Music
Press
With friends like these, who needs a record collection? A night out with eight-headed original funk and rock revue act Camp Best Friends is like a go-round through the archives with stops in the cult classics, tours through the bad cheese and romps with the rock heavyweights.
When the band plays an end-of-summer bash at Cafe Dekcuf tonight, fans will be treated to a set of originals (think of horn-heavy, get-sweaty, funk-pop in the vein of the Pocket Dwellers), plus a set of mashed-up covers (get-down Motown to one-hit wonders you once owned on "cassingle").
It's all in the name of a good time, says front guy Dylan Grier (lead vocals, acoustic guitar).
"We're all really laid-back guys who like to have a good time when we play," he says, simply. "We think of our show as if it was a DJ spinning. We want to keep that rhythm going and have one song flow into the next."
The Ottawa outfit -- Grier, David Atkinson (keyboards), Mike Barber (bass, cello), Zarnoosh Bilamoria (percussion), Gorav Chaudhry (keyboards), Alex Fok (trumpet) Fraser McEvoy (drums) and Courtney Miller (trombone, electric guitar) -- began in McEvoy's basement when he and Grier would play death metal as teens (the band members are all 19 or 20 now). That's where they rid themselves of the bad rock posing and learned that they didn't have to lean toward one style in order to form a band.
"It's music for people who love music," Grier says. And true to his claim, a Camp Best Friends show draws a crowd from hippies to hipsters. Catch the Camp's musical journey as it begins.
The band is working on its debut EP and takes off for its first tour in October.
Camp Best Friends' End of Summer Spektakula takes place at Cafe Dekcuf, 221 Rideau St., upstairs, tonight. 9:30 p.m. $6. - Fateema Sayani, The Ottawa Citizen, Thursday August 31st 2006
Discography
"Just Chillin'' (2-Song Teaser CD) - 2006
"The CBF mixtape" (distributed free at 2007 gigs w/ stickers, web address, and e-mail list sign-up)
"Camp Best Friends" (Debut LP) - March 2008
Photos
Bio
Between the concrete government buildings that populate the Ottawa skyline comes Camp Best Friends, the energetic yin to the city's staid yang. Many might see the city as the uptight bureaucratic town in between Toronto and Montreal, but the boys in the band have drawn from the city's bustling and international culture and funneled it into a brew of equal parts Red Stripe and Moosehead. The band got together during that rift between high school and after high school, and have worked their way through the pubs, clubs, and bars of Ottawa and university campuses across Central Canada while working on a growing repertoire of recorded work. In the meantime, they've solidified their line up and their grasp on what they loosely define as their 'music'. Their debut album is due out March 2008.
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