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Thursday began not with a bang, but a whimper. Nursing a tremendous hangover from the previous night, I weighed my options for the day. I could attempt to travel with a pounding headache, or I could take a little hair of the dog and power through.

So with a couple or three beers under my belt, the trip began. An uneventful, on time flight to Ontario, followed by a required In N Out stop, soon found us kicking the party off and breaking the hot tub in. Maybe the straight vodka shots that night were a foreshadowing of events to come. Maybe it was just a Thursday night.

Friday – Woke up with my serotonin levels crashing through the floor. Woke up pissed, miserable, and extremely anti-social. I tried to not take it out on my travel companions, and they tried to not bother me.

We used our patented “supersekrit” back road to get to the event and made great time to the festival. Over the course of the day I watched sets (or partial sets) from Busy P, Adam Freeland, Cut Copy, The Breeders, Dan Le Sac vs. Scroobius Pip, The Raconteurs, Aphex Twin, and Pendulum. Collectively, we decided not to stick it out for Fatboy Slim.

I couldn’t keep myself hydrated at all. I was cramping up throughout the day, and was generally miserable. As the rest of the crew kept the party going, I crashed out when we got to the rooms.

Saturday – Felt better upon waking, but then had to deal with “departure time drama”. Some members of our merry crew had a late night and were pushing for a later time, others were adamant about not missing certain bands. In the end, we reached accord and saw 120 Days, Boys Noize, Bonde Do Role, Kate Nash, Death Cab For Cutie, Kraftwerk, Portishead, M.I.A., Yelle, and (of course) Prince.

Health was fairly good throughout the day, just some annoying cough developing from the dust

Sunday – Well that annoying cough turned into a full blown outbreak of bird flu. I was laid up, and despite the encouragement of the crew to toughen up, I opted for a bottle of robo and slept through until Monday morning.

Highlights:

Prince – God damn that man is a genius. He opened the show with 15 to 20 minutes of his “other” music, meaning that Morris Day opened up with a couple of numbers followed by Sheila E. Prince was on stage the whole time playing, but was giving them all the attention. Then he launched into some of his old classics. When he did the Radiohead and Beatles covers it was all over for me. Seeing him in a crowd of ~60,000 other fans was an experience

Dan Le Sac vs. Scroobius Pip – Intelligent U.K. Hip Hop by a Matisyahu lookalike and an electro genius behind the laptop. These guys connected with the audience instantly and even during a spoken word piece, the crowd was transfixed. I saw them on the day that I was “in a funk” and their second song (Magician’s Assistant) almost overwhelmed me emotionally.

The Breeders – After all this time The Deal sisters still have it. Their performances of Cannonball and Happiness Is A Warm Gun were amazing.

Over in the techno tent, Busy P and Boys Noize were unbelievable, even getting me to bounce around through all the heat and cramping. Aphex Twin started out with what some would call slow housey tracks, but by then end, the electrodrone was turned up to infinity and was mind blowing.

Disappointments – Portishead wasn’t tuned right for the main stage and their tracks just felt too overpowering. Death Cab came on a bit late and played almost exclusively new tracks. They were good, but come on folks, play some for us older fans.

All in all, we all made it home safe (actually not sure about Arjo as he isn’t due to arrive in Norway until 5am Tuesday PST), we were all still speaking to each other, and no punches were thrown. I declare victory!

(pics will follow on my flickr stream tomorrow)

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