News

Virgin Festival

At Toronto Island Park

on the weekend

The third time was almost a charm. This year's Virgin Festival was 30 minutes or so away from making its way through the weekend without any sort of major hitch, something that couldn't be said of the first two editions of British mogul Richard Branson's promotional bonanza and major music festival on Toronto Island Park. In 2006, a headlining set by Oklahoma epic-rock specialists the Flaming Lips was cut short due to a noise curfew. A year ago, local band Broken Social Scene rushed in to replace a star attraction (Massive Attack), which had cancelled its scheduled appearance a mere three days before the festival was set to begin.

With stellar closing shows from the Welsh crunch-rockers Stereophonics and the R&B-bleeding Paul Weller, the 2008 offering was finishing stronger than a euro with a performance by Oasis when a hooligan breached backstage security, rushed the stage, knocked down a startled Noel Gallagher and approached singing brother Liam, before being tackled by the band's crew. The rough – who possibly disagreed with the Manchester band's soccer politics, or perhaps reckoned the fractious Gallagher brothers weren't doing enough battle with each other – beat the crowds back to the mainland as a secured passenger on a police boat.

It was an unfortunate and violent incident in an Oasis performance that had been going strikingly well. The flag of England waved high in a crowd of Brit-music supporters upfront as the hit-makers ran through classics and new material. Rock 'n' Roll Star was personified by Liam, who sneer-sang in type. Lyla, with its sing-along refrain, had the audience involved. Fresh ones included the Eastern-music psychedelia of To Be Where There's Life and the upbeat groove of The Shock of the Lightning, the first single from the forthcoming album Dig Out Your Soul.

After the interruption, the taken-aback band took a breather before returning to render more hits, but in a rather sombre mood. Momentum – and there was a lot of that – was lost. After the wistful masterpiece Wonderwall and a handful of other numbers, the day-islanders were sent scurrying to the ferries with a cover of I Am the Walrus, a lysergic-acid evoking Beatles tune with the line “see how they fly like Lucy in the sky, see how they run.”

The two-day Virgin Festival drew some 40,000 music lovers to Toronto Island Park, a place of swans, lagoons and almost every tree ever invented. There were grumbles about monstrous lines to the beer gardens, but otherwise there was nothing much to disapprove of. British expatriates in particular had their two days in the sun, taking in winning shows by the Kooks, the Fratellis, Pigeon Detectives, Stereophonics, Bloc Party and the copper-toned “Modfather” Weller.

Will the crowds be back next year? Undoubtedly. The vicious interlude in the final act was a drag, but if the people on the return boat were disturbed, they shouldn't have been – “Don't look back in anger,” we heard Oasis say.