutes I dare spend as a sardine in the tent sound pretty damn good. No surprises here for the crowd size or set list.

Crossroads has tumbleweeds blowing through by comparison, but the crowds quickly come when The Special Beat ramp up. Really, how can you go wrong with this 2 tone superband founded by members of seminal ska bands The Specials and The Beat, fronted by Pauline Black of The Selecter?

A half hour delay at Jambalaya allows me to catch Ruthie Foster and one of those much talked about chilli chocolate chicken mol’es. The crowd she’s drawn is fervent, and her powerful voice and soulful blues are exponentially tastier than my dinner.

It is immediately apparent that Easy Star All Stars have pulled the fattest drum sound I’ve heard all festival, but it took hours after their phenomenal set for it to sink in that this 8 piece ensemble gave arguably the best performance of the five days. Sure, none of their work is original, but the group’s dub reworkings of classic material by The Beatles, Pink Floyd and Radiohead (in that order) bypass cheesy nostalgia and head for another realm of awesomeness. Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds sung by guitarist Shelton Garner Jr. is an absolute gem – - œscuse the pun.

It’s been great to see ladies filling such diverse roles onstage – honourable mentions to Easy Star All Stars’ Jenny Hill on sax (blazing tenor solo on Pink Floyd’s Money), Banawarun’s shit hot drummer Myka Wallace, Ruthie Foster’s all female rhythm section and the festival’s biggest crowd puller Missy Higgins.

Alpha Blondy ’s band opens with Led Zeppelin’s Whole Lotta Love riff and segue into a stomping reggae beat before the man himself appears onstage. A laidback frontman with an extensive discography, Alpha Blondy also boasts in his band the most distinctive horn section of the seven or so that have graced the Bluesfest 2009 stages. Apartheid Is Nazism is as musically brilliant today as it was dangerously political in the 1980s.

The artists aren’t the only one putting on a show to bring the twentieth incarnation of Bluesfest to a close – it’s bucketing down, to the extent I genuinely fear having my vehicle bogged in festival parking overnight.

My flooding escape route includes a detour past Mojo to check the last of Ben Harper and admittedly he is good this time around. Did he do anything different to the lacklustre set of two nights previous? Musically speaking? No. But tonight he seems exponentially more enthused, and once you deal with his pretty blatant refusal to offer up crowd-pleasing material from his back catalogue you concede he’s a damn fine performer. At the very least, he provided a great soundtrack to turn my back on Bluesfest 2009 and squelch my way back to reality.