Our top picks of the Osheaga Festival 2007…
Dear Ottawa Blues Festival,
Gold roped-off sections of music festivals are for pansies and general douche-bags. To all of those fans who went to Ottawa and made it inside these roped off areas at the front, know that you single-handedly ruined your own festival with your roped off lawn chair horseshit hundred dollar privilege. In the future, please visit Montreal and see what happens when everyone is treated the same at a real festival. To the credit of Osheaga, I saw a total of two police officers inside the entire grounds and about three security guards. Dearest Ottawa, we hope that one day when you learn to be civil and learn values of equality are reflected in your event planning, you will come to understand that exclusion and privilege do not make for fun times. But back to basics…Osheaga…and our top effing picks of the festival. Oh, and there’s no particular order.
With love,
Fingers n Glover
CPC Gangbangs
Montreal’s CPC Gangbangs are bangers. Fucking head bangers. Fucking wrap the mic cord around your neck and jump into the crowd only to emerge with infectious and catchy jams that make you want to wrap a cord around your own neck and go jumping. These folks were by far one of the most exciting shows in an otherwise anti-climactic night of big-name performances and one of the most exciting acts of the festival. Word of advice for next year: take the folk singers from the main stage and put them on the small stage (or in the water) where this show happened and let a band like CPC Gangbangs take advantage of you on the main stage and fire some life into this city. Oh, and cut the line for the corn down somehow. You shouldn’t have a corn roast if you don’t have butter and a short line. Take heed, Vice. There may not have been corn, or rather, there may not have been patience to wait for corn, but we chewed on CPC jams and slid around the floor on the butter of better jams.
Hank and Lily
Something hadn’t quite felt right, as though there was no way Fong would surface from hiding, at least not here. There was nothing that reflected his persona here, at least not yet. But this party was on an island and Billy is a prolific swimmer. Then we saw the red curtains, the antlers, the tin mask. It was Hank and Lily. And there he was, Billy, hiding in the back with a zebra head hat and his trademark sunglasses. We made it as far as the barricades before getting off a quick roid. It is not really a surprise that Fong would appear here, since it was somewhat a surprise Hank and Lily would be here too, so far from the forest. By far the band with the most stage presence of the festival, they exude the oft sought after rock bandit demeanor that makes you believe they may have killed someone and stored them in a trunk before the show. The sound is big and delivers in the form of stand up drums, oil can bloodbath guitar lines, asses shaking and clocks made of confetti as Lily taps in morse code the secret sixth word that rhymes with love. Fong disappeared shortly after the show, though witnesses say the confetti was his idea and the zebra head may have in fact been real, leaving us to wonder where he would surface next and if the zebra head is some kind of hidden message or anecdote. On our way out, there were lines of police cars. Were they there for Fong? For Hank and Lily? It was unclear. But if the police were tipped off to the whereabouts of Billy Fong, the real question is…who tipped them off?
Royal Mountain Band
There’s a little something to be said about programming at this festival. Namely, that too often there are great bands on small stages and small acts on large stages. In other words, despite Martha Wainwright’s commercial success, putting her on the main stage with nothing but an acoustic guitar and slow jams is not good programming. That said, a savvy trade which would involve putting a band like the Royal Mountain Band on a much larger one than that on which they appeared would have done more to fire up a large crowd than Ms. Wainwright was able to do. The Royal Mountaineers began their set to a mostly empty stage which quickly filled after a song or two. RMB is somewhat reminiscent of The Band, with unpretentious and uncontrived songwriting delivered with vein-busting harmonies and royal organs. They are certainly not reinventing the wheel, nor will they attest to doing so. There are no Radiohead-esque antics and frivolous sound experimentations; the Royal Mountain Band is just out to make a better wheel, and in the process, better rock n’ roll. To their own detriment, they are both ahead of and behind the times. By not playing up to music fans hungry for the cute and clever, it’s true they may be alienating themselves from achieving the popularity of tweedle-beep and bippety-boop-look-how-fucking-cute-i-am-cuz-i’m-playing-a-casio bands, but in avoiding these needle-in-the eye painful trends and recognizing them for what they are (plastic throwbacks to snyth-pop 80’s music that everyone who actually remembers the 80’s will tell you it was shit), and by sticking to their rock guns and sludging through the musical vacuum of today’s music, the Royal Mountain Band may in fact be carving out a path they will get to enjoy walking for years to come. This is basically a big band for a big stage, not to be tucked away in the backwoods of the festival grounds, a point one can only hope will not be lost on future festival organizers. No offense to Martha Wainwright, I enjoy your slow jams, just don’t expect me to stand in the middle of a field listening to them.
Besnard Lakes
Okay so after overcoming some sound problems the Besnard Lakes did what the Besnard lakes do best, and that is deliver their custom brand of psychedelic rock to the heavy handed and wisely timed rhythms of their drummer. We’d been underfed and dehydrated and dealing with the evergrowing crowed required hallucinogenic nutrition. The earlier show of Au Revoir Simone was still haunting us, like that time I stepped in water with fresh socks. Paramedics had been a plenty, providing oxygen to fans after ARS has essentially sucked the life out of the park. The leaves were white. It wasn’t until the Besnards geared up for sound that the stage among the woods took on a life of its own. It’s a hard blend to place but it’s a fine blend regardless and these days there’s a fine line between original and just plain hack. There are tender vocals to accompany the heavy set rhythms that the Besnards provide, evocative of the early days of psychedelic rock but with a more disciplined approach to the final product.
MIA It’s not that political music is dead, it’s just that people are too hip for the pedantic, and if sticking flowers in your hair and waving a placard while listening to acoustic guitars and whiney singers is your thing, then it’s time to wise up because it’s going to take a little muscle to get things done and just a few windows are gonna have to get broke if you want things to change. MIA singlehandedly car-bombed the entire festival leaving fans bloody with appreciation. The beats are filthy, filthy in the way eating from a ditch in a rainstorm and then soaking in your own excrement is filthy. Couple that with a sidekick MC with an ass like a superhero and hips to make Shakira question her own honesty and you’ve got two ingredients for what can be a great dance show. But what separates MIA from the pile of beat-heavy dance outfits beneath her is the political vigour which she brings to her tracks and the ferocity with which she delivers them.You say you want a revolution? Well novice, you can stick all the flowers you want to in your hair and you could get nowhere, or you could plug in the M.I.A. and shake a few asses on the way to the frontlines. The only downside of this show was perhaps M.I.A. inviting throngs of uber-hip indie kids take the stage to “dance”. It reminded me of a quote by Jamaican born writer, Michelle Cliff and her observation of white vacationers listening to Bob Marley, dancing to the music but not listening to the words. It was only into MIA’s first track that I lost Dandy. When she finally emerged, she was armed with an AK, in hot silver shorts and face paint depicting a sawed-off. It was…well…it was love.I asked her where she was going, and she shook her head. “You should know, fingers, you should know.” She laced up her fins, and brought the snorkel to her mouth, then disappeared into the crowd. She was off to find Fong. This much was clear, but whether she was out for blood or out to protect him, it was murky. It’s been days since the show and so far police reports show nothing of dead geniuses or the bodies of musical revolutionaries in hot pants and AK’s.
Blonde Redhead
After having been denied twice by the Blonde Redhead people for passes to cover their show, we decided to take our perch on the grassy knoll next to the ghost of Lee Harvey Oswald and let them score the soundtrack of our sunny protest as we non-reviewed the show. That said, sitting on the grass on a day as nice as this had never sounded as good as this and to their blonde credit they had amassed the largest crowd of the day. Lee Harvey whispered in our ear that they were sure to be a hit. So what did they sound like? You could ask them but they would probably deny you too or just say something like, Da na na na na na na na na na Da na na na na na na NEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE and you’d be all, “Fuck ya!”
Stars
It couldn’t have been a nicer day. We took our beers on the hill, smoked our cigarettes and waited for the band. We went into the crowd and there s/he was. Our eyes met. We fell in love. Then there was this other guy. Or was it a girl? Doesn’t matter. It was just this thing on the side, and it never meant anything. Not really. Not at first. Then things got stale. Things got complicated. The breakup.The makeup. The shakes. The wobbly presence of bobby pins and the smell of burnt hair in the morning. We all went our separate ways by the last song, dying to have it all back for one more night. We threw up at the beer tent, and saw our reflection along the matter of our entrails. The sun went down and that was the end of us but the Stars sang us there from beginning to end.
Feist
Media press passes at festivals permit copious volume of beer at the cost of one’s personal merit’s and credibility alone. Knowing full well there would be a fire and a shitstorm of post-festival fallout, police investigations and supreme court challenges, granted access to said booty, it was best to choose Jamaica. As for the Feist show, it is more than likely she would not care what we had to say about her, good or bad. She has weathered her way through what can be a destructive industry and she has good enough taste in hats to shield her from any undeserved criticism from fans, journalists, and the better company of douche bags. I don’t know what to say about this show, but I will say this: I like her. She’s good. Just go see her. Whether in a white Monte Cristi hat or a white pantsuit, she will likely not disappoint. Unfortunately for Feist, she was upstaged by the sassy girl working the Jamaican food stand who kept a tighter ship than Columbus. It was an honour to watch her work, to hold court, to watch her sally forth through Afrobytes and I hope she marries a man as good as Tuba Gooding Jr. (A.K.A. find out for yourself) who lit up the stage last night at The Roots show and I hope she becomes president. We told her this, but she just smiled, and we knew then at that moment the meaning of potential. Oh, and speaking of potential, getting shit-tanked backstage with music peeps might be fun and wearing the little plastic pass around one’s neck might make you look important, but it doesn’t excuse being creepy and it will never make you a better person.