ARTS & CULTURE
Tuesday, September 2, 2014 9
A “very special festival”
Nothing but love for Vancouver Island’s third annual
Rock the Shores
heather pringle › layout editor
“
I
’ve done a lot of festivals, but this one is pretty
special.” Raine Maida had captured the sentiment running through the crowd as Our Lady
Peace closed out the final day of Rock the Shores.
Organizers described the feedback from fans as overwhelmingly positive and added that “this is our new
standard.” Mother nature failed to play nice with the
festival organizers back in 2012 when an impromptu
lightning storm kept Sam Roberts from performing his entire set. However, this year’s event went
off without a hitch. rcmp officers reported only 17
arrests and aside from two broken bones from an
overzealous mosh pit during Billy Talent’s performance, St. John’s Ambulance mostly attended to
complaints of dehydration.
There were a number of reasons that cumulatively
added up to what turned out to be the most successful edition of the festival to date. For one, it was a
smaller sized venue. The event took place on the lower
fields of the Juan de Fuca Recreation Centre and averaged just 8,000 fans per day versus Pemberton Music
Festival’s 20,000 and the 60,000 that flock to Howe
Sound for Squamish Fest every summer. With such a
smaller crowd, fans truly got to experience a casual
and relaxed atmosphere in a way that only West Coast
Islanders can provide – with shared beach blankets,
Frisbees soaring overhead, and young girls weaving
daisy chains.
Adding to the leisurely vibe in the air was a lineup
that brought together an audience spanning generations. On one end of the spectrum, performers
such as Mother Mother, USS, Kongos, and The Naked
and Famous drew in a more youthful and arguably
more ‘hip’ crowd whereas Gen X was drawn in by
the favourites of our day such as Sloan, 54-40, Billy
Talent, and Our Lady Peace. Finally, on the other
end of the spectrum, the performances of The Cult,
Loverboy, and Tom Cochrane had the silver foxes in
the crowd jovially tapping their loafers.
The festival also served as the largest test-drive
of bc’s new relaxed liquor laws which now allow for
site-wide open liquor licenses. Fans were no longer
confined to the sidelines in tawdry beer gardens and
were free to roam the grounds with their $8 beer(s)
in tow. Since the new changes took effect back in
April there had been much speculation over allowing underage fans to be exposed to hundreds of 6 oz.
plastic cups containing beer with a hefty 5% alcohol
content. Surely the kids would be at risk of getting
drunk (or at least very sticky) as it spilt over them
while thrashing in the mosh pit. In the end, there
was no sight of intoxicated children running through
the fields, no groups of shady men offering to “boot”
for the kiddos; all the liquor remained where it was
intended – in the hands of those sporting fashionable
id bracelets.
Finally, the event offered a plethora of food trucks
boasting nothing less than local, organic, antibiotic/
hormone/cruelty-free cuisine. Even the beer served
was a selection exclusively from the local-favourite
Phillips brewery. Yes, it certainly did them favours
» see shores, page 11
ê Above: Our Lady Peace closes the festival out with their brand new track “Won’t Turn Back.” Below: The Obiter’s
very own Layout Editor braves the mosh pit while her tattooed bodygaurd hovers close by.
t humbs DOWN
Drunk jerks who untie women’s bikini tops in
the mosh pit.