Montreal’s Osheaga festival rivals any Bonnaroo or Coachella lineup, but since it comes after those, it has yet to gain their traction on a wider scale, which is crazy to me, since it takes all of four minutes on the train to get from the festival site to downtown.
Anyway, I arrived with what turned out to be 38,000 people on Friday night, soaked in my own sweat in the bazillion-degree humidity—the Montreal underground must be VERY close to the earth’s core—and at one point covered in ants (“Why isn’t anyone leaning on that tree right in front of the stage?” I thought. “You idiots!”).
There are five stages at Osheaga, the two mains and three smaller ones scattered in the woods of Parc Jean-Drapeau, so I was back at the Tree Stage for Rural Alberta Advantage, whose excellent Departing is one of my favourite records this year. The trio bashed through a dozen songs, switching back between their current release and the excellent debut Hometowns. I was hoping for a rendition of “Goodnight” but instead got “In the Summertime” which is just as good. They closed with the rousing “Stamps” and I slid through ants and beer over to the Green Stage, which is 40 percent solar/wind/beer-powered, though I can tell you wind was no help at all on this evening.
Timber Timbre eschewed stage lighting for half a dozen red lamps, sitting, hoodie up. I only had time for three tracks from Creep On Creepin’ On before I dashed out to the main stage for Eminem, someone I would never make a trip for but would happily check out in this kind of umbrella situation.
I decided to walk into the crowd until it got hard. Feeling pretty pleased with my position on the outside middle third, I waited in a very busy crowd of tall shirtless drunk people. Then the lights went up, on the opposite stage. There were 10,000 people between me and Em, and the 5,000 behind me started pushing so I ran against the current to get as far back as I could.
I don’t love live hip-hop—there’s usually the one hype man who won’t shut up and I find it confusing and ill-fitting—and if I’m being honest I am only a hits parade hip-hop fan in the first place, that is to say not really. The things I did not like about Eminem: lame animations, half-songs and a backing track that revealed itself in the first song when his microphone crapped out, he dropped it from his mouth, and his voice kept going. But dude puts on a show, and I managed to see 20 songs before running to the Metro ahead of this small town, including snippets of “Cleaning Out My Closet,” “Stan,” “Love the Way You Lie,” “Like Toy Soldiers,” a medley of “My Name Is/The Real Slim Shady/Without Me,” a tribute to Nate Dogg, a Royce Da 5’9” appearance and random plays of BoB and Drake. Whether he had the breath for all those words or not, he didn’t phone it in like Snoop Dogg did at last year’s festival, and it was so hot he had to pull an emergency costume change in the middle.
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This article appears in Jul 28 – Aug 3, 2011.