The Beaches jazz festival is probably my favorite street festival in Toronto. It’s not overly crowded like the Taste of the Danforth and there’s free, live music! We went on Friday after seeing Harry Potter.
We didn’t listen to as many acts as the last time I went, since HP was two and a half hours long (!?) and the festival ended at 11PM. But they were quality. The first act we saw was Scott McCord & the Bonafide Truth. We saw them preparing and they all had cowboy hats on so I was worried they would break into some country twang. Fortunately, they just played some great music to dance too, and there was a crowd of random people dancing in front!
After awhile, we walked on and came across God Made Me Funky. What caught my ear was a tribute to Michael Jackson. The mixed in a bunch of old MJ disco/funk classics like Wanna Be Startin’ Something, Off The Wall, and included Rihanna’s Please Don’t Stop The Music and Justin Timberlake’s Sexy Back!
Live covers are awesome, and I just caught the end of Sultans of String performance where they covered The Who’s Pinball Wizard made famous to me by Rock Band. They had a real drummer (as opposed to the video on their website) which had an awesome drum solo at the end. Too bad I can’t play drums like that!
This was also an excellent opportunity for me to test out how my kit with IS would work in low light. I tried to stress it at 55mm (and thus f/5.6) with ISO1600 and the IS was useful, but not infallible.
If there was ambient light, then it’s ok, but otherwise things started getting blurry (i.e., all my pictures of the bands). Plus focusing was a bit off.
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