Love is All You Need
by John Kendle, July 8, 1999
Hole saves the day at dull Edgefest.
WINNIPEG — If there was ever a rock show that needed a rock star to save it, Edgefest was it.
Fortunately it found one.
Yes, it was a good day out. Yes, the weather co-operated and yes, the promoters were satisfied with the turnout, drawing a large walkup crowd to swell disappointing advance ticket sales to a decent-sounding 12,000 people by day’s end.
But as a day of music and entertainment, this particular Edgefest lineup left a little to be desired — especially in the wake of a scintillating ’98 show which featured Foo Fighters and Green Day.
And so it was left to Courtney Love — one of the few bona fide rock stars in the world today — to come onstage last night just after nine o’clock and electrify a crowd which had, quite frankly, just been happy to be there.
Within minutes of Hole’s entrance, Love and her band — Montreal bassist Melissa auf der Maur, guitarist Eric Erlandson and drummer Samantha Moloney — turned what was a veritable teenage wasteland into a hopped-up, hyper-amplified rock show. Which is what it was meant to be.
Dressed in a shiny black, backless dress, her black and pearl Stratocaster gleaming in the spotlight which was always on her, Love played every inch the diva last night.
Violet, the band’s incendiary, pulse-racing opening number — with its “Go on, take everything” chorus — set the tone for this evening. Love took her customary pose — left leg on monitor speaker, right hand strumming furiously — and her platinum hair gleamed as she alternately screamed the lyrics and mugged for the crowd and the press cameras.
“So this is Winnipeg,” she said, after auf der Maur, in white hot pants and knee-high red boots, displayed her homemade Muddy Waters (our city name translated) T-shirt. “You know, all it takes is three chords and you’re in California. But I bet you like it here, don’t you?”
She was greeted with roars and a hailstorm of beer cups. And you knew the show was finally on. By the time Doll Parts roared through the monstrous PA at Assiniboia Downs, Love could no wrong for those who had waited patiently to see and hear rock ‘n’ roll in both its most primal and most celebratory states.
Heck, even the chiming pop songs from Celebrity Skin, an album which lacked the visceral impact of Live Through This, sounded great — especially the sing-song effect of Boys On The Radio.
In all, then, Courtney and co. saved a day which had started nicely enough with a wonderful set from Saskatoon’s Wide Mouth Mason, but hit a horrible lull shortly thereafter.
Following an afternoon of wrangling in lineups for beer and provisions, the crowd finally settled in to watch the show as Vancouver’s Matthew Good Band took the stage at 5:30 p.m.
Poking foul-mouthed fun at himself and the crowd, Good proved a decent transition from day to evening, playing his solid, passionate pop/rock with a fervour which deserved more attention than he was accorded.
However, it seemed most in the crowd were at the Downs for the bigger names. Inexplicably, one of the biggest on the bill — Australia’s Silverchair — played beneath Moist and Big Wreck on the bill, coming on at the ungodly hour of 5:30 p.m.
Nevertheless, the Antipodean rockers proved they can make a big noise — and incite a near-riot in the mosh pit — in the early evening just as readily as they can late at night.
Looking taller and more angular at 19 than he did when his band first broke big four years ago, singer Daniel Johns proved himself quite a powerful entertainer during his 50-minute gambit. Though his band has taken on a keyboardist to fill out the orchestral sound of its latest album, Neon Ballroom, it still rocks with the in-yer-basement tenacity only teenagers can provide. By the time the group closed its set with Anthem For The Year 2000, Johns was as sweat-soaked as those in the pit in front of him.
Big Wreck, following closely on the heels of Silverchair, just weren’t up to the task of sustaining the momentum of the younger band. While Ian Thornley is a big-voiced singer with tons of moxy, his band simply doesn’t have the songs to captivate an audience for a full set.
Moist, on the other hand, is a band which continues to puzzle. At times, singer David Usher and guitarist Mark Makowy have the goods to give neo-glam groups like Suede a run for their money. Even overplayed songs such as Push and Silver still manage to captivate. But why this group still insists on ham-fisted bar-band antics like inserting AC/DC’s Back In Black into its set is beyond me — as it seemed beyond the grasp of many in the crowd.