Saturday 09/09/06 Day 1 @ V Festival, Toronto, Canada

The first ever V Festival outside the UK kicked off on a Canadian island on a very damp and chilly Saturday afternoon. Rechristened the "Virgin Festival", (which a cynic would note was done to promote branding of their newly-offered Virgin Mobile phone service in North America) it was scheduled to run two 12-hour days and heralded as "an entertainment extravaganza", which was to include a stellar line up of performers, including the long-awaited North American return of Massive Attack.

Sounded promising, didn't it? Interestingly enough, as previously reported on Gigwise, Massive Attack bowed out with only a handful of days to go before the festival, citing that "...the essential U.S. immigration visas were not issued in time..."  For those of you who are not entirely up on your Geography and/or Immigration Law: the U.S. and Canada are actually entirely separate countries, and no one has ever needed a U.S. visa of any kind to play in Canada. True story.

The festival itself was held on an island that, during the summer months, houses an amusement park intended for very young children on one side. It's a relatively large space, and very time consuming to get around. Also, it's closed the rest of the year due to the fact that it's often bloody cold in Canada during September and beyond. Maybe no one realized the festival was actually to take place in Canada, including Massive Attack?

Strangely enough, whomever programmed the line-up for the show did take the Canadian spirit to heart, as 19 of the 36 bands performing on the two stages were, indeed, Canadian. What happened to "From England with love"? Did they fly everyone to the UK first, then straight back to Canada for the show? Did no one think a Canadian audience would want a bit of global variety?

The first two acts on both stages- largely unknown even locally- drew sparse crowds. Thankfully, illScarlett turned Canadian fortunes around, being the first band of the day to make it feel a bit like a real festival- though it was already close to 3 pm. The crowd up front cheered and danced to a seemingly brief set that included their current hit 'Heaters'.

Next was the first (and should-have-been only) tough scheduling choice to be made by Gigwise- between the heavily-hyped David Ford on the second stage and the purring Parisian-based band Phoenix on the main. Phoenix was the Gigwise choice, with mixed results ranging from interesting rock-tinged balladeering to dull, cookie-cutter pop. The band didn't seem to have a consensus as to which band they were all in or, at times, if they were all even in the same band. Toward the end of the set, the lead singer attempted a Bono-esque lunge into the crowd to which was met with complete indifference. Hopefully, David Ford turned out well.

By the time The Hidden Cameras hit the main stage, a huge majority of the audience on the main stage lawn was, literally, asleep. Which turned out to be warranted, as The Hidden Cameras phoned in a plodding, pretentious, dead boring set. Eventually, Gigwise tiptoed to the front of the stage (as not to wake any of the sleeping customers) in anticipation of The Dears, scheduled incomprehensibly during dinner hour and deserving of a much, much better lead-in.