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The School of Arts County Fair at Thunderbird Stadium
Vancouver
May 9, 2006
Thousands of hardworking students, our leaders of tomorrow, gathered for the 15th annual Arts County Fair at Thunderbird Stadium at UBC. This next generation of professionals let off steam from a challenging year by forgoing the discussion of academia and focusing instead on their desire to slam into each other to the beat of performers Cadence Weapon, Corb Lund, The Salteens, The Weakerthans and The New Pornographers.
However, as with all students, school is not far from their minds as they partake in the festivities of the popular year-end event. The students and other audience members learned many crucial lessons during the outdoor concert.
Lesson one can be attributed to Corb Lund and the Hurtin' Albertans as their song lyrics “it’s time to switch to whisky, we’ve been drinkin’ beer all night” inspired many a student to diversify their drinking tastes. One of the best things about Arts County Fair is the mood of the crowd, and Corb Lund certainly capitalized on this as he elicited the best audience response of the day. Lund and his band, the Hurtin' Albertans, played their down home grassroots country that garnered them “favorite folk artist or group” at the Independent Music Awards last month. The area in front of the stage was packed with fans doing their best country jigs, hollering, and of course, enjoying their beverages.
Despite a mediocre audience reception, in this reporter’s opinion the best act of the day was the little known Cadence Weapon who performed hip-hop tracks from his first LP release “Breaking Keyfabe.” The brilliantly flowing conversational rhyme style was not appreciated by the whole crowd, so lesson two would have been to get out of the beer lineup and go watch this 20-year old perform the most heartfelt set of the day. Weapon interacted beautifully with the small crowd that gathered to watch him, he stage dived more than once, and he was by far the most engaged and excited performer.
Lesson three of the school of Arts County Fair is that the weirder you look, the more you’ll fit in as the day goes on. Nobody blinked when the fully-grown man in the bunny costume slam danced with the shirtless frat boys and a few brave young ladies. Maybe it’s all the fresh air or perhaps it’s because the majority of patrons were testing how much beer is humanly possible to drink, but anything goes at Art County Fair. There were picnickers with tarot cards who would gladly foretell your future sitting among the rowdy young men who were using garbage bags to slide down the hill into the unfortunate bystanders below.
Thank goodness for the entertaining crowd, because the majority of the bands failed to capture any audience attention. Lesson Four is to know your audience; the disorderly and good-natured crowd was wanting to see bands having just as much fun as they were. It’s a bad sign when the fans outshine the performers; this was most evident during the closing band’s set. What should have been a romping good time to end the evening and squeeze the last energy out of the sun-stroked fraternity boys was instead a disappointing set by Canadian darlings The New Pornographers. A.C Newman and the rest of The New Pornographers approached the stage rather fearfully; they played a quiet set with mild highlights during the playing of the bouncy “July Jones” but people mostly just checked their watches during the Pornographers set. Newman posed the question “what happens in the slam pit when there’s no music?” A more appropriate question for the day is what happens in the slam pit when everyone thinks the performers are a bit lame.
It’s too bad the bands couldn’t capitalize on the intensity and willingness to party of the crowd. The setting sun glistened on the sea of empty plastic cups as the audience filed out while The New Pornographers were still playing. A depleted crowd remained to see the end of the day as a man in a bunny suit took a solitary seat on the grassy hill to watch the sun set over the Thunderbird Stadium.
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