It surprises me how many people still haven’t heard of Westfest. Westboro’s clever new business development association reacted to a huge street & sewer repair debacle that nearly wiped out a number of businesses on Richmond by throwing a huge yearly street party. It’s getting pretty massive.

This year’s Saturday night headliners were Sloan, who I haven’t seen since like 1998 (in Waterloo!), but they made a huge impression on me and I’ve been following their album releases ever since. You’ve probably heard some of their stuff recently: “The Good in Everyone” is the theme to George S15s’ ‘The Hour’ on CBC.

The Westfest venue is in a park that works really well for small audiences, but they struggled a bit with the larger Sloan crowd. It was standing room only from the stage to the condos across the street, and the food shacks inconveniently covered a lot of the stage viewlines if you got caught behind the hill. I managed to elbow my way through the crowd to a great spot about midway through the concert, and camped out there in the wash of the bass coming out of the speakers. They were great! They crammed a bunch of their best songs in their time on the stage, jumping from song to song with clever transitions.

I heard Crash Test Dummies are coming back, too… it’s like 1998 all over again! I’m going to get a huge square pair of glasses and never tie my shoelaces!