****warning – man in sparkly thong!

Reignwolf @ the Sasquatch stage.

Japandroids at the Honda Bigfoot stage.

Arctic Monkeys @ the Sasquatch Stage.

Strand of Oaks @ the Yeti Stage.

Father John Misty @ the Honda Bigfoot stage – my favourite show of the day.

More to come from day 2!

A partly cloudy, cool morning at the Sasquatch! music festival turned into a beautiful sunny warm afternoon just in time for Saskatchewan born Reignwolf, a.k.a. Jordan Cook, to take the Sasquatch stage at the Gorge.

Reignwolf’s blues based shredding was a welcome sight at Sasquatch and big crowd showed for his 5pm set. The trio including, Stitch (Cook’s brother) on bass guitar and Joseph Braley on drums were appreciative of the lively audience.

The show was a flawless reckoning of riff driven rock and soulful crooning as Cook pulled out all the stops on this show, likely in hopes of garnering new fans.

Cook keeps his title as “King of climbing tall things and rocking out” when what appeared to be his tour van was suddenly backed into the middle of the crowd for the finale of the show.

Bouncing off the stage and up onto the roof of the van – guitar, microphone and kick drum in tow, Cook proceeded to finish the show in spectacular fashion playing a few hits and then eventually thrashing, as only he can, while the van slowly pulled away.

The crowd loved it! Reignwolf was a hit at Sasquatch 2013– big time.

Photo by Kim Jay

Well before the events of the past week, The Globe and Mail began to research the Ford brothers in an effort to chronicle their lives before rising to prominence in Canada’s largest city. Over the past 18 months, it has sought out and interviewed dozens of people who knew them in their formative years.

What has emerged is a portrait of a family once deeply immersed in the illegal drug scene. All three of the mayor’s older siblings – brother Randy, 51, and sister Kathy, 52, as well as Doug, 48 – have had ties to drug traffickers.

Ten people who grew up with Doug Ford – a group that includes two former hashish suppliers, three street-level drug dealers and a number of casual users of hash – have described in a series of interviews how for several years Mr. Ford was a go-to dealer of hash. These sources had varying degrees of knowledge of his activities: Some said they purchased hash directly from him, some said they supplied him, while others said they observed him handling large quantities of the drug.

The events they described took place years ago, but as mayor, Rob Ford has surrounded himself with people from his past. Most recently he hired someone for his office whose long history with the Fords, the sources said, includes selling hashish with the mayor’s brother.

The Globe wrote to Doug Ford outlining what the sources said about him, and received a response from Gavin Tighe, his lawyer, who said the allegations were false. “Your references to unnamed alleged sources of information represent the height of irresponsible and unprofessional journalism given the gravely serious and specious allegations of substantial criminal conduct.”

Go read it! In fact, the five-page epic is so good it’s even worth buying the physical newspaper and devouring it old-school, printed-words-on-paper style.

Doug Ford refutes the Globe’s story, calling media “scumbags” and saying ““I think it’s pretty low, and a bunch of sleazy, sleazy journalism. It has gone to the bottom of the barrel … it makes me sick”.  Is he just throwing out insults and lying his ass off to protect his position of power? What do you think?

To give you a sense of what Young Benjamins are like here’s video from February of the band performing their song “Young Argument” at the Dakota Tavern in Toronto:

2 ROBOCALLS WERE ORGANIZED FRAUD: JUDGE Greg blogged it last night and I’m mentioning it again because I’m  annoyed that bye-elections weren’t ordered. Supposedly the scale of the fraud wasn’t significant enough. Here’s the story and here’s the actual ruling. In other robocall news, the CRTC has fined Alberta’s Wildrose Party $90,000 for breaking the robo-rules.

3 MEANWHILE IN SASKATCHEWAN We, along with three other lower population provinces,  got a “D” in health care; Regina wants federal money to clean up the dead lots once used by gas stations (context here); The police union is worried about our new labour laws and the lack of an arbitration mechanism for when contract talks break down; a police officer’s assault trial continues; and the Saskatoon Blades have been eliminated in the Memorial Cup and Saskatoon is so sad they’re banning dogs from riding in the backs of trucks.

4 MORE ARRESTS IN LONDON ATTACK Here’s the latest news on BBC and the Guardian. Also, Glenn Greenwald has a thoughtful column on the definition of terrorism here.

5 SYRIA AGREES TO ATTEND HYPOTHETICAL PEACE TALKS IN GENEVA Read all about it.

6 THIS IS WHAT AN “INFRASTRUCTURE DEFICIT” LOOKS LIKE A bridge in Washington State collapsed, dropping cars and people into the water. Fortunately no one was killed. The collapse appears to have been triggered by a Canadian trucker whose truck might have been over the weight limit but having said that, the bridge had received low scores on inspections and was rated “functionally obsolete” in 2010. Remember those infrastructure conferences in Regina? This kind of thing is why it’s important to fund infrastructure. Also, don’t drive overloaded trucks on bridges.

7 THIS SIX HAS SEVEN Hey, the Boy Scouts of America will now accept gay scouts who must GET OUT, GET, OUT, GET OUUUUUT when they become adults and would like to be scout leaders, but minimal progress is still progress.

8 EIGHT? WHY NOT? John Gormley has a slightly pompous but not insane column on the ongoing Senate scandal.

PURR Word on the street is that today’s Friday Afternoon Kitty isn’t a cat at all. But what’s a Friday without a cat? So here you go. More here. Meow!

To get everyone primed, here’s video from 2010 of Cannibal Corpse performing “Priests of Sodom”: