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To Rogers’ Picnic, Bring an Appetite for Twee Instruments

By Sarah Nicole Prickett

20080717rogers.jpg
Still listening to indie rock? If so, time to get amped for that other cellular service provider–sponsored outdoors concert: the Rogers Picnic. This year’s spread includes the usual grub—ubiquitous preps Vampire Weekend and local flavour-of-the-year Tokyo Police Club—as well as finer treats, like the lovable, esoteric Animal Collective, or Cat Power and her smuggled-whiskey voice. The egg salad sandwich, if you will—love it or loathe it—is headliner City and Colour, the Dallas Green solo project you can usually find on your mom’s and your little sister’s recently played lists.
On the side, the Nokia Tent offers DJ sets by Jeremy Greenspan (one of the Junior Boys), Team Canada, Let’s Go To war, and VND/LSM. You know, just in case you’ve missed a lot of Wednesday nights at The Social.
Tickets are $49.50 in advance and are available online at Ticketmaster, TicketBreak.com, or with friendly neighborhood vendors Play De Record, Rotate This, and Soundscapes.
Bring your checkered blankets and cocoa butter to (Historic) Fort York, 100 Garrison Road, this Sunday afternoon. Doors open at 1 p.m. and Scarborough’s own dance-and-thrash duo The Carps kickstart the show at 1:35 p.m., and the last acoustic chord will probably fade out around 11 p.m. Do we need to say rain or shine?
Photo, left, of Dallas Green by Vanessa Heins; right, of the Carps, courtesy of Listen Harder Music.

Comments

  • Rajio

    Don’t forget Dizzee Rascal

  • greatcop

    I was just gonna say the same thing!
    Bought my ticket today. A tad steep compared to my usual showgoing fare, but Animal Collective, Dizzee, Born Ruffians, Cat Power and TPC all playing Toronto at the same time would be too hard to justify passing over.

  • spacejack

    I’m pretty sure that photo on the right was taken in 1989.

  • David Toronto

    Here I am thinking I’m a fool.
    For more than sixty years I believed that
    picnics were free community and family
    gatherings.
    And that you brought something to the mix
    sort of pot-luck style.
    But Rogers wants to charge nearly $50 for
    a social gathering at an historical site.
    But the CHIN picnic is free, isn’t it?
    So what gives? Is this some new corporate
    ethic that allows one to charge admission?
    Does a private business that closes down for
    the day to give its employees a day’s outing
    and picnic charge them? I hardly think so.
    If anything the business goes all out as a
    thank-you gesture to its workers and their
    families.
    But this is Rogers. And as with Rogers, you
    take what they give and swallow hard.

  • leftist

    Still listening to indie rock?
    That just made me spit out water… so rock is passe now?
    Guitar music is so over.

  • flashman

    David Toronto – you’re joking, surely? It’s a concert featuring some of the best and biggest indie rock bands in Canada… Picnic is just a cute and catchy name… T in the Park doesn’t actually serve tea, for example. I’m baffled – again, unless you’re being all Torontoist on us (read: sarcastic.)
    I’m all for raging on cell phone companies, but charging for tickets to a concert is hardly an Snidely Whiplash-esque corporate plot.

  • PickleToes

    Indie is just an invitation for the emo wrist cutters to show themselves. I really don’t know why Torontoist is egging them on.

  • MariaPD

    Hah, I think the word “picnic” is stupid. It is not a picnic, it is a concert or something. If it were a picnic… where is the picnic basket? are people going to share sandwiches and watermelon?… etc.
    The name is just confusing.

  • james a

    Confusing? Seriously?

  • MariaPD

    Look at comment #4, Re: confusing.

  • David Topping

    Yeah! And who is this “Roger” fellow, anyway?

  • David Toronto

    @flashman
    ———-
    No, I wasn’t kidding. I took it literally.
    Of course, maybe they meant “outdoor feast”
    of music. That I would understand but I don’t
    think there was any similar expression to
    clear things up.

  • mrtunes

    my mind is being expanded to new heights with all this outdoor nomenclature discussion.
    anyways i know the festival lineup isn’t up to snuff for the aficionados out there, but wouldn’t it be weirder if the telecom giant that is Rogers put together a seriously crazy lineup of artists?
    besides, these are the people that brought you the 30 seconds of glory where a bunch of teenagers use flickr on their cellphone to find out that their friends have been eaten by a bear.

  • AR

    Wow, it’s like this generation doesn’t know what a picnic is. They just assume it’s a generic name for an event.