Music Sleuth, I

Of late, a little investigation reveals something so shocking to me: the line-up at Arts County Fair this year includes the Weakerthans and the New Pornographers.

Simply look at this, and then at this, and say it ain't so.

Arts County Fair is a cheesily-named end-of-the-year concert/fiasco at the University of British Columbia. It's the kind of event which involves drinking in the morning, strategic dressing (hot in the day, freaking cold by the nighttime, when you are sweaty from the mosh and covered with mud), and careful plans on how to smuggle the weed in. Once in, you concentrated on not shattering your plastic ACF beer mug, endlessly trying to locate your friends in the giant sprawl of folks, and watching your stoned friends not so suavely steal bites of the hot dogs of complete strangers. A plastic fence halfway down the field seperated the drinkers from the non-drinkers and its periodical seiges by the 18-year-olds after beer and closer proximity to the stage was always an exciting spectator sport.

So, in essence, what I am saying is the music line-up doesn't really matter. The years I attended this event, bands like Moist, The Tea Party, and Big Sugar didn't enhance my enjoyment of the day, but they didn't necessarily squash it into the mud either. 54-40 plays this gig a lot, and we can all get a little enjoyment out of swaying in a mosh and yelling about how we-eee-eee-eee got an ocean pearl, especially when we don't have class the next day.

But what the eff? How come the UBC Arts Undergrad Society waits until now to book the people who sing the anthems of my discontent circa 2002? They were younger, cheaper and more angry then, and so was I, and churning the stadium into mud to the chords of Watermark would have meant so much more.