OTTAWA - Bluesfest, the biggest party of the year, finally came to Ottawa last night with The Tragically Hip at LeBreton Flats to make sure people got the message. It's time to party!

More than 25,000 fans were on hand at LeBreton Flats to crack a couple cold ones and chill to the best band to come out of Kingston.

And the Canadian Rock Hall of Famers didn't disappoint. Even after 20 years, Gord Downie and his pals Rob Baker, Paul Langlois, Johnny Fay and Gord Sinclair still put on a staggering live show beginning, as virtually every Hip concert does, with Downie.

Wearing the same black suit and plaid shirt he's been sporting on this latest tour to promote their new record World Container, Downie was particularly delirious as he strutted and convulsed across the stage like a showstopping master of ceremonies during the opening tunes Yer Not the Ocean, My Music at Work, Grace Too and The Drop Off.

With a wild glint in his eye, Downie punctuated each lyric with mimed theatrics as if he were a possessed actor, ripping his heart out and offering it to the fans, canoeing across the stage and later, breaking his microphone stand in half and twirling them like a cheerleader while the rest of the band played on oblivious to Downie's histrionics.

Eventually, Downie dropped most of the entertaining improv and stuck to singing, which he did very well and in good voice on Ahead By a Century, Springtime in Vienna, Courage and later, the classic New Orleans is Sinking.

Predictably, the show was long, intense, cathartic and fun, so by the end of their two hours, all 25,000 knew they had been to a real rock circus.

Less predictable was TV on the Radio. Fronted by the imposing singer Tunde Adebimpe, the freewheeling indie band from Brooklyn are musical chameleons who switch between jazz, hiphop, rock, a cappella and French burlesque, all at drone-inducing volumes on tunes from their sixth record Return to Cookie Mountain, including Young Liars, I Was a Lover, Wolf Like Me, Let the Devil In and A Method.

Elsewhere on opening day, many Bluesfest vets headed straight for the idyllic River Stage earlier in the evening.

There, the blues-rock trio from the Isle of Man, Back Door Slam, showed why they've been creating a lot of buzz for their uncanny resemblance to Cream.