The main stage area was actually really well managed. It helped that they had two stages set up, so while one act was playing, the next one was setting up on the other stage so there was no more than a few minutes switchover between acts. There were two other stages, the Scene des Arbres (nice small stage surrounded by trees) and the Scene MEG (a slightly bigger stage with a good open field). I spent quite a bit of time at those two as well. After catching some of Starsailor as I got there, and then some of Shoot the Moon, I caught the last half of a really cool "anti-folk" band from Sweden called Herman Düne.
They do this great kind of matter-of-factly folk narrative type thing that I really can't explain very well, but it was pretty awesome. I caught most of Tokyo Police Club at the Trees stage, and then headed back to the main stage to get some coffee and catch Ben Lee.
Although I'm not a huge Ben Lee fan or anything, I'll admit that he did put on a pretty entertaining show, although there seemed to be far more people standing by the other stage waiting for Wolf Parade, who had about 10 minutes of technical problems to start with and I didn't really find them to be all that interesting anyway. So I headed a bit early to the MEG stage to get close to one of the acts I was pretty sure would be cool, Final Fantasy (aka Owen Pallett).
Final Fantasy wasn't just cool, he totally blew me away. For those who aren't familiar with him, he's a violin player who starts a song by creating his own loops piece by piece, layering himself over previous parts he's played, and then adds vocals, solos etc overtop of his freshly minted backing track. At times he had four or five loops going simultaneously and it sounded like a small string ensemble. It was absolutely mind-numbingly cool to watch. (I found a YouTube clip of him playing The CN Tower Belongs To The Dead at a club in Manchester, so go watch it and you'll know what I'm raving about.)
Then it was back to the main stage for what would be one of the best acts of the day: G. Love and Special Sauce.
I had just picked up the new(ish) G. Love album a week or so before and I was really excited about finally seeing them live. The show was awesome; they played a great set of mostly the funky blues stuff that I really dig, and I've had "Cold Beverages" stuck in my head ever since. It was a total groovefest, and one of those shows where I knew all the songs they played, having been into G. Love for some time. Extra entertainment was provided by some of the members of Wolf Parade who were up in the VIP section between the two stages and who started throwing stuff at G. Love, and were subsequently escorted out of the VIP section by stage security. Nice one, guys.
So after the high of seeing Final Fantasy and G. Love back to back I decided it was time for something to eat while there was a lull in bands I wanted to see, so I headed over to the Cultures tent to try to get something remotely healthy in me. With Bedouin Soundclash on the main stage, and while standing in line, it started raining which it had been threatening to do all day, but it only lasted a short while and this crazy rainbow happened. It just kept growing and growing and disappeared about 10 minutes later. Cool!
The next hour or so was pretty much spent wandering around the festival seeing some random acts until I came back to the main area to get up close for the much anticipated Flaming Lips show. Just watching them set up was actually kind of fascinating, and while Damian Marley was playing to a huge reggae dance frenzy next door, I carefully positioned myself as close as I could to the stage. Which, as the next photo will attest to, totally paid off.
Total mayhem. The whole Flaming Lips schtick; Wayne Coyne in the bubble, confetti, streamers, huge orange balloons, everything. And they played a really good set. Here's a shot of them playing Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots.
And they finished their set (and subsequently my day at the Osheaga festival) with Do You Realize?? which I found a shaky YouTube clip for.
Then it was off to the bus station, and I slept the whole way back to Ottawa. Crazy.
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