Concert Reviews

Virgin Festival B.C. '09, Day 1
At Deer Lake Park on Saturday, July 25

There are a couple of equally plausible explanations for the freakish turn of events that took place at Burnaby's Deer Lake Park on Saturday. The first and most likely one is that God has a major problem with the British Columbia edition of Virgin Festival.

Remember two years ago, when the inaugural V Fest set up its sound boards at Thunderbird Stadium? If you don't, let's just say that the day looked like the monsoon season in Laos, only colder, wetter, and decidedly more miserable. This year seemed as if it would be an entirely different experience, with things starting out hotter than a Texas redneck's pistol on the Fourth of July. So what happened at about the halfway mark of the afternoon? Well, inexplicably—given that the sky was mostly a cotton-candy blue—it started spitting in the middle of a ragingly cacophonic set by Mt. St. Helens Vietnam Band.

And it turned out that was just a warm-up. Even though Vancouver has been drier than the Nevada desert this summer, a lightning storm showed up on the horizon just as Spinnerette was taking the stage. And by storm, we're talking something you see in a horror movie right before everyone dies.

Thirty minutes later, organizers pulled the plug, leaving the day's headliners, the Roots, realizing they were going to get paid without playing a note.

Shutting things down was the right decision considering you could not only smell the ozone in the air 10 minutes later, but, as sweet baby Jesus is my witness, actually feel the heat from one of the strikes. As security evacuated the field, the skies opened up like the apocalypse. If God's message was open to interpretation with the first edition of Virgin Festival B.C., this time it was crystal clear.

But before all hell broke loose, the day was pretty much a brilliant one, provided that you remembered to bring the SPF 50 sunscreen. Taking home the not-quite-right-in-the-head award was Mute Math singer Paul Meany, if only because he showed up in a dandified suit jacket that Chris Martin would have coveted.

Previously trafficking in a brand of electro-chilled computer-programmer new wave, the four-piece seems to have developed a fascination with Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon. But as entrancing as the spacey “Chaos” was, the best moment of the set came when Meany dived into the crowd, only to emerge two minutes later with a peeved-sounding message: “Next time don't touch my balls.”

Elizabeth has—perhaps not surprisingly—improved immensely since the first time I saw it battling things out in the Shindig finals at the Railway Club. A Mohawked dude sporting retro-chequered shorts and an obviously-into-it chick in a blue-satin jump suit did their best to one-up each other in the interpretative-dance sweepstakes, as the band gave every indication it's outgrown all the early Joy Division comparisons. The beyond-postpunk guitar violence unleashed by Reggie Gill and Davor Katinic was good. The efforts of Rickenbacker-slinging bassist Rory O'Sullivan were totally great.

And speaking of great, major props go to whoever decided to add a surreal touch to Virgin Festival this year. It's a toss-up as to which was cooler (or, if you were stoned, more terrifying): the four dancing shrubs, which boogied their way around the site like escapees from In the Night Garden, or the straight-out-of-a-Venice-costume-ball stiltwalkers, who were the day's most tireless movers and shakers.

K-os kicked off his set by suggesting the crowd's members throw their hands in the air and wave 'em around like they just don't care, which is right up there with “Helloooooo, Vannnnncouvvvver” on the originality front. He would atone for that, however, with an admirably adventurous, live-instrument-based performance that worked in snippets of everything from Led Zeppelin's “Stairway to Heaven” to Black Sabbath's “Iron Man”. (The latter sequence thrilled the shit out of the father of three camped out in front of the sound board with his wife and tweenage offspring. He probably wouldn't have known Grandmaster Flash from Flash Bastard, but the second k-os and his band started channelling Ozzy and company, he was—to the horror of his sprogs—on his feet and givin' 'er on air guitar like Tony Iommi circa 1970.)

The beauty of k-os is that, somewhere, the Toronto-spawned b-boy we first knew and loved seems to have—based solely on “Valhalla”—become fascinated with a whole shit-mix of styles, the sounds of Soweto being front and centre. Uplifting only begins to describe things.

Mt. St. Helens Vietnam Band was about a million times more hard-hitting live than on record, and only partially because of the efforts of 14-year-old drummer Marshall Verdoes. The Seattle-based quintet brought its exhilarating strain of punky art-pop with more ferociousness than any act on the bill.

Broken Social Scene, on the other hand, proved the day's most impressive spectacle, with what seemed like a cast of 30-or-so members wandering on and off the stage like busboys in a chain restaurant. As seamless as the collective was on locked-and-loaded indie-rock jams such as “Fire Eye'd Boy”, its grandest accomplishment was incorporating four horn players without sounding like the third coming of Less Than Jake.

The message of Montreal post-math rockers Plants and Animals was, at times brilliantly, that Wolf Parade isn't the only hipster-sanctioned, off-kilter game in its hometown. Our Lady Peace would, against long odds, do the best job of making a connection with the 5,000-plus crowd. Singer Raine Maida might be the unfortunate owner of a gratingly whiney voice, and has fashion sense that's suspect at best (dude, no one but Iggy Pop looks good in a leather vest), but he at least had everyone singing along with “Superman's Dead” two songs in.

Too bad he spent the kick-off number screeching into a mike that, unbeknownst to him, wasn't working. That was made doubly hysterical by the fact he was making the pained faces of a man who'd just shotgunned a bottle of Professor Phardtpounders Colon Cleaner hot sauce.

Things came to an inglorious end with a limp performance from Brody Dalle's new project Spinnerette. Seriously, lady, you gave up the Distillers for an edgeless exercise in toothless stoner-pop? Mercifully, the set was cut short by the lightning. Which brings us back to the weather and what happened to a day that was supposed to be nothing but sunburns and heat stroke. As already stated, explanation number one is that God hates the British Columbia version of Virgin Fest.

A second and more likely theory, though, was provided by a loaded, shaved-bald loogan caught in the mass exodus. As the lightning crashed all around, and the rain pelted down in grey sheets, he saw fit to shriek, “Mother Nature is a real fucking cunt!”

At that particular moment, you didn't have to be a Virgin Festival organizer to disagree.