Metal Lungies

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Another month, another Virgin Festival. It took us more than a week to recover from the madness that was Virgin Festival 2007 in Toronto (do NOT call it T-Dot as we learned), Canada. We are certain a good part of the 40,000 attendees are still riding that euphoric high of dope music (not the dope!) on four stages.

DAY 1.

Before we even got ferried over to the freaking spacious Toronto Island where the festival was held, the media was laced up with endless supply of breakfast food and those oh-so trendy reusable bags.. aniiiice. This gave us a few moments to reflect about what I was going to encounter, and how unique it is. What other festival organizer other than Virgin puts on music festivals that feature so many damn good artists? Very few.  Even though some may be turned off by the commercialization of such festivals, we don’t view that as a big deal, in the end a big corporation like a Virgin/Virgin Mobile are the only ones who have the resources and expertise to execute an event of this caliber. With an agenda of donating $100,000 to charity, and extensive plans to ensure the concert leaves no environmental footprint, you don’t get a money thirsty vibe ala Woodstock 99. Plus, more than 3 million people voted in the contest to book the band, Crowned King, you wouldn’t get that many people involved if the organizers weren’t doing something right.

As soon as we arrived at the Island we noticed a camera crew walking alongside us on a tour – Naked News, was in the building, where the news is a priority but not the first. When we finished our tour of the grounds, I decided to test drive one of the porta-potties.. I think I may be a little slow, because I never realized that there is a urinal on the side..and there was a sticker (only in this one portapotty) that said flush prior to using, and flush after using, I fidgeted with some buttons only to release toilet paper, in the end finding no way to flush, was this a hoax? are there porta-potties that flush?

The first band that we checked out was Dragonette who played on the 2nd smaller stage. As we approached the stage we saw to-the-beat dancing by Martina Sorbara. They jammed out so much that there was broken bass only a few songs in, and proclamation by Martina that "I smell like rotting livestock". Dragonette was a good way to kick off the weekends music. If you like LCD Soundsystem, you will find Dragonette electronic-pop offerings very similar, just mix in some Police influence.

Paolo Nutini sounded great as we caught him wrapping up his set with everyone singing along to ‘Jenny Don’t Be Hasty’.

Next on the main stage was K-OS, who is the type of MC who performs with a band and DJ (ie, he puts effort into his live performance). K-OS pulled of a very musical hip hop set working in piano and guitar riffs into Crabbuckit. This was followed by some unnecessary guitar playing K-OS which didn’t add anything, rather acting as unpleasant distraction. All of this was quickly forgotten when ‘Sunday Morning’ came.  When K-OS left the stage, the set seemed pretty short, leaving us to want more.

 

The next act we checked out was M.I.A., the queen of all hipsters. We were curious to see how she would fare playing on a huge main stage rather than a more intimate club or tent setting (In Baltimore, we missed her but, she was relegated to Dance Tent duty, albeit a much larger one than the one in Toronto).  M.I.A. started off sounding good, but the music struggled to translate to such a large venue with most concertgoers neglecting to dance and choosing to stand still as rock. M.I.A. solved all the above problem by getting more than a 100 kids on stage with her to dance, this woke up everyone in the vicinity. Even members of the media who snoozing in the media-tent scrambled to take pictures of the craziness going on stage. K-OS was even shown on the big monitor being in the eye of the impromptu dance party. During this I bet security was pretty anxious. After witnessing the madness on stage Gangalang came off as a relaxed end to an impressive performance.

Next came Kid Koala, who was a last minute replacement for the white devils #1 fan, Amy Winehouse. With Ms. Winehouse failing to impress in Baltimore, we were pretty geeked to see some turntablisim from Kid Koala. He kicked off playing stuff of what KK called his "new" album Your Mom’s Favorite DJ (it came out last October). Unfortunately, being on a main stage didn’t benefit KK at all, more than half of the people fled after M.I.A.’s set and the end result was people standing still while KK scratched it up on the turntables. That’s not to say KK didn’t try to get the crowd hyped up, he used cue cards for people to scream Hell Yeah. During the set KK repeatedly apologized for his vinyl warping in the heat. In the end, due to the heat KK had to cut his set short, concluding a disappointing set, the factors of which were pretty much out of KK’s hands. If you get a chance do it right and see the man in a club.

Arctic Monkeys sounded great live. Their light rock sound was the perfect soundtrack for a mid-day afternoon. My favorite songs they did were San Francisco & What Do You Know.

 

Mute Math was a quartette was a thing of beauty. I went to check em out based on the recommendation of a friend, and they blew me away. Musically and visually their live show was very impressive. They creatively employed things like a chair like a musical triangle and saxophones to build up the epic tension of their songs. The whole band exemplifying raw energy, I didn’t want it to end. As soon, as I came home from Toronto, I started to look at their tour schedule to see when I can catch them live again. Favorite song of the night: Control.

Bjork.. Visually very interesting, we didn’t know much of her music so being dead tired and the hotel being sorta far off, we hit the road after about 2 songs.

Day 2

The weather on this day wasn’t looking so hot, there was no sun in sight and every one was wearing hoodies. This wouldn’t last long though as the sun would come out later.

The first band we saw of the day was Louis XIV. They were a good selection to open up, even though I’ve listened to their stuff and I’m not a huge fan or anything. Some people might hate me for this but I think they sound like a better version of Jet + a violin.

The Stars & Metric huge bands in Canada, people seem to really like them though. I missed most of their sets to hang out at the Bacardi Tent though, sorry readers. I did catch Metric do Rogue Music as well a few other songs off their new album.

The Killers were the single band we wanted to see the most, and they rocked out! This was one of their last tour stops in support of Sam’s Town, so the band had clearly perfected their set. All of their hits from Mr. Bright Eyes to When You Were Young sounded damn near prefect.

 

 

Interpol

The Smashing Pumpkins were one of the highlights I was looking forward to the most, and I missed seeing them at Baltimore. Maybe I should’ve missed them here too. Watching them was a complete snoozefest.

In the end the only real let down was missing out on Blonde Redhead, as from all accounts they were fantastic, oh well.

 

Misc notes:

• Geez, Toronto is a hipster haven, we saw more Rayban Wayfarers than I saw pairs of eyes.
• $100 for a Smashing Pumpkins hoodie? $10 more an XL??!
• A man wearing a “I love big dumps shirt”-Instant class

 

• The mandatory “Lets go Leafs” chant was done by the crowd
• The Bacardi Tent showed a lot of potential, we just wish more people checked it out, but it seemed like a hassle that people didn’t want to go through the gated entry.
• Speaking of gates.. people in Canadian like alcohol so much they are willing to give up a good view of the concert in order to have the privilege of consuming in the place they call beer gardens (I was surprised to find out that Beer doesn’t actually bloom or grow here). The fence made these folks seems the lepers of the festival, the undesirables if you will.
• Daughters of some media folk had a fierce showdown of volleyball over the fence that separated the media and the beer gardens.

• TorontoIndie likes Britney Spears.
• The Killers don’t allow photography?

 

Last, but not least, a HUGE and sincere thank you to everyone who organized the event and the fellow media who we shared many a free snacks with. Chris Baines (possibly the nicest English man ever?), Erica Faltous, Andrew Bridge, Nate Rosenberg, Martin Rios, Brad, Lisa, Becky from Bacardi, Murtz (a legend in the making, no last name needed!), The Postage Stamps, and Lidia of TorontoIndie If we forgot you, blame it on the sleep deprivation!

PS- If you’ve been bummed out by all the Virgin Festivals being too far away from where you live, fret not, a little birdie told me that based on the success they had this year are going to be adding a bunch (see: double) more locations in North America for next year (as well as being back in Toronto in 2008).

Oh yeah, don’t forget to FLICK OFF!

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