Travellin' - Day Four

Or Osheaga, Day One.

Our group of six meek music fans descended upon the Osheaga Music & Arts Festival site with a strict itinerary, a mass of digital cameras, and several backpacks of food and drink – including two huge containers of Gatorade that (unbeknownst to us) wasn’t permitted… so we all had a pre-bag-check Gatorade chugging exercise, which left us sufficiently hydrated for a full-length soccer match. Or a full day sweating it out in the baking heat of the nearly shade-less Parc Drapeau.

The main stage setup consisted of two rather huge adjacent stages overlooking a sandy dust bowl, a series of vending tents, and a grassy hill lined with trees – some 800m from the stages. The secondary stages were set up in the much more desirable treed areas of the park – away from the sand and dust devils and punishment from above. Our day was spent meandering between our hideout amongst the trees at the main stage, to the much more attractive green spaces of the secondary stages. Oh, and the bathroom “party potty” lineups…

And now, the synopsis - complete with blog-standard distant blurry festival pics (where I managed to get them)…

Apostle of Hustle. Of Broken Social Scene. Not your average guitar player. Lots of interesting riffs and percussion – including something I’ll refer to as the “wooden snare box seat drum”, which would appear a few times over the course of the day. This was an impressive show and a good way to start the day. Wish the show was longer. Thumbs way up…

Rahzel. Of The Roots. Human sound machine - kinda like that guy from the Police Academy movies as Drew would point out. This set started very promising, but soon devolved into a patience-testing stand-up routine and “name that tune” type performance, with Rahzel mimicking 40 seconds of a popular hip-hop beat in between seemingly eternal stretches of stage banter. The first misstep of the day…

Thunderheist. Montreal hip-hop. Four-out-of-six concert-goers agree – this was the performance of the day. A group of randomly selected females from the audience danced and snapped pictures onstage while a skinny white-dude DJ spun electroclash beats and a female MC with the personality of Dave Chappelle-as-Rick James spat catchy (if not redundant) raps (e.g.) “jerk it, jerk it, dust it off and jerk it!” and “wipe your nose Freddy, Freddy wipe your nose!”. Seemingly unprepared for this performance, the duo were incompetent to the point of endearment (endearing?). It felt like we were watching a performance in someone’s basement, and it was wicked fun. Check their Myspace, which doesn’t begin to do justice to their performance…

The Clientele. Great picnic music. Nice and mellow and…nice. We laid in the shade and watched these guys play while the wind shook the leaves and the clouds raced across the sky. Another highlight of the weekend…

Distractions – there were lots…

Blonde Redhead. Back at the main stage, we were all looking forward to these guys. Unfortunately, the blinding sunlight and dust storm conditions weren’t conducive to a great concert experience. Regardless, with samples upon samples upon echo effects and backing vocal tracks and great thrashing guitars, they moved me enough to buy a T-shirt (that may very well be a girlie tee)…

Stars. And out come the cell phones. A solid performance nearly spoiled by pockets of noisy chatting girls. Why, why, why pay all this money to go to a concert only to talk over the music? Anger. Anyhow, Stars were tight. Fun. They played the hits and I enjoyed them, begrudgingly, despite the ignorance. Torquil Campbell – that’s the guy singer – is kind of intense, in a Johnny Rotten with a sense of humour kind of way. Actually, he’s on CBC Radio right now, hijacking the mic from Jian (douchebag) - hilarity!

Feist. A lot of hype for Feist before this show. I was nervous that she would suffer the same problem as Stars and be drowned out by the gaggles of cell phone girls. Things started out promising with a few of her more raucous numbers, When I Was A Young Girl and My Moon My Man, but soon she slowed things up, and subsequently lost the crowd. She still sounded great mind you - and did redeem herself later with (my fave) 1, 2, 3, 4 – just maybe not the most appropriate setlist for the main stage of a big rock show. I’m split on this performance, but did enjoy watching the stoned chicky pass out in front of us…twice…

Damien Rice. Surprisingly loud. Pretty good. Lots of swearing…

Explosions In The Sky. The remaining two-out-of-six concert-goers agree – including me – this was the performance of the day. Loud. Beautiful. Intense. Repeat. The beauty and awesomeness of this performance cannot be overstated – it left all of Montreal weeping with joy. The remainder of the Osheaga acts didn’t stand a chance…

The Smashing Pumpkins. With goofy outfits and a lightshow lifted from Parliament/Funkadelic, I might have enjoyed the Pumpkins more had it been earlier in the day, when I wasn’t so dry and my back so sore. That said, an acoustic version of 1979 had the crowd singing along and everyone in our troupe reminiscing of the 90s. Thumbs down for the new stuff though, and we took off early to beat the rush to the Metro...