Number 14 on this list marks the third artist, following P.S. I Love You at #30 and Library Voices at #25, that I discovered at the 2011 edition of Ottawa Bluesfest. Like the two others, Diamond Rings, one of the many performing names for John O’Regan, hails from Canada. His set that year was part of his tour supporting his debut album, “Special affections”, and took place early on a Sunday afternoon on the festival’s smallest stage. I had heard the album in advance, which was the only reason I had made such a special effort to be there so early in the day, but I wasn’t at all prepared for the Diamond Rings experience.
I’m also reasonably sure the early, sun-baked crowd weren’t sure what to make of the skinny white dude with bleached blonde hair and a swath of rainbow coloured makeup swiped across his eyes. And the confusion likely increased when he started, using loops, drum machines, programming, and other trickery while strutting and dancing across the stage with his guitar, brimming with all the confidence of a glam rock hero performing in front of a stadium of adoring fans rather than a handful of people scattered around on the hill facing him. His performance was infectious, though, and he had the crowd, which grew substantially, by the end and it turned out to be one of my favourite sets of the year. Two years later, when he returned to the festival in support of his sophomore album, it was also on a Sunday but this time, it was the headlining set on the medium sized stage. And now, he fittingly had a full band backing him, smoke machines, cool lighting, and a bigger, more adoring crowd.
“Wait and see” is the second track from that debut album, which I went out and bought for my vinyl collection early on. It’s a phenomenal track that you really have to listen closely to in order to guess that it’s a one man show. The sensibility is post-punk revival with a touch of darkness and a whole load of glam. The guitars are like chain saws messing with the industrial beat but it’s O’Regan’s silky baritone vocals that raise this track up to the rock heavens. You can hear and almost taste his persona in the song. He’s like a time traveller from the eighties, a forgotten rebel that had fallen asleep behind a stage, waking up almost thirty years later, and decided to wreak havoc on his new reality.
I loved this song and album and even the next one but lost track of O’Regan, and his Diamond Rings persona, after hearing he was touring with OMD in 2013. It seems like I wasn’t the only one because putting his name into google resulted in a handful of articles titled “Whatever happened to…” and one by Exclaim from last year that talked about a newish, yet still mysterious, project that had nothing to do with Diamond Rings called JG Ballad.
It is a bit of an unfortunate and unfinished story, but I feel like Diamond Rings was never really meant to be anything more than an experiment for O’Regan. Whatever he had to prove, though, I’m sure he did… and then some.
For the rest of the Best tunes of 2010 list, click here.
My (life in) music lists 