This weekend I was able to partake in both days of this years Virgin Festival on Toronto Island. I had gone to the Saturday of the first year and had a really good time, so I was definitely keen to go when I found out Oasis was headlining the Sunday.

On day one I managed to catch The Midway State, St Alvia Cartel, The Constantines, Flash Lightning, Spiritualized, MGMT, The Fratellis, Wintersleep, Bloc Party and The Foo Fighters I wanted to sample as many bands as possible, so it just resulted in a whole hell of a lot of walking between stages. For me the band of the day was Bloc Party. This was the first time I’d seen them and I was quite happy with their set as they hit on a lot of my favourites. Foo Fighters were kinda meh. I know everyone blows a load over how great the Foo Fighters are, but to me I just don’t see it. When people tout a band as this generation’s Led Zeppelin I expect more then yelling and a bunch of average guitar wanking. I was happy they played Skin and Bones and Marigold though.

Day two got off to a late start. First of all I didn’t have anyone to go to the concert with until my sister phoned me up and told me someone had coughed up a spare ticket, so on short notice I was able to get my buddy Les to come with. This is about the 3rd free Oasis gig ticket that has dropped onto his lap now, which is rather amusing onto itself. Second of all, my legs were just toast after Saturday, so going late was the order of the day. We got down to the ferry by 5:30 and found a huge lineup, so obviously a lot of people were getting the late start on the day like myself. By the time we got there we saw about half of the Stereophonics set. I had seen them years ago opening for David Bowie and was unimpressed, but their V-Fest set was loads better.

Les and I managed to get reasonably close for the Paul Weller set, which was quite good. I know most of the people at the show barely had a clue who Paul Weller was, but his show was damn good. Steve Craddock(of Ocean Colour Scene fame) had a couple guitar solos that made Chris Shiflett of the Foos look like an amateur. By the time Oasis hit the stage we were about 15 feet from the stage on the left side which was pretty decent. Oasis’ set was pretty run in the mill for them, aside from the crazy guy bowling Noel over on stage in the middle of Morning Glory. I always said I wanted to go to one of those Oasis shows that go down in infamy and my guess this will be one. Noel apparently might have a cracked rib and their show in London tomorrow may be in doubt. If that’s the case he’s definitely a gamer for finishing off the show for us.

I kinda had the feeling as soon as it happened that this had the implications of an international incident in the making. It’s too bad this guy decided to give Toronto and their music fans as a whole a black eye with his actions. Toronto has long been an Oasis hotbed, so I hope this doesn’t change their perspective on the city. Canoe has been doing a good job of keeping up with the details of the whole incident since it happened. Apparently it was just some drunk 47 year old guy from Pickering. Probably lives too close to the nuclear plant.