Osheaga Festival 2006
Osheaga is a brand new large-scale outdoor music festival in Montreal. I was fortunate enough to catch some incredible shows....
Dinosaur Jr.
I arrived at the first year of Montreal's Osheaga music festival at Parc Jean Drapeau – site of Expo 67 – just in time to see Dinosaur Jr. playing a great set. It was my first time ever seeing Dinosaur Jr, I was too cheap or broke to catch them when they did their first reunion tour. So I was pretty excited, having been a huge fan of them back in the day.
Lou actually looked like he was having quite a bit of fun and he even sang on a few songs including at least one from the first album. J looked like a grumpy old catatonic but his playing was awesome - lots of awesome distorted wah guitar leads. As a band they sounded great and it was a great pleasure to finally see them live.
Brazilian Girls
The next show of mention for me was The Brazilian Girls who were playing as part of the MEG festival stage. Sabina Sciubba was so, so sexy and the band sounded way more intense live than their super-slick mellow album would have suggested. Sabina wore a white face mask which she did not remove at all, but at some point during the set she began to adorn the mask with makeup to suggest lips and eyes, then blew the audience kisses. She led the audience through a particularly saucy call-and-response about penises and vaginas on "Pussy Pussy Pussy Marijuana". This is a great band on album and even better live. Highly recommend checking them out any chance you get.
Sonic Youth
The last show of the night on the Osheaga festival grounds was Sonic Youth. Absolutely incredible to see them - my first them seeing them live too. They kicked ass! Kim Gordon spent a portion of the show as their avant-garde love-in go-go girl dancing and twirling. Their set featured lots of highly accessible melodic songs including a couple of golden oldies from the early 80s.
Ghislain Poirier, Ellen Allien & Apparat
Next I headed to the Osheaga/MEG after party at Metropolis in time to catch Motormark. I found them so ridiculous that I went back outside to wait it out. Came back in to catch Feadz & Uffie which was a bit like Peaches - sexy raps with DJ beats. Ghislain Poirier blew the roof of the place with a live drummer and huge tracks like "Dem Nah Like Me" which is out on 12". Finally Ellen Allien & Apparat played one of the greatest shows I have ever ever seen. They were absolutely incredible, killer tracks and surprisingly performative considering it's laptop music. Ellen Allien looked great in sexy clothes that are no doubt from her own new clothing line. Checking out their new CD, Orchestra of Bubbles is absolutely essential.
After not getting to sleep til 5am the previous night, I didn't have the energy to go back the next day in the cold dampness - the only band I was really dying to see was Lady Sovereign anyway. It will be interesting to see how Osheaga developes. This was their first year, it's a really nice location but the food and drinks were overpriced and the lineup of bands was not as interesting as it could have been. Would be nice to see less mainstream stuff - maybe if they had a more experimental stage with black metal and noise and sludge/drone/doom and just more left-of-field stuff in general would be awesome. But I can't complain, got to see some wonderful bands in a beautiful setting and what more could you ask for ona Labor Day weekend except sunshine!
