1 day, 2 festivals, 3 music legends

The Heavy Mania stage
 
If I was gonna be taken back, I was going all the way. No sooner did I enter the guest bar when I bumped into an old high school chum. The underground wrestling world knows him as SeXXXy Eddy. He and his friends are like crazy famous in a universe that I can’t even begin to truly understand. He told me he was “working” at 4 p.m. So we slammed a couple and headed off to see Nashville Pussy.

What serves as the outdoor den of iniquity we call the Piknic stage during Osheaga morphs into the Scène Apocalypse for Heavy, as the former’s barf-fuelled, dope-sack-scattered charm gives way to a Jack’s Links-frenzied, silica gel-package-plastered landscape that bellows “Do Not Eat” as loudly as the Pussies doing their Nashville rawk thang on stage. One wonders what the band would have beaten to death if not their instruments.

Over the course of this 2:30 p.m. and decidedly whiskey-free encounter, I became intensely aware of the fact I was hanging out with a wrestling demigod. My boy Eddy has always been nothing but a 100-fucking-per-cent original and the nicest dude, but when I got him to sign a flyer for my daughter, 10 of the 20 people who stopped to gawk told me how awesome he is and the other 10 were just jealous.

Even Eddy’s pre-tighty, out-of-disguise swagger caught us ‘nuff beef jerky, plus face time with Heavy’s bevy of lovely female wrestling promoters. I had no idea this wing of Heavy existed. I was to find out.

I ventured to the front of the Nashville Pussy crowd hoping for a warm-up slam in prep for Body Count later on, to no avail. The crowd were watchers. I enjoyed myself till the end of NP and then purposefully sat down against a fence in the dirt. I noticed I got some muck on my boots but it was likely leftover puke from Piknic debauch. I had that punk rock feeling.

The next thing I’ll describe doesn’t usually find a place in objective reporting but I think we’re past that. My friend that works for Heavy, the man who helped me cook up my interview with my own personal hip hop Jesus (Ice T), the guy who brought me to the event, a dude who is just a good soul I’m glad to have met along my travels, and who I never once actually bothered to ask, “What exactly do you do for this festival?” texts me: “Don’t miss the wrestling. That’s my project right there.”

Eddy was on at 4 p.m. and Body Count at 4:25. I counted my blessings, my wits and my drink intake, rounded them all out, and found myself hooting and hollering ringside for my high school homie, his motley crew of sweaty, musclebound, theatrical heroes and villains, and the 1,000-plus fans who enjoyed this newly expanded aspect of the festival: the Heavy Mania stage. All wrestling, all day, all completely astounding. I’d really jumped in the tank. I was at Heavy.

A sweaty, SeXXXy hug and a dash away later, I imposed myself on the frontmost edge of Body Count’s already bubbling pit and swam in. I missed their grand entrance, but the intro had just begun, and there I was, awe-filled. I made a pact with my phone to hold on tight, to keep dry, and to shoot pics unashamedly while moshing.

I’ve been star-struck exactly once in my life. It was watching Ice T front row at Foufs in July, 2007. I didn’t meet him. I didn’t shake his hand. I just witnessed my childhood icon in person and felt that feeling I’d always imagined everyone else felt when encountering their heroes and talking to their role models. I’ve never been jaded by what I do as a journalist because I talk to someone at the bus stop as casually as a renowned artist and treat people like people. But there’s only one Ice T.

So there I was, seven years later, that much more seasoned in everything I do, that much more humbled by the fact that I actually got to share in a half-hour of this man’s life by telephone, and nothing changed. I was in shock. Plus, this is Body Count. That Foufs show with just Ice, Coco and DJ Evil E was like a rap Sex Pistols reunion in its own right. But in the front rows of thousands and thousands of ecstatic metal fans, body surfers comin’ overhead toward the stage barrier like planes over a Dorval backyard, Body Count live was something I simply never thought I’d get to experience.

I took it in for everything it was worth. It was worth the moment in time I was seeking, the payoff being another personal opportunity to pay homage to an architect of the game and of my own world-view. It was worth kicks to the head, brief shoulder dislocation, mild claustrophobia and voice loss to the refrain of “Cop Killer” and “There Goes the Neighborhood” — songs eerily prescient of the coming days back in the real world, in hindsight.

But this was still Heavy and I was still kickin’. I had a fuckin’ wicked headache, the by-product of 36 years and one-sixth as many afternoon sunshine beers. I knew I needed lots of water, a couple more of those beers (shady-style) and a bite. I didn’t know what to do with myself until Fucked Up at 8:30. I knew Twisted Sister was at 6 PM, but I didn’t know if I cared. And then once I realized I kinda cared, I didn’t expect very much. Off I went.
 

CONTINUE TO PAGE 3: Twisted Sister and Fucked Up