Antibalas with Kiltlifters

Last Friday was an exciting night for a couple of reasons. The first reason was that we went to check out Antibalas as part of the Victoria Jazz Festival, the second was that we fianlly got to meet the mysterious Marie-France. This post will only deal with the show, so we'll leave a little mystery.

The show was at Centennial Square downtown and got started early. The opening act, the Kiltlifters, were already playing when we got there. They're a fun ska band from Nanaimo and fiercely proud islanders. They got the crowd warmed up well and there was a small crowd dancing by the time they had to wrap things up.

Rockin' it.

One interesting thing about the Kiltlifters frontman was that throughout the show he played a mean air guitar on his saxophone.

Antibalas were awesome. There were eleven of them, and they were all bang on. There were multiple incredible solos. The two main guys held the crowd in the palms of their hands. The crowd adored them so much that when the sax player did his last solo he barely had to do anything and people were screaming and throwing their hands in the air. It was one of those moments when it's a thrill just to be in a crowd and feel yourself fill with their positive energy.

Stage left.

Unfortunately it was darker when Antibalas was on so we didn't really get any good pictures. The only big negative from the night was that it was over too quickly. Because the concert was outdoors and downtown they had to wrap it up obscenely early. The median age of Victoria is somewhere around 73, so the show was over at 10pm.

Sax player.

Apparently the guy above in the blue shirt is named Dr. Acid Head Ted. We thought you should know that.

Big thanks to Uncle Bill and Aunt Marianne for treating us (and James and Marie-France) to the concert. We all had a great time.