Anatomy of a Buck 65 Concert

There was a lot of excitement surrounding Buck 65's Edmonton Folk Music Festival appearance. He was slotted on stage two for the last workshop on the last day of the festival. My family and friends have been doing this for a long time, so using special ninja skills honed over many folk fests, we guaranteed ourselves good seats. The workshop was exceptional because of skill represented by this original and gifted Canadian artist. The excitement and expectation was almost palatable. Everyone wanted to get a glimpse of Buck 65. Stage two is an average size stage, normally the really big workshops are held at the other end of the site at stage six. It was by far the biggest workshop I have ever seen held at stage two (as the image below attests) illustrating Buck 65's star power.



People kept coming and coming. Far far up the hill. Everyone - even those to the sides of the stage - was watching the performace with enraptured focus (including me). There was only one really techy song with lots of buzzing and beeping that didn't agree with me other than that I thought all the other tracks were genius. He is such a great wordsmith one has to listen carefully as the references zoom by. And seeing him live made me appreciate his charisma. I especially liked one of his new songs which sampled a nasty guitar rif taken from an old skool Nova Scotia wrestling program. A real rocker which takes some creativity to then rhyme over. In reference to the picture of Buck at the top of this post, it was never fully explained why he needed the neck brace. Perhaps his dangerous head-nodding beats? He will probably be questioned by Homeland Security if that's the case. Even Spearhead front man Michael Franti made an appearance at the side of the stage, barely noticable in his longer than previously dreadlocks, to see some prime Canadian hip-hop talent. The last interesting this of note was that Buck 65's vinyl scratching skills were not as great as I had been led to believe but others (for lots of boring technical reasons). Not that I could of done what he did, but there are other Canadian DJs that stand several rungs above him skill wise. But not to worry, I still loved his set and the hour was over far too quickly. The folk fest doesn't use setting 11 for on speaker system often enough!