Meta-post: Blog plans

Figured this is as good a time as any to start collecting all my writing (FFWD and otherwise) in one blog. Most of the content here can also be seen at www.ffwdweekly.com, but if I'm particularly inspired, I might go back and add anecdotes and context to some of the interviews and reviews, more because I think that could be an interesting exercise. The thing about doing preview pieces is that, when you try to sculpt them into good stories in and of themselves, you have to edit out a lot of tangents and things that don't really work -- things that don't make sense in the story but that I'd hate to forget about.
So maybe that'll be a project.
And I'll also be adding to the archives when I find the time -- I have a few more years of interviews and articles kicking around, but Jan. 1, 2009 seemed like a decent cut-off point for the time being. Keep an eye out for more history, I guess.

Taking back Woodstock

In Taking Woodstock, Ang Lee’s ode to the landmark music festival that has served for 40 years as shorthand for peace, love and good ol’ fashioned youthful rebellion, the case is once again made that Woodstock was a high-water mark for youth culture. A free concert attended by almost 500,000 hippies, freaks and open-minded fellow travellers, the fest proved to the world that a group of weirdos could accomplish something grand, peaceful and maybe even transcendent.

There’s no denying Woodstock’s impact, but nothing’s as perfect as we like to think. Forty years after the fest, it’s about time to start examining the mythology that’s built up around the three-day love-in.

It wasn’t about the money

Of course it was. As Demetri Martin’s character says in Lee’s film, “It’s all about commerce.” In the beginning, Woodstock wasn’t a free concert. Tickets cost $18 each, roughly $105 adjusting for inflation, and the only reason the festival became free was that the organizers couldn’t pull together the ticket booths and fencing in time. Combine that with the fact that far larger crowds than expected were on their way and the organizers really didn’t have much choice.

Granted, this one’s fairly well-known, but it’s still worth mentioning. Like Woodstock ’94 and ’99, like Coachella and Sasquatch and Bonnaroo, Woodstock was supposed to be a profit-making venture. And thanks to music licensing and a film deal with Warner Bros. (a move that’d likely earn eye-rolls from the modern D.I.Y. counterculture), it’s earned plenty over the years.

In fact, one of the few genuinely free festivals of the era was held only four months later, at the Altamont Speedway in California, and we all know that one didn’t go so well.

The music defined an era

Again, there’s no denying that some hugely talented acts were at Woodstock. Creedence Clearwater Revival, possibly the greatest rock ’n’ roll band ever, was there. They played at 3 a.m., though, and frontman John Fogerty famously complained that everyone was asleep except one guy half-a-mile away.

The Who, the prototypical art-rock band, was there, too. The sound was so terrible that singer Roger Daltry called it the worst show the band had ever played. The Grateful Dead’s set was plagued with technical problems, as were many others given the wet and muddy conditions. Many of the songs that eventually saw release on the Woodstock soundtrack albums were edited down into more listenable sections, cutting out some of the go-nowhere noodlings that wouldn’t work on record and adding to the fest’s mystique.

It’s also worth mentioning that a lot of the acts at Woodstock weren’t exactly big names. It’s a bit of a cheap shot to single out Sha Na Na, who played the second-last set of the fest, just before Jimmy Hendrix, when names like Quill, Keef Hartley, Tim Hardin and Ten Years After draw the same blank stares. A lot of big names weren’t at Woodstock, either — no Zeppelin, no Doors, no Dylan, and of course no Stones or Beatles. Joni Mitchell reportedly blew off the fest to go on The Dick Cavett Show.

The fact is, as far as the music that defined the era, Woodstock doesn’t do a much better job than, say, the Newport Folk Festival of 1965 — the one where Dylan went electric. It might be picking nits, but when you’re talking cultural landmarks, nits matter.

You could even argue that the main reason Woodstock is as well-remembered as it is, musically, is because of Warner’s documentary and the soundtrack that came with it. The genuine event was marketed right back to the boomers — a countercultural ideal made more palatable by the marketing arm of a multinational conglomerate. If that’s the case, Woodstock is the watershed moment, if not necessarily the origin, of the development of rebellion as a lifestyle accessory, a commodity that can be bought and sold. That’s where the Woodstock myth starts to get dangerous.

It’ll never happen again

Here’s where things get interesting. As a mass countercultural moment, Woodstock seems pretty unique. Even four months after the fest, Altamont — despite being only a single-day event with fewer attendees — couldn’t replicate the Woodstock spirit, ending in three accidental deaths and one homicide. (Reports vary, but it’s generally agreed that Woodstock had either two or three deaths, all accidental, including one heroin overdose.)

Concerts on the scale of Woodstock have happened since, though. For example, there was the US Festival, put on by Apple Computers’ Steve Wozniak in 1982 and ’83. The ’83 concert, which took place over three days on Memorial Day weekend, had an overall attendance of 670,000, including 375,000 on a single day, to see the likes of Quiet Riot, Scorpions and Judas Priest. Yes, it was for-profit, but so was Woodstock — and Wozniak lost about $20 million between the two festivals, which is as much of an act of charity as any on the part of Woodstock’s organizers.

That was a quarter-century ago, though, and these days the US Festival is better remembered as a Simpsons punchline than a cultural touchstone. Lollapalooza, the travelling festival founded by Jane’s Addiction’s Perry Farrell, seems like another decent option, given its generation-defining ambitions and its anything-goes cultural approach, including freak shows and open-mic poetry. But Lollapalooza made its pilgrimage to fans, not the other way around, so it never had the same single-weekend impact.

So where’s the modern Woodstock? Well, that’s trickier. In the late ’60s, and even in the ’80s, the festival circuit wasn’t what it is today. Back then, it made sense for an event like Woodstock to draw half-a-million flower children for one weekend, even if no one had predicted it would be quite so many. These days, you have Sasquatch, Coachella, Bonnaroo and the Pitchfork Festival, to name a few, splitting up the indie-music demographic and drawing hundreds of thousands of fans between them. With so many options, it’s no wonder that no single event stands out.

It’s also worth wondering what’s actually considered counterculture these days. Calgary, one of Canada’s most conservative cities, has an annual, family-oriented event where thousands of people get together to listen to everything from unsigned hip hop artists to folk veterans to aging first-wave punks, where long hair and Hula Hoop dancing are considered normal and drug enforcement is lax. It also has a week-long festival where the city’s venues host the cutting edge in independent music from around the world — a solid week where the downtown core becomes a feast of under-explored talent. If a city of one million in the heart of big “C” conservatism can boast that, what’s there to rebel against?

And again, remember that most of the acts at Woodstock, especially the bigger names, were all on major record labels. Indie labels as we know them today hardly existed before the punk movement. If an event like Woodstock came together today, it’d hardly seem “underground” — it’d basically be Virgin Fest. Genuine fringe concerts are things like Shambhala, an event in B.C. that draws 10,000 people for three days of literally non-stop dance music (and quite a bit of drug use, too). They’re things like The Gathering of the Juggalos, an event by and for fans of Insane Clown Posse. In other words, they’re events that cause people to give you the side-eye when you mention that you’re attending.

Time to start looking elsewhere

With a counterculture that’s been split into countless factions both by big-business marketing and by evolving ideologies, it’s unlikely we’ll ever get another concert that’s as well attended and is deemed as significant as Woodstock — that myth has already been made. The more we look at the concert as the height of a cultural charge, though, the more we do exactly what the people who attended Woodstock were trying to avoid, namely buying into the previous generation’s standards. If we want to look for the next defining moment, it’s time to start looking beyond concerts.

What about Burning Man, which draws 50,000 people a year to the middle of the Black Rock Desert in Nevada for a celebration of radical self-expression and communal living? The scale may be smaller than Woodstock, but the statement’s just as clear, and if anything, it’s even further divorced from mainstream notions and commercialization.

If that’s too small in scale, how about Obama’s inauguration? Estimates put the attendance at between 1 and 1.4 million attendees. The pre-concert alone (there’s that music thing again) had 400,000 people. Sure, rallying behind the most powerful authority figure in the free world doesn’t have the same instant-cool cachet as getting stoned and listening to The Who, but there’s something to be said for working within the system, too.

What about something more abstract? These days, people with alternative perspectives don’t need to gather in any particular place. That’s what social media is for — connecting like-minded people from around the globe. Sure, it’s often frivolous, but every once in a while, something like the tweeting of the Iranian election happens and suddenly the importance of the new media comes to light. The ability to talk to, sympathize with and spread the message of someone half a world away, all in the space of an instant — that’s at least as significant as half a million people just getting along for three days.

Why this all matters

None of this is to belittle Woodstock. Every culture needs its myths and Woodstock is actually quite a good one, as far as these things go. For the baby boomers (the ones who were there and the ones who just say they were), it’s a crystallization of ideals that never quite panned out otherwise. For the generations that’ve followed, it’s a concrete reminder of the power of youth to buck the system and to scare their parents, which is arguably valuable in and of itself.

The danger, though, is in seeing Woodstock as a limit, the apex of a movement that will never be reached again. Naturally, that’s how the boomers want to portray it — it’s their myth. It’ll continue to be shown that way in movies like Lee’s Taking Woodstock and in publications like Rolling Stone, and that’s their prerogative. In the us-versus-them language of the ’60s, though, Woodstock is now the establishment. It’s 10 years older than the 30-year-olds the hippies weren’t supposed to trust. To use it as a measure of rebellion, as a definition of countercultural heights, is to let them define the terms, and that’s the exact opposite of the way it should be. Forty years ago, no one thought a rock concert could change the world. It’s time to remember that other things can, too.

Review of Taking Woodstock

(for ffwdweekly.com)

For a movie about one of the culturally defining moments of the last century (at least in terms of baby boomer nostalgia and the mythology that surrounds it), Taking Woodstock is surprisingly flat. Based on the autobiography of Elliot Tiber, the man responsible for bringing the floundering music festival to the sleepy hamlet of White Lake, New York, Taking Woodstock largely puts the music in the background, focussing instead on the personalities and the community behind the fest. Even with the less music-centric approach, though, the film often feels less like a cultural statement than a collection of ’60s touchstones.

Standup comic and occasional actor Demetri Martin stars as Tiber and though he’s in nearly every scene in the film, he fails to make much of an impression. His wide-eyed persona and deadpan delivery work well on stage, but on screen, they make him something of a non-entity, emotionally detached from the rest of the film. It doesn’t help that a number of the other actors are busy over-playing their roles, either. Henry Goodman actually turns in a wonderfully restrained performance as Tiber’s father, but Imelda Staunton portrays his mother as a caricature of a Russian battleaxe and Emile Hirsch is equally in stereotype mode as a Vietnam vet returned to his hometown just in time for the love-in to beat all love-ins.

If the performances seem to be all over the place, it’s because director Ang Lee never establishes a consistent tone for the film. Hirsch in particular seems torn between two films — his character is undergoing some serious post-war stress, but he’s so two-dimensional that it’s hard to see him as anything other than comic relief. When Lee moves towards winking irony in jokes about bottled-water price-gouging and a Woodstock follow-up with the Rolling Stones (“It’s gonna be beautiful”), it’s too on-the-nose to elicit anything but groans.

For all its failings, though, Taking Woodstock isn’t a total loss. As the film progresses, it becomes easier to forgive the flaws and get swept away in its mythmaking. Watching small-town squares loosen up and seeing a generation of disenfranchised youth pull together for “three days of peace and music” almost makes up for the obligatory acid trip (set to “The Red Telephone” by Love, a band that wasn’t actually at Woodstock) and the equally obligatory parents-accidentally-getting-high sequence. Almost, but not quite.

Happy Avatar Day! Granted, it’s not a holiday so much as a bit of publicity-drumming from the marketing department at Twentieth Century Fox, but that’s no excuse not to grab a beer, light some fireworks and watch the just-released trailer for James Cameron’s 10-years-in-the-making follow-up sci-fi fantasy.

As an added dollop of holiday cheer, Cameron and Fox also offered an extended version of the trailer for folks willing to make the trek down to their local IMAX (in Calgary’s case, the one at Chinook mall). If you missed out, here’s some observations on what Fox is dubbing an “unprecedented experience” set to take place in theatres this December.

1. James Cameron thinks big: This is the guy who brought you the first two Terminators, not to mention True Lies, The Abyss and Titanic, still one of the biggest movie events of all time. Avatar, which has an estimated budget of almost $200 million, looks like it’s aiming to top all of ’em.

2. It’s quite pretty: Although the 3-D still feels like a gimmick and the humanoid aliens are stuck squarely in the uncanny valley, the movie is exceptionally well-rendered. I wasn’t expecting so much of it to be fully CGI – it looks like Cameron’s basically made a cartoon with a live-action intro – but it does look quite polished. The only trouble is that the 3-D makes it hard to focus when the perspective is shifting around.

3. Don’t come for the plot, and especially not for the dialogue. If the extended trailer is meant to show off the script, it could’ve stood for a few less action movie cliches – virtually every line from the main character feels ripped from a thousand meatheaded ’80s action flicks. And the plot, inasmuch as it can be deciphered from a 15 minute preview, seems to be as follows: Dude gets his mind put into a powerful alien body; runs from scientists; meets wise, nature-loving tribe of aliens; battles against former human allies; falls in love along the way. Humans are war-mongering imperialists, aliens are wise savages who we would do well to learn from.

4. It’s quite pretty.

Will it pull Titanic numbers? Probably not – that was a once-in-a-lifetime cultural fluke. But it at least looks like a sci-fi fantasy vision that could give George Lucas a run for his money, and in that respect, it’s a welcome addition to the multiplex. And heck, Lucas wasn’t much for dialogue either (or depth, or anything but big-screen mythmaking, really).

Edit: It's since been pointed out to me that the "live action" parts I referred to are actually CGI... in which case, I'm doubly impressed with the visuals, but stand by the uncanny valley comment as far as the aliens are concerned.

The Cave Singers - Welcome Joy (Matador)

These days, it seems like you can’t shake a tree without at least one bearded folkie falling out, picking up an acoustic guitar and recording an album of Neil Young- and Bob Dylan-inspired tunes. While the trend towards stripped-down instrumentation and roots-oriented songwriting isn’t going away anytime soon, at least it’s bearing some sweet fruit.
Welcome Joy, the second full-length from Peter Quirk’s post-Pretty Girls Make Graves project, The Cave Singers, should feel like more of the same. They are, after all, travelling some well-trodden ground. Fortunately, the band manages to distinguish itself by embracing a wider range of Americana than most and by doing it so damn well.
Album opener “Summer Light” balances Quirk’s rough-hewn vocals with delicate acoustic guitar and backing vocals from Lightning Dust’s Amber Webber to lovely effect. “Leap” then follows nearly the same formula, adding a more energetic backbeat and licks of harmonica to the song’s constantly cresting structure.
By the third track, things really pick up, veering from the back-porch blues stomp of “At the Cut” to the more ethereal, percussion driven “Shrine” and the campfire singalong vibe of “VV.” The touchstones may be familiar — a touch of American Beauty guitar here, a bit of Ryan Adams-style revisionism there — but Quirk’s vocal delivery and the band’s impeccable performances keep it all fresh. Those who feel the folk-rock revival has overstayed its welcome should probably steer clear, but anyone curious to hear it done right would do well to welcome Quirk and company in.

Fast Romantics & Secret Broadcast interview

They say great minds think alike. Secret Broadcast and The Fast Romantics were two of the five local bands to win $15,000 from Calgary radio station X92 last year as part of its Xposure contest. There were no strings attached to the money and no guidelines for how it should be spent; just the hope that the winners would put the cash to good use.

From there, the two bands have taken remarkably similar paths. Both played at the Virgin Festival last year in Calgary (also part of the radio station’s prize), with Secret Broadcast getting invited to last year’s Toronto event and this year’s Virgin sequel, as well. Both also used the cash to enlist A-list talent for recording their full-length debuts — producer Laurence Currie (Wintersleep, Holy Fuck, Sloan) for Secret Broadcast and multi-Juno-winning engineer Mike Fraser (Franz Ferdinand, Elvis Costello, Metallica) for the Romantics. And both wrapped up their recordings at about the same time, leading almost inevitably to this Saturday’s dual CD release. It makes you wonder — just how close are these two bands?

“I think we’ve just partnered up,” says Fast Romantics vocalist Matthew Angus. “We’ve been helping each other by nature, with this whole tour. Even just booking shows, it’s been an incredible partnership.”

“It’s like you’re in the same band,” he adds, turning to guitarist Matthew Kliewer. “You talk to them more than you talk to me now.”

They may act like they’re in the same band, but The Fast Romantics and Secret Broadcast are far from musical clones. The Romantics trade in highly danceable, keyboard-laced indie-pop — it’s entirely appropriate that Fraser was mixing Franz Ferdinand’s new album at the same time he was working with the Calgary quartet. Secret Broadcast is the more dramatic of the pair, all shimmering guitar tones and minor-key chord shifts — the kind of sound you could easily picture filling an arena within a few years’ time. They’re completely distinct sounds, but also oddly complementary, a fact the two bands have realized is well worth exploiting.

“We played just for fun at the HiFi club about six months ago,” says Secret Broadcast singer (and this article’s third Matt) Matt Lightstone. “In Calgary, it’s tough to get a good crowd out to a show. Really, it is. We didn’t expect that. We had never had this happen before — the place was completely rammed solid, completely sold out, with a lineup around the block. And we’re like, OK, we did that. Let’s try to get that at a bigger venue.”

Bigger is clearly the plan with this weekend’s CD release (which includes copies of the two discs for fans who buy their tickets in advance), but neither band is expecting it to come easily. The two bands are handling the show entirely independently, rounding up support from local sponsors, co-ordinating publicity and generally doing the kind of grunt work that a lot of bands shy away from. It’s become a full-time job in a very real sense — the members of Secret Broadcast are expecting the band to be their full-time job as early as the new year. For The Fast Romantics, career independence (though not necessarily financial security) has come even sooner — both Angus and Kliewer have already given up their day jobs. Kliewer even got to live out a minor rock ’n’ roll dream when his boss cranked up a Fast Romantics tune on the stereo as he was escorted out of the building for the last time.

Still, Angus makes it clear that the business side of the band isn’t something anyone in the group was itching to take on.

“I think we’re averse to it, but we recognize that you have to do it and you have to be really good at it,” he says. “We’ve learned the hard way how to be good at it. I don’t think any musician really wants to think of themselves as a businessman. It [can be] hard to accept that you have to have a business sense and that you have to spend days crunching numbers and calling booking agents.”

It’s the kind of necessary evil that most artists only dream of when they first start jamming, though, and both bands seem genuinely grateful for the opportunities they’ve been given. It’s tempting to call their rise in profile a quick one — Secret Broadcast have been together for three years, The Fast Romantics for two — but there’s no denying they’ve worked for it, whether in previous bands or the sheer effort they’ve put into their recent success. And now, with the joint CD release and a shared cross-Canada tour, the two bands seem determined to pull each up other to the next level. It’s the kind of commitment that could drive some folks crazy, but according to Angus, it’s working well.

“We’re working really well together — so far, anyway,” he says. “It’s harder. There’s a lot more people to please, and you can’t just be a control freak. You’ve gotta compromise about a few things. With them, it’s been easy. If we were working with a band we hated — not that we hate really anyone at the moment — it would suck. But they’re like family, those guys.”

Lightstone agrees. With the two bands, there is no rivalry — just a strong musical friendship.

“It’s right down the middle,” he says. “It’s completely equal. As far as who’s going to play last [at the CD release], we’re literally going to flip a coin to decide.”

Wax Mannequin - Saxon (Zunior)

After two albums of dunderheaded bluster and blissfully bizarre twists on hard rock cliché, Wax Mannequin steps away from his “president of indie rock” persona on Saxon. Though not quite a return to the twisted prog-folk of his first two albums, Saxon is a far subtler effort than 2004's The Price and 2007's Orchard and Ire.

Surprisingly for an artist as singular as Wax, Saxon's strongest moment is a cover — a slow-burning take on Geoff Berner's anti-capitalist critique, “Volcano God.” The originals are none too shabby, either: The galloping vocal cadence of “Feelings” is endlessly listenable, while songs like “End of Me” and “God's Love” bring to the surface the mastery of imagery that has always underlied even the most outlandish Wax Mannequin songs.

It's not quite right to call the album a return to form, as Price and Orchard were both fine albums in their own right. Instead, call it a summation of the songwriter's career to date and a notice to those who've accused him of hiding behind stylized characters and arch irony. If Saxon is any indication, Wax has plenty more than just an absurd sense of humour to add to the Canadian indie scene.

Statistical muddling at the Calgary Herald

I don't usually get into politics on this blog, but lazy, misleading statistics are a particular pet peeve of mine. Last Friday's Calgary Herald featured a column on hybrid cars, which pointed to a study on the efficacy of rebate programs in encouraging people to buy hybrids. From the article:

"Researchers at the University of B. C. studied rebate programs over six years for hybrid electric vehicles in B. C., Ontario, Quebec, PEI and Manitoba. Their results, released this week, show two-thirds of those who bought hybrids were going to purchase them anyway. The rebates didn't influence their buying behaviour at all."

Think about that for a second. If two-thirds of those who bought hybrids were going to purchase them anyway, one-third of those who bought hybrids wouldn't have. One third of all hybrid sales, according to that statement, are directly attributable to the rebate programs studied.

Put slightly differently (because it's always fun to play around with the numbers a little), the rebate programs in B.C., Ontario, Quebec, PEI and Manitoba led to a 50% increase in the sale of hybrid cars. How can that be construed as not having an affect on buyer behaviour? If the goal was to increase purchases of hybrids, in what world is a 50% increase considered a failure?

Virgin fumblings: Fest's Alberta stop gets awkward

With less than a week to go before Virgin Festival’s second Calgary stop, the fest added another 11 bands to the lineup it announced five weeks ago. According to a press release issued on Tuesday, Aug. 4, the new additions include Juno Award-winners Wintersleep, indie-pop collective Library Voices and local rockers Secret Broadcast, Static in the Stars, Michael Bernard Fitzgerald and a handful of others — a welcome announcement that doubles the number of bands confirmed for the festival.

As nice as it is to see a list of bands replace the vague “and many more” that’s loomed large on the Virgin Festival’s website since its original lineup announcement, the release is at least as revealing as it is relieving. The four days between the announcement and the concert hardly seem like enough time to build word of mouth and none of the bands are big enough to provoke a last-minute surge in ticket sales. In the view of some of the local music industry’s key players, the late announcement seems more like a sign of a disorganized festival.

According to Malissa Dunphy of local radio station X92, which was tied to last year’s Virgin Fest through its Xposure talent contest, the announcement is typical of the way the festival has been handled this year. “I haven’t liked the timing of any announcements regarding Virgin Fest this year,” Dunphy says. “They announced the lineup so late, after people could buy folk fest tickets and Sled Island tickets, and there’s that Drenched fest the same weekend. There’s a lot of places people can spend their money this year as far as music festivals go. If they want to sell out [the festival] in five weeks, it’s going to be a lot harder than last year when they had months of prep.”

Festival director Andrew Bridge disagrees. According to him, the announcement is part of the festival’s ongoing strategy. “From our history, a lot of tickets are sold in the last week of the festival, and we love creating some excitement and noise around that last week,” he says. “We held off announcing a few of these artists so that we could have them all together and make a big ‘Wow’ announcement. We’ve had tremendous ticket momentum both on the Pearl Jam day and on the Billy Talent day, so we think that the announcement of the acts today can only create more excitement in the last week leading up to the festival.”

The trouble is, the announcement hardly constitutes a “Wow.” Wintersleep, by far the biggest band announced, was in Calgary this past March and came through town twice in 2008. Library Voices put on a great, highly energetic show, but they’ve also made the rounds, playing a number of smaller venues around town in the last year. It’s hard to imagine the announcement convincing many fans who’ve been on the fence up to this point.

The lineup isn’t the only thing that has some fans wondering what’s going on. The festival recently teamed with CJAY 92 to offer weekend passes at a steep discount. Using a promotional code found on the station’s website, fans can now get a limited number of tickets for $92 — a 25 per cent discount from the original price, and only $12 more than a single-day pass for Saturday’s Pearl Jam-headed performance. Some fans are crying foul on Virgin Fest’s Facebook page, wondering why the fest’s early supporters are paying more than latecomers. Bridge says this is common practice — “We’ve done it with every festival across the country every year” — but others don’t see it the same way.

“Not in our world, it’s not [normal],” says Calgary Folk Music Festival artistic director Kerry Clarke. “We’re very sensitive to the fact that people would feel ripped off if something like that happened. We do have some discounts — if you buy in bulk, there’s a 10 per cent discount — but nothing of that size.”

Asked why any festival would do it, her answer is simple.

“They’re not selling very many tickets,” she says. “At least, that’s what I would think.”

Still, what matters in the end is the concert itself. A number of local critics, including this publication, expressed skepticism about last year’s lineup and the event was by all accounts a rousing success. This year’s lineup may not boast many big names, but the biggest — Pearl Jam — is the kind of band that could sell out the Saddledome. As long as people are excited, the event can still be a success.

“Last year we played on the second stage, and it was a huge stage, and we felt dwarfed by it,” says Matt Lightstone, frontman of local rockers (and two-time Virgin Fest vets) Secret Broadcast. “This year, it’s like five times the size of that stage, so it should be interesting. We’ll be playing when most people are coming into the venue and people naturally gravitate to the main stage, so we should be able to play to a lot of fans and a lot of new people. It’s exciting.”