My year is divided into two seasons: school season and festival season. Annually, when my second semester begins, I begin to scope for festival lineups on the Internet, only to find myself playing “Where’s Waldo” in trying to find real lineups amidst the countless fake ones.Usually, I’ll make a point to attend a couple festivals, and I find myself traveling as far as California to go see these things. Needless to say, spending over a week of travel and a lot of money to see a bunch of indie-rock bands is a tiring experience.Enter the Rifflandia Music Festival, a refreshing, local, and affordable hipster wet dream to wrap up festival season. Founded in 2008 by Nick Blasko and Casey Austin, the festival lasted over the course of four, sold-out days, from September 24^th-27^th, on which music lovers got to see seventy-five shows at six different venues in downtown Victoria.This year, I managed to attend the Thursday shows and I also had the privilege of chatting with the Manager of Administration for Rifflandia, Deb Beaton-Smith, about the festival in general and how the weekend went.Once I had reached downtown Victoria, I found myself somewhat unsure how the night would turn out. I had to face an unfamiliar festival format: various venues throughout a city, rather than one grouping of multiple stages. In one hand, I had a list of bands, in the other a list of venues. My initial thought was that I would almost certainly miss some of the acts I wanted to see. Fortunately, this was not the case.

“Part of the success was the concept that all of the venues were really close together”, Deb told me when I spoke to her over the phone later the next week.

I found this to be true as I made my rounds, starting at the Market Square venue for the disco-punk of Montreal’s Creature. Through their hyperactive performance of tracks off of 2008’s No Sleep At All, Creature set precedent for the night. With my adrenaline pumping, I whisked myself away to Final Fantasy, probably my most anticipated act of the night.Final Fantasy was to play at the Alex Goolden Hall, just a few blocks up the street from the Market Square venue, which was being used as a venue for the first time in this format, one of the few changes made from last year’s festival. I must say, I was really excited by the prospect of sitting in comfortable chairs AND being able to see the artist perform, an experience seldom experienced at most festivals I’ve been to.

Anyways, upon my arrival, I was immediately informed of tragedy. Apparently Owen Pallett had fallen ill and wouldn’t be able to perform. Crushed, I quickly changed course to Element Nightclub to catch the remainder of the Said the Whale set.I was impressed with how quick and thorough the volunteers at the festival responded to the changes. This was possible due to the fact that the volunteers at each of the venues were in constant contact with the headquarters. With Final Fantasy, the crew was quick, yet helpful in their redirection of a potentially disgruntled crowd.During my conversation with Deb, I asked her about how the team coped with last minute changes, to which responded that “we were Twittering, Facebook, and messaging out online” in order to inform people about the changes. For the most part, due to Rifflandia’s large online presence, this was a successful tactic. This is no surprise considering the popularity of the in-depth, and very informative Rifflandia Website (www.rifflandia.com) of which Deb was an important contributor in terms of uploading bios, photos and music (she cites on one day the site had 22 000 hits!).

This shows an incredible connection to the people attending the event, a process that had started the previous year, and continued this year with the distribution of thousands of copies of a free Rifflandia magazine throughout Victoria that offered in-depth artist bios and venue maps.It was the latter of which I found very helpful in guiding me to Element for Said the Whale.The local sweethearts in Said the Whale played to what appeared to be on of the larger, more excitable crowds of the evening. Being vaguely unfamiliar with Said the Whale at the time, I became increasingly interesting in the band the longer their set continued. The gracious hook-friendly folk pop that made up their set, quickly pushed Said the Whale up as a potential set of the night, making me feel obliged to eventually pick up their new record, Islands Disappear. Despite being won over, I reluctantly tore myself away to Lucky Bar in order to catch another Vancouver act (though significantly less sweet), Fake Shark Real Zombie!.Now, the great part about this band is that you could absolutely hate them (which I’m sure is the case for some people, as they aren’t the most accessible group, save for maybe the track “Angel Lust”), but their on engaging stage presence was undeniable. Despite the small, mainly seated crowd, Fake Shark Real Zombie! still went balls first into a sweat-drenched, no holds-barred set. Eventually, their onstage energy became infectious and forced people out of their seats and on to the dance floor.Next up, I shuffled back to Market Square to catch one of my favorite Canadian hip-hop artists, Shad. Armed with a bassist and a DJ, Shad was welcomed with a large ovation. Needless to say, Shad didn’t disappoint. Shad played everything from his hit “The Old Prince Still Lives at Home” to cuts from his first record, like “Rock to It”. He even did a cover of the Hey Ocean! track “Vagabond”, on which he is featured, with a sample of Sufjan Steven’s “Come On! Feel the llinoise!”. For the duration of his set, Shad owned the entire Market Square.For the most part, after Shad, my night was done. However, I kicked around Lucky Bar again to regain my energy after Shad’s chilled-out style. I found a second wind with DJ Felix Cartel but left before the end of his set to return to Market Square to see the much-hyped DJ Champion and His G-Strings. Regardless of being unfamiliar with most of DJ Champion’s material, their set was the perfect way to cap off the night. Their loud, epic electro-rock fusion attracted what seemed to be beyond venue capacity, as there was hardly room to move on the balcony surrounding the large Market Square dance floor.The overwhelmingly positive reaction of the DJ Champion and His G-Strings was a perfect demonstration of the success of Rifflandia. In speaking to Deb, she mentioned that a festival format like Rifflandia “allows for a variety of good music and to be able to present that to the public and not just one genre, or one format, or one stage”.The success of this year couldn’t have been without the help of the 80 volunteers that were instrumental in the running for the weekend. In terms of the positive feedback received by concert-goes Deb attributes part of the responsibility to the artists.“I think it really speaks to live music” she says. “When a song gets recorded its always the same, but when a band plays live, they change it up” she continues.“Each time can be different and each show can be different.”I would like to extend huge thanks to Deb Beaton-Smith for supplying me with her commentary on the weekend and information regarding the festival.Hopefully, preparation for next year has already began because I know that I’ll be there for sure.