Yellowcard was among 18 bands that appeared at last Saturday’s Ookfest, billed as Canada’s biggest campus party. Thousands of students swarmed over NAIT’s main-campus soccer field to take in the bands and the sideshows with temperatures as hot as the music.

The 2006 lineup included:

• Metric
• Yellowcard
• Thornley
• Danko Jones
• Idle Sons
• Cadence Weapon
• Emery
• Reeve Oliver
• Lillix
• Broken Nose
• Murder City Sparrows
• Maestrot
• Elevated Tactics
• Cocksaw
• Ryan Stock & Amber Lynn
• 1664 BMX & more!!

Article from the NAIT Nugget by TAZ DHARIWAL

I think the music festival Gods are smiling brightly upon NAITSA as one of Western Canada’s premier music festivals, Ookfest, entered its ninth year with a bang that could be heard from Nelson, BC’s Shambhala to Toronto Island’s Virgin Festival.

This year’s lineup provided the extra boost Ookfest sorely needed after the last few years of disappointment when it came to needed headliners to insure there was enough rocking on the NAIT soccer field.

Metric, who are still riding high from last year’s Live it Out, and Yellowcard were a couple of the headliners that really attracted both fans and partiers alike to this year’s festivities. Rounding up the lineup were a slew of local performers and nationally known artists such as Danko Jones, Thornely, Maestro, Cocksaw, Cadence Weapon, and Broken Nose.

The day boded well as the three stages were in full effect by midday. Wandering the venue, I was in awe of how great the venue looked. I’m a veteran of music festivals, from small-fries to Big-Boys, and it’s in this author’s honest opinion, that Ookfest is defi nitely past that small fry stage and closing in on Big Boy status.

With three major stages, two fully stocked bars (if beer was not your libation of choice,) bleachers for the tired and weaklimbed, and food concession stands that didn’t gouge the living crap out of your wallet. In addition to the lovely weather the music fest Gods blessed us with, we also had main attractions that rocked the ever loving crap out of us. With three stages, Ookfest never got stale or boring. There was always something going on, and watching the rushes of people going from stage to stage was always a treat if you weren’t smack dabbed in the middle of the crowd. As for the crowd, I don’t think I’ve ever met a group of drunken crazies rowdies that were actually really decent folk who looked out for their fellow festival go-er. I saw a number of people going down in the moshpits, but everyone was supercool and got the fallen back onto their feet without incident or injury. It’s a far cry from some of the pits I’ve seen where it’s every man (or woman) for themselves.

Many of the highlights of this weekend’s festivities include Ryan Stock’s Mayhem, a balls-out freakshow meets comedian that entertained the Jagermeister stage three times getting us all prepared for his new series on the Discovery channel called “Guinea Pig.”

On the Molson Canadian stage, Canadian Hip-hop legend Maestro kicked it oldskool with his set which was pretty much like a best-of album performed on stage. Even his hypeman threw the crowd into a hip-hop frenzy. Indie darling Cadence Weapon and DJ Weazel threw down another vicious set, showing that local hip-hop can make waves throughout the world without having to relocate to Toronto or Vancouver.

Danko Jones turned Ookfest into the Danko Jones festival for his blistering set of sex rock. Broken Nose took punk rock and gave Ookfest a spikedfi sted enema of awesome. Thornley and Cocksaw gave awesome performances as well, and naturally, Metric and Yellowcard held the festival goers in their palms of their hands, and fi nished off their night with electrifying shows.

Overall, Ookfest gave everyone a piece of what they were looking for. Whether it be punk rock, freakshow, hip-hop, and alt.rock, Ookfest delivered, and hopefully, they can crank it up again next year, and take all of us to the next level.