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2017.07.15 - Bluesfest, Ottawa, Canada


timberley

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Muse will be headlining Ottawa Bluesfest this year, playing on Saturday July 15 (closing weekend of the festival). This will be the first time Muse has played in Ottawa since 2004.

 

Tickets are on sale as of Feb. 24, 2017, including full festival passes and individual day passes. Full details here: https://www.ottawabluesfest.ca/

 

 

Just bought my day pass for the 15th :D

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Sort of odd that this hasn't been added to the tour dates yet (or announced by Muse), particularly now that tickets are on sale and the lineup has been out all week.

 

I wonder if they're waiting for the Osheaga announcement, which is coming on Tuesday next week. Muse was been widely rumoured to headline, so perhaps they'll announce both festivals together next week...?

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  • 3 months later...
  • 1 month later...

Bluesfest is now underway (as of last night), and a week and a day until Muse! Anyone else on here going to this one?

 

There's a part of me that's hoping we might get something interesting, since it is their first time in Ottawa since 2004 (and they famously played Glorious at that one...), they often seem to play slightly better sets on this side of the border, and they've just had a few weeks off. But we'll see! I'm being careful to keep my expectations low, low, low, and just enjoy the show no matter what sort of set we get. I'm mostly just excited to finally get to see them in a festival context as opposed to their standard arena tour shows.

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I've been on operation shutdown since I bought tickets for NYC and Ottawa, not wanting to know set-lists, stage set-up or anything else. Since the Drones tour and as much as I have enjoyed the major tours, I really wanted to see the band on a no-frills stage with 2 mics and just have them bring it and rip thru their set

An outdoor festival I figured would be a basically a greatest hits shortened set with little or no frills as far as staging goes coupled with being uncomfortable and tough to see.

Surprises: Stage set-up was awesome, I had seen seen a couple of pics and just figured it was a simple video wall but when they moved and the band appeared from behind them to start the show, it was pretty neat.

 

Set-list was really good in my opinion. I'm not one to OD on pills because they didn't play a Hullabaloo b-side I've based my existence on so the inclusion of Stockholm, PIB and Time is Running Out were quite welcome after not hearing them for a while. Being a festival and tight time restrictions, they actually played longer and fit in more songs than I was expecting.

 

I got the rail, wasn't expecting it, hadn't planned on it, but we got their about 1/2 hour before gates opened and that proved to be good enough. Bass was loud enough to move a small cruise ship and not always pleasant, but wouldn't have changed anything. Kids beside me got Chris's harmonica; they deserved it, had a handmade sign, got in line at 10am, I was happy for them. Everybody around me on the day caught something from some band...I gotta work on my catching abilities.

 

Matt destroyed an amp with his guitar. I was happy when I finally saw him trash a guitar on last tour, this was a new wrinkle.

 

Great weather. Friday got rained out after 2 songs by headliner Live...go figure, Lightening was Crashing. It rained yesterday, it's raining this morning..it's rained every &*%ing day this summer. Awesome day.

 

Morgan seemed to have increased role, maybe because he was out of his hole from Drones tour but some with a guitar more than ever before, even when Matt was playing.

Bit of a new intro for Knights, went from Harmonica to heavy guitar/drum jam then back to Harmonica.

 

Disappointment: Matt leaving stage for New Kinda Kick. Really didn't understand this. But it did give me time to reminisce about The Cramps...great band, got to see them a bunch back in the day.

Anyway...off to NYC, looking forward to it.

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So I had an absolute blast on Saturday. I was a bit farther over to the right (just right of Chris, but left of the speaker column), and second row from the rail.

 

I knew going in what to expect from the set, and on paper it doesn't look like anything super amazing, but the show itself was killer. Their performance was amazing, so much energy, and the sound was pretty great (when the riff kicked in at the start of Psycho....holy hell....). Having seen them on the drones arena tour, this was definitely a big step up. More like the energy of the T2L shows, and they all looked like they were having fun. Matt in particular seemed a little goofier than many nights. Watching him wreck the amp after SS was pretty sweet.

 

Given that the show was scheduled for 1h15, it was great to get a solid 1h30. Sure, there's filler in there, but I enjoyed it all a lot. Even new kind of kick, as much as I hate the whole playback vocal thing, actually sounded pretty good. Enjoyed when the bass really kicked up. I am a fan of that song (partly because my gf is a big fan of the Cramps so I have an appreciation for their stuff), so it was fun.

 

Stage setup is my favourite since T2L arena tour - simple, but super effective. Balloons during Starlight were cool, and confetti during Mercy was awesome - actually made that song a lot of fun, and was much better being right in the cloud than it had been up in the seats on the Drones arena tour.

 

Crowd seemed pretty decent, though unsurprisingly the biggest reactions were for Madness and Uprising, by a mile. I heard at least two different people before the show saying "I hope they play madness!"....

 

So yeah, that was a lot of fun, and seemed to go over really well with everyone I talked to and overheard after. Now looking forward to Toronto, and hoping for a few different things maybe (we'll see....)

 

Oh, one more thing: Matt's piano was actually out on stage at the start when they were setting up for Muse, but then the crew brought out the flight case and packed it up. Not really sure what was up with that. Were they originally thinking about playing something in the piano? Or was it just there for soundcheck? I got briefly excited seeing it there, but when they packed it up it did immediately kill the chance of a few more interesting songs....

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Oh, one more thing: Matt's piano was actually out on stage at the start when they were setting up for Muse, but then the crew brought out the flight case and packed it up. Not really sure what was up with that. Were they originally thinking about playing something in the piano? Or was it just there for soundcheck? I got briefly excited seeing it there, but when they packed it up it did immediately kill the chance of a few more interesting songs....

 

I saw the flight case roll across the stage before the show and then roll back about 20 minutes later...didn't even dawn on me that it was for a piano. I just scanned the stage, didn't see one, and figured that was that.

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I saw the flight case roll across the stage before the show and then roll back about 20 minutes later...didn't even dawn on me that it was for a piano. I just scanned the stage, didn't see one, and figured that was that.

 

It was off on the left side of the stage. I just noticed it as someone started rolling it out from the side, and was like "sweet, the piano!" - then I realized they were rolling it out to pack it up in the flight case.

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