Festivals are a lot like real estate: location matters.
Sound bleed issues aside, LeBreton Flats works well for the thousands of people that flock to Bluesfest each year. The Ottawa Jazz Festival has long roots in Confederation Park. Westfest puts on engaging musical performances while showing off what Westboro has to offer.
It’s something that the organizers of Ottawa Sucks, a new hardcore punk festival, obviously get.
The festival’s small performance spaces, such as the Royal Canadian Legion on Kent Street, are great for sweaty, powerful and energetic shows.
Don’t let that combative name fool you. Ottawa Sucks is here to praise the city as much as it is to bury it.
The festival, organized by Germ Attak member Jo Steel, features 25 bands from across the globe.
Many of the acts hail from the capital, but those from outside the region will also get their chance to shine.
Like the best punk music, the name is also rather subversive. It attacks Ottawa’s reputation as a boring, bureaucratic city while showing off the capital’s exciting musical underbelly. Many Ottawa music fans could learn from this tactic, instead of just lobbing the same old complaints and doing nothing about them.
In some ways, Ottawa Sucks is following in the wake of another festival, the Ottawa Explosion Weekend.
Both are weekend-long events. Sucks kicks off April 12-14, while Explosion runs from June 20-23. Both take place at multiple venues around Ottawa. And, most importantly, both act as a showcase for vibrant, local music scenes that continue to thrive under the radar.
In fact, the Ottawa Explosion blog gave Ottawa Sucks some publicity back in January, posting the new festival’s line-up.
Emmanuel Sayer, a festival organizer for Ottawa Explosion, is also playing Ottawa Sucks on April 12 with his band Pregnancy Scares.
Sayer says the new festival offers punk fans a venue that the city’s arts scene doesn’t provide anywhere else.
“(Steel) was just talking about doing a big hardcore punk festival, which is definitely something that Ottawa doesn’t have, so that’s great,” Sayer says. “I feel like it’s a good accompaniment to Ottawa Explosion because it kind of touches some genres that we don’t necessarily touch during our festival, although we’re kind of branching out as well.”
Event organizers still have a lot to grapple with, though. Ottawa doesn’t have enough venues, Sayer says, and while putting on a show at a legion is very punk rock, non-performance spaces have to work harder and organizers often have to supply their own equipment.
But it’s that hardship that makes music from Ottawa so resonant. Sayer even says that the lack of music infrastructure around the city helps foster solidarity among bands.
“People who are involved in the scene will meet people who are playing in different types of bands and who are going to different types of shows,” he says. “It’s kind of this ‘we’re all in this together’ kind of atmosphere where everyone’s trying to play wherever they can play and swapping information when someone finds a venue that can book a band.”
Ultimately, Ottawa music fans need to take a page from both Steel and Sayer. By now, “Ottawa Sucks” has become the standard refrain for anyone with little attachment to the city’s underground music scene.
It’s a horribly self-defeating attitude, and it won’t help venues or artists grow to the point where they can break out of that “best kept secret” label.
Bottom line: If you don’t see art that appeals to you in this city, fill that void and make it yourself. Ottawa Sucks looks poised to do just that. The festival has already turned a snide, shallow phrase aimed at the local music scene into a rallying cry for it.