Look at how happy the audience members were! Photo by ming wu
Rock Lottery went down without a hitch on Saturday, May 21st at Mavericks in Ottawa and surprisingly all of the bands were GOOD! We had about 200 people in the audience who were VERY supportive of all of the groups, considering it was the long weekend, that’s amazing!
And we raised $400 for the Ottawa Food Bank and $50 worth of food!
MC of the night CBC Radio 1's Adam Saikaley and event organizer Samantha Everts do some last minute preparation
After the bands were announced on Friday night from a 10-gallon cowboy hat at the James Street Pub, a bunch of the groups went to jam immediately Newly formed Mongolian Struggle Arms, I’m told jammed for over 10 hours over the 24 hour period! (That’s crazy!) Whereas others hit up the bars along Bank Street for some quality ‘bonding’ time, ahem, drinking, but hey, some of the topics of conversation were around music, right?
Neon Tampon - Photo by Ming Wu
Neon Tampon
Rolf had said that one of the songs they had written together had sounded very ‘Acorn-like’ but that quickly changed when he used a voice-box to do some spoken word-like rant over a post-rock jam. Lots of keys involved too!
Tiger and the Playground - Photo by Ming Wu
Tiger and the Playground
Very fun dynamic of Mallory from Politique and Ian Keteku doing the boy-girl call and return type of song. They had a song about going skinny dipping at Mooney’s Bay that had some serious audience participation, “One, you take the shirt off you back, Two you take the pants off your bum…” This was a poppy-band with some hip-hop stylings.
photo by Ming Wu
Photo by Ming Wu
Shades on Stage
Shades on Stage - Photo by Ming Wu
Original Rock Lottery organizer Luca Furgiuele finally got to live out his dreams of fronting a hardcore metal band (think Horse the Band). Given that the members of this group came from an alt-country band, experimental post-rock group and super alternative dance-band, this sound wasn’t completely unexpected given that member Billy Hatchet comes from a death metal background. There was facepaint, costumes and much throwing down to the songs. Who knew Luca had it in him??
Photo by Ming Wu
photo by Ming Wu
Mongolian Struggle Arms
photo by ming wu
These guys were given a platform to show what skilled musicians they are and a comfortable hush was held in the room as they played. No real lyrics were even needed, just really great post-rock jams. They kind of cheated in the end though and invited Ian Keteku up to do a rap song about Macaulay Culkin- the song was completely improvised on the spot and had everyone wavin’ their hands in the air like they just don’ care!
photo by ming wu
The Demi Moore-moore-moore-moore-moores!
photo by ming wu - one member of the demi-moore-moore-moore...
This band hit on a name the Friday night before and had renamed themselves after individual Demi Moore films (Yes, GI Jane was there). It was getting a little late so the photographer peaced out, but this band literally hit you over the head with their sound. Again, given the background of the players, emo-rock, pop-rock, and hip-hop audience members were shocked/delighted when the band’s genre quickly turned to an 80s hardcore throwback band! A pit erupted and frontman Mihajlo Kos rocked it Henry-Rollins-style. A shorter set than the others, but hilariously enjoyable and perfect set to end the night with.
More random awesome photos from the night!
Thank you to everyone who came out, supported, helped promote and participated in the event! There is already some serious talk about the NEXT lottery in 2012!
Ottawa Rock Lottery 