Thursday, July 9, 2009

As I stepped off the bus at Lebreton Flats just before 6 PM on the opening day of the festival, fat rain drops were cascading on the pavement around me. I ducked into a nearby shelter as the skies opened up for over 15 minutes of torrential downpour.

As the skies cleared, the sun poked out over the festival grounds, and I took that as a good sign. I tucked around the back of the festival grounds, and slithered up to the media area and got my envelope full of tickets, and a yellow piece of paper for photo access. Journalism!

I was starving, so I grabbed some fairly tasty fries as I wandered around checking out the festival grounds before any music even started. The on again/off again rain throughout the day had created huge mud areas that were navigable when the sun was out, but became nasty surprises once the star went down. The festival's layout hasn't changed since last year, but that's a good thing. They've got the layout figured out pretty well by now.



Amanda Rheaume was the first to take the stage shortly after 6, and she was a disappointment. I had no expectations, but her variety of bland pop rock was a bore. The band was going through the motions, having fun on a big stage, but it wasn't nearly enough to start the festival with any kind of excitement.



I wandered over to the Subway stage where Tympanic were entertaining a relatively small crowd with their Sublime influenced funk/ska. Troy Lajambe is a capable front man, getting the audience into the show through callbacks, and just having a blast himself. Charity Corbett on saxophone was the band's soul element, and Murray Matheson on Bass was ridiculously funky (and adept).


I originally had plans to see Blue King Brown, but a friend I was with really wanted to get close for the Black Keys, so we made a sacrifice in hopes of a good show.


Holy Fuck(they're playing tonight), did the boys come through. Hailing from Akron Ohio, The Black Keys play an extremely heavy variation of the Blues that threatens to tear the earth into pieces.


Patrick Carney will probably never be labeled a virtuoso on the drums, but he doesn't give a fuck, and he'll force the skins into submission instead. Countless sticks were shattered throughout the set, with none of the fans agreeing on exactly how many. I bumped into a kid on the bus ride home who showed me the one he caught with a huge shit-eating grin.


Dan Auerbach was something special. From now on when someone mistakenly laments the loss of "real" rock & roll, I can point them in his Dan's direction. The feeling that tears through that Gibson was a force. Channeling both Jack White and Jimmy Page, Auerbach is calm and even stoic on stage, but the noise that erupts every time he touches a string would move a nun to heathenism, given the opportunity. To use the parlance of our times, he's disgusting.


To be entirely honest I was a newcomer to the band, I don't own any albums, and I had only started listening to them a week or two before the show even started, mostly through videos on youtube. I'm not a fan of the word converted, but it does hold some water in this situation. I just ordered Attack & Release on Vinyl, because I don't think this variety of aural assault belongs on wussy plastic discs. It belongs on vinyl, right next to my Zeppelin and Sabbath albums.



Jeff Beck took to the main stage when the Keys finished up, and it was quickly clear that he had not updated his sound since about 1986. The entire irony movement of the 90's was lost on him, as he went through the motions for his fans. The amount of people watching was staggering, but our little posse decided to move on.

Van Der Graff Generator was playing on the Subway Stage, and it was evident that a high dose of a hallucinogen was required for enjoyment. I didn't have anything on me, so we moved on to Eric Lindell, who was pumping out generic blues on the Hard Rock Cafe stage. After a song, we gave it our last shot with the Black Sheep Stage, where we discovered Sergent Garcia.


Hailing from France, this eleven-piece band had just about every instrument imaginable on stage, and they were all in use. The front man bounced back and forth on stage, switching between singing and rapping in what I think was Spanish. The whole band had an incredible amount of energy, and the crowd responded in kind. When he said jump, they jumped, and when he said dance, they danced. His English was extremely limited, but he could get across what each song was supposed to be about.


They slowed it down as they moved closer to 11, and we shuffled out about 10 minutes early, to try and beat the rush back to the bus station.

In comparison to last year's opening with the excellent, but out of place TV on the Radio, and the unbelievably boring Tragically Hip(I love the Hip..but c'mon, they play here constantly), 2009 is off to an excellent start.

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