Weekend of music and hippies

August 1st, 2008 Posted in Day to Day

Sunset on Sunday

This past weekend I went to Hillside. Hillside is an annual music and culture festival that takes place on the island (peninsula) in Guelph Lake Conservation Area. This year was the 25th anniversary and (I think) the fifth year I attended.

Rather than going into an insane amount of detail and recounting the entire weekend I’m going to try and sum it up quickly with highlights.

  • I look forward to this weekend every year and this weekend did no disappoint.
  • Hillside is a big, mainstream, indie, hippie music festival and it is almost completely green. Reusable dishes are washed by Ninjas, all organics are composted recyclables recycled. Beer bottles are collected and returned and food is all locally prepared and supported.
  • The Tibetan Monks were actually Tibetan Monks and not a band called Tibetan Monks. Super cool.
  • Workshops are what differentiate Hillside from other music festivals. Workshops are when two or more bands get together on stage for an hour and just jam. Some of the stuff that comes out of those events is better than watching one band playing their own set. I had some videos, but Youtube doesn’t seem to like them. If they ever end up online, I’ll post it here.
  • Tom King (writer and federal NDP candidate) and Ed Broadbent (former NDP leader) partook in a traditional Native American drum circle.
  • Mike Nagy (federal Green Party candidate) was also floating around/organizing the festival (there is a federal by-election ciming up in Guelph)
  • Stuart Mclean’s musical guest was Ron Sexsmith and not Bono as some people were expecting.
  • The food, as usual, was super fantastic.
  • I saw a number of people I see once a year at Hillside and it was great to catch up.
  • One of these “annual friends,” Liz Buzza, makes bags which she was selling at the festival. I bought one and love it.  I’m going to make her a website for a customized laptop bag. It’s going to have lots of secret pockets (the bag, not the website… or.. maybe the website will too..)
  • It didn’t rain until Sunday, after which there was an INCREDIBLE rainbow. Three full spectrums of colour. I wish my camera batteries hadn’t died.

Here’s some music (and their myspaces) I would highly recommend you check out: