I should add...

This'll be brief, because I'm pretty wiped out and we have a damn full day tomorrow. We caught three acts today. First it was Sarah Harmer, who played pretty much every song of hers that I know (and who's super hot, BTW). Rest assured that there is no studio trickery involved in producing her albums because she sounds exactly the same live. Great stuff. Sadly, the memory I'll really take away is of this douchebag who sat down near us about three songs in. He was probably in his mid-forties, half in the bag (I hope), and he would not shut up. He offered such insights as: "This isn't blues." And: "I came here to hear some blues." And: "Is it too much to ask that I hear some blues?" He was there for about half an hour, until Sarah Harmer started to talk about Canada becoming too militaristic. Then he offered this rebuttal: "Fuck off and play some music," and an older dude in front of him turned and had some very angry words with him. Douchebag packed up and left immediately after, and then we all applauded.

After this, we caught Michael Franti. He and his band play a sort of cross-genre blend of music, a goulash of rock, reggae, and pop. He's heavily into social justice, and incidentally he puts on a hell of a show. He's extremely high energy and a really tough act to follow. Which was bad news for Manu Chao, the night's headliner. Chao plays this Spanish-language worldbeat kind of stuff, something I know nothing about. It was... okay. For me to enjoy songs performed in another language, the music itself has to be really hook-filled and compelling. But once Sarah pointed out that every single song ended the same (with this polka-y BOOMdahBOOMdahBOOMdahBOOMdah matched with shouts of hey! hey! hey! hey!) then I just couldn't wait to get out of there.