Big ups to Montreal – the kids still say “big ups,” right? - for setting up a Grey Cup village that provides a rather diverse drinking experience.

At the heart of this temporary community is a bar that looks like something the Euro-party set might stumble into if they took a very wrong turn in Ibiza. It’s a giant inflatable sphere, with silhouetted images of cheerleaders being projected onto the enormous tented walls. Inside, there are white couches, a DJ spinning dance tunes, and girls who may or may not be paid to be there dancing by themselves and being more friendly than you’d expect when you’ve been wearing the same jerseys for three days. Around the time we saw a dude giving a girl a lap dance, we decided to see what was next door.

Unfortunately, what was next door – in the largest of the village’s venues – was a U2 cover band named Elevation. Admittedly, our expectations for cover bands remain sky-high because of the transcendent experience that was Free Ride, the Rolling Stones imitators who rocked Grey Cup ’06 with two Keith Richards and nary a Ron Wood in sight. But Elevation just took themselves way too seriously. Honestly, when you’re in a cover band, you really don’t need to have entrance music from another band you’re not in. But for the record, we did enjoy the Bono impersonator describing the guy pretending to be The Edge as “the one, the only, The Edge.”

In the final pavilion – “The Bistro” – we finally found what we were looking for. No, not Free Ride – something called Wang Dang Doodle, a cover band that’s actually more of a jam band, complete with a saxophonist, a bassist who looked sort of like a shorter and more robust version of Geddy Lee, and an imposingly bald singer/guitarist who seemed to spend large chunks of the set serenading us with endless solos that we don’t remember being in the original version of Jet’s Are You Gonna Be My Girl.

We know that this sounds awful. But while it’s conceivable we were just swayed by their ridiculous name, we happened to find Wang Dang Doodle many shades of awesome. By the time they closed with some AC/DC, prompting tens upon tens of Montrealers to spastically gyrate like life-sized bobbleheads, Elevation had been left thoroughly in the dust.

Sadly, it appears they’ve not experienced the level of celebrity they deserve. At show’s end, following an encore slightly delayed because the bassist had disappeared into the can, the saxophonist was seen exiting the Bistro by himself. Honestly, we’d have thought there’d be a lineup of eager young ladies waiting to Wang Dang his Doodle.