It's been three months since we last covered fallout from this year's Rotaryfest. Three months! In that post, we seemingly wrapped up Stage 1 videos and started talking about Stage 2, but a couple of videos from the main covers-centric stage were uploaded to YouTube after our August 19th post, so what's there now? This year's headliner on Thursday, July 18th was local Abba tribute band Abba Soo, and on their YouTube channel, you can see a video of them covering "S.O.S." Good quality video from a close angle, and while far from metal or hard rock, Abba fans will enjoy the rendition! The other new video comes from classic/hard rock cover quartet Double Down, who were this year's closing band on Saturday, July 20th in their second Rotaryfest appearance and first festival set with Beej Syrette on guitar & vocals. Like their Rotaryfest 2023 full-set video, this was uploaded to drummer Ric Datson's YouTube channel as a scheduled upload on August 29th, so what is there to see here?
Double Down's over an hour-long, Rotaryfest-closing set featured covers of Thin Lizzy's "Jailbreak", Honeymoon Suite's "New Girl Now", The Temptations' "Shakey Ground", The Cars' "Just What I Needed", Simple Minds' "Don't You (Forget About Me)", The Foo Fighters' "Times Like These", Sugarloaf's "Green-Eyed Lady", Thin Lizzy's "The Boys Are Back In Town", Doyle Bramhall II's "Green Light Girl", Bachman-Turner Overdrive's 'Let It Ride", the Thin Lizzy version of "Whiskey In The Jar", ZZ Top's "Gimme All Your Lovin'" and "Sharp Dressed Man" back to back, and lastly, Peter Frampton's "You Had To Be There". While not alternating between singers for lead vocals like in 2023, Joel Syrette sang on half of the songs on offer once again, with his cousin Beej handling all three Thin Lizzy tunes, plus "Just What I Needed", "Times Like These", and "Sharp Dressed Man".
The remaining song ("Shakey Ground") featured bassist Brad Stephen on lead vocals. Like last year, Ric did a great job getting multi-camera footage of Double Down's set, including stationary cameras on the far left of the stage and a drumcam setup, as well as at least two different filmers on the lawn capturing the action until the final three songs. The audio quality isn't as high as the visuals, and while it is passable, I had trouble identifying a couple of songs, especially "Green Light Girl", which I only nailed down once I found a personal Facebook video of that cover with clearer audio. Still a solid set with some surprise covers that you don't often see other local bands play (if at all), so give it a watch below!
To belatedly finish up our Rotaryfest fallout coverage, what else was publically filmed at the originals-centric Stage 2 that Saturday beside the Art Gallery of Algoma? Three months ago, we already touched on HeadFirst's own YouTube video from their day-opening set, but as far as YouTube and Facebook goes, there's nothing else that I am aware of. This is complicated by five of the nine Stage 2 acts on Saturday this year not having public Facebook pages for their music in the project seen there, but I did find a handful of Instagram-exclusive videos concerning Stage 1! The Sault Algoma Students account shared a video of country/classic rock band The Way Backs covering Bobby Charles' "See You Later, Alligator" on the Saturday, but the other two obvious Rotaryfest videos there are actually hype videos for Mike Haggith's set opening up the Friday program on Stage 1! Mike has occasionally used his Instagram page to post exclusive content, so what made it there to promote his return?
In one video from June, Mike looked back on when he dislocated his knee early in his Stage 1 set last year, as well as his long recovery and his aims to complete the redemption arc by returning to Rotaryfest this year. Suffice to say, Mike and crew performed without a hitch in July, and you can watch the complete set on YouTube at this link! Embedded below is a jokey promotional video from Mike and his backing group The Big Finish Band, under the pretense of Chris, Elly, Matt, and Brandan interrogating Mike about how he came up with the band's name and why it's not always used in advertising. Cute bit of self-deprecation, so give it a watch below!
Finally, in my searching, I did find unacknowledged Rotaryfest videos from last year! While classic rock veterans RPM were a Saturday performer on Stage 1 this year, they have played the festival thrice before, including a Friday evening set last year. Guitarist Dino Mazzuca posted three videos from their 2023 set to his YouTube channel, including covers of The Black Crowes' "She Talks To Angels", John Mellencamp's "Pink Houses", and as embedded below, Trooper's "The Boys In The Bright White Sports Car". Good quality horizontal video from a close filmer, and they have a solid handle on these classic rock covers, so give RPM's Rotaryfest 2023 videos a watch for yourselves above and below!
That's all for today, but stay tuned for more news and notes on the site later this week! Thanks everyone!
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