OTTAWA -- The Crash Test Dummies get crazier and crazier with every stage performance. While it wasn't the visually obvious "let's-dress-up-as-Britney-Spears" stunt lead singer Brad Roberts pulled when the Winnipeg group opened for Alanis Morissette a few years back, yesterday afternoon's set on the final day of the Tulip Festival was littered with little bits of zaniness to sustain attention from the capacity crowd at Major's Hill Park. Then again, you'd be in a jovial, goofy face-pulling mood if you were in Roberts' position last fall, recuperating from a car accident in Nova Scotia which almost cost him his life -- and ultimately the end of the Dummies. Fortunately, he and his signature deep baritone survived, the one that gave stripped-down renderings of Superman's Song and Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm such haunting appeal and warranting much uproarious audience rejoicing. Where the craziness arose was from the mix of music styles that defied pegging the Dummies into one specific genre. One minute, as on the group's latest outing I Don't Care If You Don't Mind, Roberts, keyboardist-singer Ellen Reid, guitarist Stuart Cameron, drummer Mitch Dorge and Roberts' brother Dan on bass delved into the, er, Nova Scotia delta alt-bluegrass of The Day We Never Met, I Don't Care if You Don't Mind and one of the best toe-tappin' romps I've heard in awhile, Sittin' On A Tree Stump. The next minute, Roberts the country junkie slipped into melding funk, disco and even rapping to his heart's delight to the funky par-tay grooves of A Cigarette Is All You Get, I Want to Par-tay and that tooth-pulling-gone-awry number, He Liked to Feel It. More musical shakeups abounded with easy-on-the-ears fare such as God Shuffled His Feet and Reid's cover of XTC's The Ballad of Peter Pumpkinhead, which also gave way to one of the day's funniest face-pulls. Roberts went a step further with mockingly forgetting what song came next on his set list, not to mention all the smiles, head shakes and "thank you people" jocularity. But if anyone needed to ask who put yesterday's 7,000 or so in a good mood, to borrow a phrase from the Dummies' encore number Keep A Lid On Things: They did, baby, they did. Sandwiched between the Dummies were a pair of much-underrated talents: Danny Michel and Kathleen Edwards. In the former, the Kitchener-Waterloo singer-songwriter and former Starling bassist-guitarist brought smart-pop lyrical insights and equally smart guitar chops in one all-too-brief set. In the latter, the local songstress and her crack band delivered a riveting top-notch set of mostly new material which should be released very, very soon. Prior to Colin James' evening set, Tulip Festival organizers were also all smiles with this year's turnout, estimating about 100,000 visitors passed through the Major's Hill Park gates. "Strategically, we planned a strong lineup from the get-go with Leahy and Big Sugar bringing out the crowds," Doug Little, festival marketing and communications director, said yesterday. "And people might've had a chuckle about Loverboy, but when all is said and done people came out to see them." (More on Crash Test Dummies)