The world exploded, then it all got better

I stepped out of the SUB on the day of the AMS Block Party and the first thing I saw was a girl crying and vomiting into the bushes. This seemed like a good start. Evidently everyone who was celebrating that day started at about 8am. I’ve never really believed that the students at UBC have much school spirit, but my doubts were wiped away like pukey chin-spit when I saw belligerently drunk first-year students falling into the shrubbery before noon. Dedication like that brings a tear.

McInnes Field was caged off, and once I passed inside it was like being in a cattle pen. Most of the cattle were lined up so they could show their IDs to security people and cross into the “mature” side of the cage and buy beer. The lines snaked into the distance, and as I joined their ranks, clouds began to obscure the sun.

The line didn’t move and day got darker. The idea of waiting longer to drink became less appealing. I’d had a few beers, maybe a joint or two, and some mushrooms in the hours leading up to the Block Party. My stomach was agitated and I felt cold. The psilocybin kicked in as the first raindrops began to fall.

A small group was beginning to bob and shuffle around the stage, and an opening band called Hey Ocean! began to play. I joined them, and started to shift back and forth to the music. Looking down, I noticed the grass was twisting and growing at super speed. The trees around the stage writhed in the fog, and I realized my body was completely wet.

At this point I was struck with an immense pity for every human alive, and their unending desires for the transient pleasures of the material world. My shoes were filling with mud, and I decided that, if I were in fact dead, this would be Limbo. Everything was grey and the people around me were wraiths.

The shuffle around the stage became more intense. I gave up and let myself be bumped along to the music. Hey Ocean! was playing, and the lead singer—a cherub from a Renaissance painting, halo and all—implored us to dance. She pointed over the crowd, and as heads turned to look, a patch of sky lit up gold. People started to move. Everyone seemed drunk but I felt more sober than usual.

The band on stage told us to dance harder to clear the clouds. This seemed infallibly logical, and the crowd agreed.

As the song ended, a hard beam of sunlight hit the stage and I felt a spark of something like hope for the human race. A guy elbowed me in the head and I forgave him with Bohisattva-like compassion. The rain had stopped and another dance had started. Fingers of photons stretched through the crowd and I felt warmth on my shoulders. We surged and shouted praise for the sun. Heads began to steam as the clouds retreated and the temperature increased. Someone tried to crowd surf and fell in the mud. Everyone laughed.

By the time Hey Ocean! finished playing, the world had been redeemed and cosmic order reestablished. I got tired of the music and left after the Barenaked Ladies played a few songs. The beer lines were gone. I had a VIP badge for the Party because I was supposed to write for the paper. It made me look like a dick so I’d given it to my friend before the show started. He came back drunk and told me the pass got him free beer. I didn’t know the magical pass warranted free beer. I found my way to the VIP section and smoked and drank and listened to “One Week.”

Leaving the Block Party, I passed a field full of broken plastic cups lit up by the sunset like lilies of the valley. People were making out and falling down and it smelled like spring.

Into the dark heart of the 2010 Block Party

By Kai Green

Campus, late morning. The walk past McInnes Field is longer than usual, the layers of protective fencing bloating its radius, making it into something pseudo-industrial, psuedo-professional … keeping out the bad students. Or keeping out the good students, letting in the rest? A containment unit, an ecto-container: pull the cord and the ghosts of bad mistakes past and future go whirling into the field with the beer tents and the burger grill and the rows upon rows of gleaming blue port-a-johns…

Somehow in the post-class maelstrom of the SUB I find the news office and grab the necessities: tape recorder. Wallet. Aviators. Emergency gin. Two big gulps of the second and a hit off someone’s beer and I’m back out into the real world, swinging down the hallways. Phone rings; we’re all drinking in a secret office location! Get down here now! I hustle through the doors and someone puts a litre of orange juice in my hand; someone else hands me a beer. The little guy has my tape recorder and someone has handed me a third thing, a coke thing, and somewhere far away “Settlers of Catan” is being played. Well.

Oh God, it’s not even 3pm and I’ve been picked up bodily six times.

Another office, another table of questionable legality. Someone storms in to yell about the cops and storms back out. I think there’s a protest being organized; we’re all going to smoke in front of the fascist fuckers. But first, finishing this drink. Someone claps a hat on my head, troops are gathered and we commence the march up and out and into the parking lot, singing the songs of the revolution. The songs of the revolution seem to be largely from the early 90s.

A little hassle at the registration table; the hipsters are unhappy about our numbers. Damn right they should be; the armies of the revolution are innumerable! … and we’re cranky bastards, don’t be fooled by our sweet demeanour; we’ve infiltrated this area not to be closer to the stage but to wreak havoc among the ranks of the supposed elite, the lucky sons of bitches with their stick-on VIP and their all-access to the washed-up … picture our masses, sweating, unwashed, yearning to be free—or intoxicated—storming the beer kegs, compostable cups outstretched…

Hey Ocean! tells the crowd they have a song for people born in the 90s, and the mass of them, the heaving screaming drunken bloody mass of them go nuts, throwing themselves on the goddamn barricades like suicidal blues onto a beach, exploding where they once lay quietly … and Deee-Lite grooves us all in the heart, even the couple humping against the side of the toilets.

Later. Four or five of us lined up along the fence, watching a girl down on all fours, puking into the grass—that’s how you can tell which ones have really had enough, they can’t make it to the more socially acceptable regurgitation areas, like the toilets or the area around the toilets. Security milling around, waiting for her to finish up before they ask her to leave. Someone takes a picture, and she coughs out a little more, then heads back into the fray with her friends. Hippies move in to dance in the same area, and the Barenaked Ladies take the stage. Eight guitars, no stage presence … and the aggressively Canadian stage banter is making my head hurt.

But the crowd is still loving it—some of them have even crossed the divide from the piss-up booze-soaked side of the field to the area where the bands are playing—and they’re jamming themselves up towards the band again, faces upstretched towards the residual odor of fame … mouths and nostrils splayed open to catch it … some great horrible wonderful schmear of beer and drugs and sun and bodies across the field. Tomorrow there’ll be great trampled swaths in the grass, and piles of beer cups… crunching beneath our feet as we stumble out into a decidedly lowering evening, mumbling song lyrics into the back of our carriers. It’s all been done before.

A sober and reasoned analysis

By Philip Storey

Reviewing Block Party is sort of a strange thing to do. For example, I don’t usually make a habit of going over to a party at my friend Stanley’s house and then critiquing his guacamole and chip bowl (which sucks, by the way). For what it’s worth, then, here is a review of the music event that is Block Party.

First up was Michael Bernard Fitzgerald, a name with far too many syllables to be catchy or easy to say. Anyway, I’ve never really liked MBF because his whole ridiculously-huge-band shtick always seemed like a gimmick to me. However, I am happy to report that I was fairly impressed with his performance, probably due to the fact that there was only a small group of musicians onstage. His conversation between songs was awkwardly funny but that is the sort of thing that he does and it does show a certain level of stage presence and showmanship. I’m not crazy about the peppiness of most of his tunes but they did seem to suit the last day of class.

Next, Hey Ocean! took the stage. I’ve honestly never listened to anything by Hey Ocean! before but they too certainly seemed up for the challenge of playing while everyone drank themselves blind. I wasn’t crazy about their effort to pad out their set list with covers of Green Day and The Cardigans, but again, everyone else seemed to enjoy it. Nothing in their show really convinced me to start caring about them but nothing really turned me off either.

Finally, Barenaked Ladies arrived onstage. This was, I felt, the weakest performance of the day, yet by the time BNL took the stage, everyone was too drunk to notice. BNL supposedly used to shine with their humourous performance between songs. At Block Party, this humour revolved solely around telling people to drink more water and some inane mention of the kraken. It seemed forced. Obviously it’s difficult to judge BNL properly without their chief singer/songwriter. Time will tell if this proves to be a killing blow to them or not, but it wasn’t quite the experience I had hoped. Old favourites “One Week” and “If I Had $1,000,000” were played well and certainly resounded with our collective memories of being ten.

(No Ratings Yet)

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