Sasquatch Report: Sunday Kickoff

After the storm passed, most of the crowd reappeared for mainstage-only performances -- the two side stages were shut down. The Tragically Hip picked up where Neko had left off. (MSN Video has excerpts, and is going to be adding more from the whole concert over the week -- they're hoping for around 5 hours of video.) We're not that down with the Hip's brand of vocal stylings and improvisational soliloquizing but we have to give them credit for playing hard for a shivering, blue-lipped audience. Also, they dedicated their set to Neko because they are nice Canadians. We wolfed down some "hot 'n' spicy" yakisoba (which was neither) during their set.

Up next was The Shins, fresh outta P-town. Is it too much to say that their warmth and good humor revived the audience, saving lives most likely lost to hypothermia otherwise? No, it is not. It's not true, exactly, but there you go. Anyway, their set was varied, they tried out two brand-new songs that didn't suck, and as Natalie Portman promised in Garden State, they changed our lives.

(We'll spare you several hundred words about strings of monkeys holding hands who pressed themselves through the crowd jammed in front of the stage from the beginning of the set to the end. We're not sure what band they were there for because they frequently left again for beer. Our favorite was the-guy-with-the-full-backpack who wanted to be front-and-center but decided to head there 20 minutes into the set.)

The Flaming Lips were to follow, but after an agonizing set-up time -- it wasn't freezing, but we had been frozen, and it was definitely cooler after the sun went down -- Ben Harper came on, with the Lips to close. The Harper set was furious, fierce, and fucking fabulous. We couldn't feel our feet but we didn't care. From the looks of some of the people in the crowd, they couldn't feel anything and they were still having a great time.

We were torn about missing the Lips (who played until nearly 2am), but we were over the initial thrill of hypothermia, and packed it in for the night.