Oh British Columbia, the beautiful left coast of Canada. Where the tiny town of Squamish lies quietly nestled in between Vancouver and Whistler. Not seeing much action for most of the year, other than people checking out the mining museum and bathroom breaks on the way to Whistler. That is until Virgin schedules a music festival there and thousands of hipsters descend upon the tiny town for 2 days of beautiful music and mayhem. Thus Live at Squamish was born.
Quite frankly, I was more pumped about being in the mountains than about any of the bands playing. However, a combination of Kokanee, Pulled Bison and nostalgia made it worth the trek.
Two headliners
Two bands I’d never seen
Two festival highlights
1. Weezer
For some reason I wasn’t that excited to see Weezer, so it was a nice surprise when they absolutely rocked live. Talk about Nostalgia, Weezer was huge when I was in high school, which means that I knew just about every song.
You’ve got to hand it to Weezer’s ever-oddball front man, Rivers Cuomo for always being consistent – wearing his signature collared shirt with sweater on top. He jumped around on stage with boundless energy singing classics like Buddy Holly, Island in the Sun, Say it Ain’t So, The Sweater Song, My Name is Jonas, We Are All on Drugs and many more. Everyone knew the words. Everyone sang. It was amazing.
I’ve heard murmurs of The Weezer Cruise, a music festival…ON A BOAT. If you can, GO! It’s bound to be awesome, with accompanying acts such as: Dinosaur Jr., J Mascis, Sebadoh, Wavves and a bunch more. Sounds pretty epic.
2. Girl Talk
After seeing him at the festival, I still honestly don’t know what Girl Talk does at his live shows other than press play on his iTunes playlist and proceed to remove layers of clothing as the concert progresses. However, since he’s the king of generation-Y-pleasing mash-ups, this was one amazing dance party that started with audience members dancing on the stage and ended with confetti cannons.
Other festival honourable mentions include Jon Butler Trio, Stars and the Emily Haines/James Shaw acoustic show.
As far as music festivals go, Canada doesn’t have many. Squamish, however was well organized, beautiful and scored a decent bill of bands! See you next year!
