by Mattael Darson

A new musical age is about to dawn in Saskatoon.

While the Saskatoon indie music scene has traditionally been dominated by a tight-knit cabal of musicians jointly making up a handful of bands, a new music festival — aptly dubbed the New Music Festival — aims to bring new Saskatoon talent to the fore.

The festival charter mandates that all bands be composed of members who have not performed together in the past. The organizers stated that this was to prevent the festival from falling prey to the “disgustingly incestuous nature of Saskatoon’s music scene. Really, it’s gross. Cut it out, you guys.”

Denver Sampson, who plays bass in about a dozen bands in town, says news of the festival hit the music community like a ton of bricks. “It’s just so unfair, you know,” says Sampson. “The same five guys and I bust our asses trying to put together the best six bands in Saskatoon and these goons, this musical Gestapo, comes in and tells us that we’re getting stale?”

Luckily, the enterprising and spotlight-hungry artists that comprise Saskatoon’s music scene have found a loophole — or rather, they have found a makeup artist.

“It’s genius,” says Marky Jack, another ubiquitous Saskatoon musician, his left eye cleverly disguised with an eyepatch, his right with a Ziggy Stardust lightning bolt. “These dumb idiots think they can stop us? No one can stop the rawest dudes in town from playing the sweetest beats and dropping the freshest rhymes,” he continues, as his stylist sizes him for a prosthetic Bieber bob and bedazzled eyelashes.

Festival organizers, so far, appear not to have caught wind of the devious scheme.

“This is great. This is exactly what we wanted: a whole new crop of Saskatoon bands coming out and getting some exposure,” says Jason Schreuers at the New Music Festival office. “We have The Sheet Hogs, Shy Business, We Were Brothers, Chad Reynolds and the Czechs — I’ve never heard of any of these acts!”

“These dudes look like rockstars too,” says Schreurs. “Did you see that one guy who was wearing a crocodile’s head on his arm and a tiger mask? I don’t know how he’s going to drum like that but it’s going to be wild.”

However, the clever tactics of Saskatoon’s musical veterans have had consequences for actual new musicians wanting to take part in the event.

“We tried to sign up last week,” says Greg Smith, the bassist for a new local group called The Ratfuckers. “But they said they’d already filled all the slots.”

“If the young guys want to join in, we’re open to that,” says Sampson. “My band could always use a chick on the tambourine or a roadie with a strong back.”