Fujirockers: The official fansite of the Fuji Rock Festival

Best Shows:

Fishbone tore my brain off.

John Fogerty has so many classic songs, and he plays them with such love and gratitude.

Them Crooked Vultures rocks hard, and were compelling even playing all-new material that most people didn’t know well. Dave Grohl and Josh Homme just have so much bad-assery between them.

Greatest ambivalence:

Jamie Cullum wins epically and fails hard, generally doing one then the other then the first again, in a constant cycle until his set ends.

Matt & Kim had me falling completely in love with their insane sincerity and enthusiasm at their first show at Gypsy Avalon, and then feeling rather creeped out when they repeated the show at the White Stage the next day. And by repeated I mean verbatim, line-for-line, with the same jokes, same ’spontaneous’ asides, same ‘oh-hey-I-just-thought-of-this’ ideas for audience participation.

(We should probably take the hearsay rumors about why they cancelled their first show at Naeba Shokudo with a hefty grain of salt though. Seems none of us got a chance to ask them directly.)

Seven Nation Army Sighting:

Yes.

Although I have to say I was disappointed. I expect such a thing from a beatboxer, and since Beardyman waited until late in his second performance to drop it, I thought he was going to act as the canary in coalmine and signal the death of a zeitgeist by not performing it. But really, once in a 3-day Fest is pretty light for this one.

Most striking fashion:

Boots!

Best cold beverage:

Old Speckled Hen.

Best blog post headline:

Roxy Music: Perverts Welcome But No Longer Expected

Best oasis of respite after three long days in the mud and a flu about to arrive in my lungs the next morning:

I’ve been walking past the bar in these photos (a couple hundred meters past the Palace Of Wonder, in town) for years and never stopped. Dragging my sorry, wet, getting-sick ass back to the minshuku Sunday night for a bath I thought of this place and decided this would be the time I took a much-needed break, to gather strength and resolve. Next thing I knew, I was upon it, and, receiving a cold cup of Asahi with a smile, sat down for a drum jam under the awning. Sweet, sweet, succor.

-Kern