20 - Friday, July

x ers

FINGER Eleven guitarist James Black at EdgeFest.

An ex

Sob Mackin
News Reporter

WHICH fest was besi?

You could argu: for hours
about the quality of the four
rack festivals that came to

Thunderbird Stadium over
the first pvo weeks of July:
Vans Warped Tour, Lilith Fair,
EdgeFest and Ozzfest all
played to the masses at the
University of B.C. venue.

_ . But there’s no denying
which fest was biggest.

That honour gocs to
Ozzfest. Ozzy Osbourne’s
annual all-metal road show
made its first Vancouver stop
on July 16 before 25,000
people,

For the first time
Osbourne came with his old
band, Black Sabbath. The proto-meral quartet trot-
ted out all the classics (“Ironman,” “Into the Void”
and “Children of the Grain”) before a five-minute
fireworks show in the nearby parking lot.

It capped 11-hours of music, featuring the likes
of Rob Zombie, Slayer, Primus and Fear Factory.
The latter act has quite a local following, despite
spending more timc here to record than perform in
public. Its last visit to the Lower Mainland was a
May weekend to record a video with Gary Numan in
North Vancouver.

The day belonged to Biack Sabbath. Supposedly
on its final tour ever, the band refused to issue pho-
tography passes to publications big and small (the
News included).

Everywhere the cye could see, people shook their
heads to the rhythm and played air guitar (a la Beavis
and Butt-head) as the sun set beyond the stage. A
truly humorous sight was Osbourne spraying the sar-

COURTNEY Love closed this year's EdgeFest.

|:

dine-like fans in front of the
stage with a water hose. And
what a stage it was, with
torches, video screen, gothic
Ozzfest sign and an automatic
sprinkler system to cool those
same sardine-like Sabbath-
lovers when Ozzy didn’t feel
like impersonating a fireman.
Just 48 hours earlier,
Courtney Love brought the
cross-Canada EdgeFest tour
to a grinding, raunchy halt.
Her band, Hole, was ar
the top of its game. As for
Love, she bared her soul in
song and a litde bit of her
body in between selections.
The former stripper (at
* Vancouver’s No. 5 Orange,
Strect) prowled the stage in a
provocative manner and bared
aa oher left breast tate in the set
: ‘ (after the photographers were

NEWS photos Sprout <wev.eyoteaser.comveprout (sproutbc@hatmail.com) —gonc, of course). Montreal-

EDGEFESTERS crowd stage (above); Matthew Good Band’s Dave Genn (below). raised bassist Melissa Auf der

Maur, wearing a Canada flag
design top, sang a cover of the Doughboys’ “Shine,”
a song reportedly written about her.

The proceedings degenerated into an exhibition
of exhibitionism. Love waded into the crowd and
gave some EdgeFesters a closer look at her chest.
She returned to the stage and one brave concertgoer
jumped on a particle board plank held aloft in the
mosh pit and dropped his pants. Love was so
amused, she gave him her guitar before leaving the
stage.

auf der Maur told a radio interviewer carlier in
the day the band planned to play 2 Quict Riot cover
in honour of Nardwuar the Human Serviette, who
was recovering in Lions Gate Hospital from a brain
hemorrhage. With crews waiting to dismantle
EdgeFest gear for storage until next year, the band
kept to the 10 p.m. curfew. Love wished the West
Vancouverite well anyway and encouraged everyone
to pray for his recovery.

NEWS photas Sprout <www.eysteaser.com/sprout (aproue @hotmail.com)
FEAR Factory's Burton C. Bell at Ozzfest last Friday.

Sheogles
shimmy at
Folk Fest

Katharine Hamer
Contribzting Writer
Shoogle (v.) To move,
agitate. Nifty (adj.)
Dextrous, nimble, deft.
Shooglenifty: To shim-
my in a free fashion.
Scottish uber-folksters

Shooglenifty were certainly
shimmying freely when they

‘ performed last weekend at

the Vancouver Folk Festival. |
As the sun set over Jericho
Park, the crowd rose to its
feet, unable to resist the
Shoogles’ infectious, bass-
heavy rhythms and egged on
by a thumbs-up from fiddle-
player Angus Grant. “There’s
some lovely dancing going
on out there,” he cried.
“Keep it up!”

osc who lingered on
the ground were sternly
chastised by bassist Conrad
Ivitsky. “You people sitting
over there,” said Ivitsky,
pointing to a huddle of stray
still bodies at the back of the
audience, “if you sit on your
arses ali day, you'll get hem-
orthoids!”

The six-man band — with
Grant on fiddle, Ivitsky on
electric and double bass,
Garry Finlayson (banjo and .
banjax), Malcolm Crosbie
(guitar), Iain MacLeod

See Eclectic Page 25