Day 2 started a bit crazy. First Ian rang me up at like 1 in the morning when I had already gotten back home from Day 1 and was sleeping, and he was still waiting for the ferry. What an ass, but apparently his friends bailed for Day 2 and he wanted to see if I was still up for Day 2 and to meet up. Then, after I had actually woken up, Jeb said that he was sick and couldn’t make it either, so I scrambled around to find someone else. I had talked to Chard earlier the week about going, but Massive Attack backing out was a deal breaker. But he was a good sport and came anyways.

So something like five hours after we started organizing, some lunch and bubble tea later, we made it down to the Islands. We headed to straight for the main stage without grabbing any freebies (well I was handed another beachball), hopefully in time to catch Thrice. It was only 3:30, which should have been in the middle of their set, so we were kind of confused why they were setting up the stage and the board said that Wolfmother was coming up next. Apparently they had revamped the schedule for some reason, probably to avoid the debacle that happened with the Flaming Lips yesterday. On the plus side, Broken Social Scene was scheduled for an 1:15 set.

We sat around until they were ready and stood for Wolfmother. Then walked around so Ian could grab some food and came back to stand for Sam Roberts. I never really got into his music, but was apparently pretty popular with the crowd. I thought he would be more energetic live, but neither him nor the crowd really seemed that way. Maybe it was my earplugs.

I brought my ultra-zoom camera today to take some pictures, and although I wasn’t really successful it wasn’t for a lack of trying. We were in a bad spot for Sam Roberts as there were a lot of tall heads in my way. So after they were done, I dragged everyone up through the mass of people closer to the front. This sucked, because basically there was no room to move and we had to stand around while The Strokes setup.

They actually were setup rather quickly and the sound check was fast. After a bit, Sir Richard Branson rode out on a Harley, said like 2 sentences and then rode off away. Now, the only problem was that the band themselves were 30 minutes late for no reason, and they didn’t even mention the fact that they kept everyone waiting. This was the band that I had really wanted to see at VFest, I went sans-earplugs, was right on the edge of a mosh pit and it was craazy. The Strokes were really tight, sounded like their CD but of course, better in real life! I took a lot of photos, but because they were smoking up for 30 minutes, I didn’t get the awesome sunset light. By the end of the set, the sun had gone down, and with no spotlight on them, the whole moody “I can only see your silhouette” look fit them really well.

What did they plan? My memory is foggy (must be all the marijuana smoke) but it was something like this in somewhat this order:

1. Is This It?,
2. Red Light,
3. Heart In A Cage,
4. Someday,
5. You Only Live Once,
6. NYC Cops,
7. 12:51,
8. Last Nite,
9. Killing Lies,
10. Hard To Explain,
11. What Ever Happened,
12. Ask Me Anything,
13. Ize of the World (Ahh such a good song),
14. Barely Legal (Casablancas messed up the words in this and laughed),
15. Reptilia

Awesome set, a lot of favorites although the crowd was wondering what happened to Juicebox and I would have loved to hear You Talk Way Too Much or Meet Me In The Bathroom.

After that, surprisingly none of us wanted to stay for the Raconteurs. We figured we would be the only 3 people at the Futureshop stage, but when we tried to cross the tiny bridge connecting the close side of the two islands, we quickly realized that was not going to happen. The Strokes and Zero 7 overlapped by 10 minutes, and given that The Strokes were 30 minutes late, we stopped for a washroom break, and had to line up to cross the bridge, it would have been lucky if we made it there before the end of their set. Surprisingly, they were still setting up and we scored ample standing room in front of the retarded Futureshop VIP section (so Ian got his VIP wristband for nothing).

Then we waited for actually quite awhile because they were still setting up their equipment. I was wondering what Zero 7 would be like because when I looked up their bios awhile back, it was just two guys on synths. They had a huge setup, drums, piano, guitars, lead singer, + the two guys. The crowd was also as Ian puts it, “mature and British”, it was indeed an older crowd with no teeny boppers. There wasn’t even a mash of people up front, it was very civilized and appreciative. The latter was important because when they started, there ended up being no power for the Bass and electronics. So they juggled around their set and played some acoustic stuff. Jose of Jose Gonzales (I believe) was also there providing vocals and guitar support.

Their performance was incredibly tight. With 6 people playing together, they were in perfect sync without having to take cues from each other; the songs were very polished and the sound with my ear plugs on was full and rich. Even with their problems and the lack of playing In The Waiting Line, we came away impressed and in awe. Probably the sleeper hit of the festival, considering the intimate environment we were in.

Afterwards, we made the long trek back to the main stage. We tried going through the official way, but they had fenced it off for people going back to the ferry. On the plus side, we picked up a sampler of Axe deO and spray. Good for the smelly air starting to blow over the lake. So we walked all the way back around, and we were really confused because everyone was leaving! We were thinking that since we had to wait awhile before Zero 7 came on to play the hour long set, maybe we missed both the Raconteurs and Broken Social Scene; but it was only 10PM! To add to our confusion, Ian asked a passerby if BSS had played and they said yeah, and then some other people going the opposite direction were wondering why there were so many people going in our direction??

Anyways, as we made it to the main stage, BSS started playing with their 2 trombones, trumpet, sax, 5 guitarists, 1 violinist and 2 drum-kits. We made our way to the middle of the crowd, and again it was mostly the hipsters remaining. I’ve never really listened to BSS so I didn’t recognize anything aside from Shorelines which they played as their 3^rd song. Feist came out to the vocals on that track which was pretty cool. Later on, Feist, Emily Haines from Metric and the lead singer from Stars came out to sing another song. Does BSS really need 3 lead female vocalists in addition to their already overwhelming number of band members? Anyways I digress. We quickly left before the last song, which ended up being an audience vote, and caught the first ferry we saw. After a hot dog it was back home and an end to a fun but tiring weekend.

Here’s a link to a much shorter review from the Toronto Star, including a hilarious quote which spells MSTRKFT as MSTERCRFT.

Posted by Kevin in Blogs Tags: concerts, diary, virgin