This weekend we had a great outdoor weekend at Deer Lake Park. Saturday was the Burnaby Roots and Blues festival featuring the Wailin' Jennies, Mem Shannon, Lhasa, Johnny Clegg and the Neville Brothers. We had quite the motley crew, as Deanna's parents, my brother, my step-mom and our good friends Guy and Katrina joined us. Nothing like sitting on a slope on a sunny day listening to great music, and occasionally tossing disc, sipping a beer or having some really really stinky blue cheese. My favs were the Jennies and Lhasa.
Jack Johnson
We returned on sunday late afternoon to see Jack Johnson 
preceeded by ALO and Matt Costa. I really enjoyed JJ, and lots of other people did too! 
Demographics
As much as I enjoyed the show, I was really surprised by the demographics of the crowd. There were about 8,000 people in attendance. I got my tickets on March 15th and they sold out within days of going on sale to the general public around March 20th. So there was huge pent up demand.
I think about 7900 of the fans were caucasians between the ages of 15 and 25, and everybody was looking pretty darn fine. Vancouver is an incredibly multicultural city, to the point that it's a strange experience being in the "majority" in a crowd. I find it fascinating that a stand-up mellow folk/rocker like Jack Johnson has such a strong appeal to such a narrow audience. Apparently, lots of "kids" are really liking that laid back guitar style, which I hadn't expected at all. I thought there'd be way more folks even in the mid-30s, but I was *definitely* in the top 1% when it came to age.
One rationale that I thought of is that young "moderate" music listeners that want something interesting, new and cool(is "sick" soo 2004?) that's not hip-hop or metal and JJ gives them exactly that. It helps coming from the surfer background too. What was also interesting too was the crowd support for his piano player, who's the lead in the 2nd warm-up band, Animal Liberation Orchestra. Every time he played during JJ's show, the crowd went wild. I'm serious, 20-something women going crazy for a piano player when he's playing the accordian.
Mellow folk rocker and accordian playing appealing to the good-lookin' 15-25 age group, who knew.
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