Sheila E. elevates Interstellar to new heights

“All those moments will be lost in time … like tears in rain.”

Yeah, sure, if you’re some freaky Aryan robot dying on a rooftop that’s true — but at Interstellar Rodeo, the only way Saturday’s memories are flitting away any time soon is simple overload. We’re going to be talking about what happened here for decades.

Where to begin? List off every artist in order with a single sentence, ignoring at least ten memorable accomplishments apiece? Slither up the nearest billboard in the name of Sheila E’s hate-rejecting sermon and scream “I LOVE YOU!” to a congregation of dewy corvids of dawn? It was a living, stranger-hugging antidote to Alberta’s increasingly mouldering name.

Let’s go by themes, starting with the energizing.

From Major Love singer Colleen Brown’s beautifully weird monologue about being creatures of flesh to K’Naan’s heartbreaking eulogy song Fatima, through the slow-motion St. Vitus, bend-over-backwards dancing of Perfume Genius’ Mike Hadreas, all the way up to the simply jaw-dropping funk finale, Saturday under the Heritage Amphitheatre was a return to the Charles Bradley/Buffy St. Marie/Courtney Barnett heights of the previous seven years, full stop.

Ever a place where, with the slightest willpower, you can get up and dance inches away from your favourite band, the day’s hand’s-on interactivity included a flower-crowned James Baley reaching out to the audience, the mighty Sheila E. setting up and playing guitar in the centre aisle, pulling 20 people from the crowd onstage — and of course the reliable shoulder-to-shoulder chitchat as the stage was shut down during the afternoon thundershower.

There was an especially funny moment as CBC’s Tara McCarthy hinted we’d be up and running fast, so long as lighting didn’t strike. It did, the second she finished that sentence. Getting up again took about an hour.

Let’s add to the scoreboard that only one afternoon shutdown in two days is actually better odds than the last couple years out here, and Zaki Ibrahim came back with her tilted-LP hat and outrageously awesome backup singers in pharaonic ocean bodysuits, South African R&B with a brazen Afro-futurism sexuality — the singer foreshadowing the headliner by getting up and drumming centre stage.