Fujirockers: The official Fuji Rock Festival blog

An extremely energetic Matt & Kim at The White Stage on Sunday Morn

My performance best o’ list for FRF ‘10 is as follows:

Matt & Kim — Sunday, August 1 @ White Stage (I know Kern said they did the *exact* same show on Saturday at Avalon, but I didn’t see them on Avalon and hot diggity damn were they ever fun on the White Stage)

Dirty Projectors — Saturday, July 31 @ Red Marquee

Vampire Weekend — Sunday, August 1 @ Greeen Stage

John Fogerty — Saturday, July 31 @ Green Stage

Mountain Mocha Kilimanjaro — Sunday, August 1 @ Field Of Heaven Continue Reading…

Foals impressed me so much that I went home and started listening to their album right away!

Yesterday I picked up a six-pack and went and debriefed a friend about Fuji Rock. He wanted to go  this year, but work and family obligations kept him away. He’s the type of bloke that gets NME shipped to his house and sees a ton of shows such as Atari Teenage Riot, Pet Shop Boys, and Ian Brown, all of whom  played recently in Taipei.   I told him that one of my surprises at the fest was  Foals and he  went over to his computer and started playing their music. We agreed that this awesome festival stuff  frenetic, upbeat tempos that really get a stage pumping.  I caught only a few songs but  should’ve known better due to an excellent preview right here.

As for the rest of the fest, I visited all of the stages and picked out a performer who fit its surroundings and entertained the audience.

Best Green Stage Performer: John Fogerty (pure unfettered joy)

Best White Stage Performer: Foals

Best Red Marquee Performance: Air (great light show and ambiance going on here. And its sort of funny  but I heard Thom Yorke calling for a little more ambiance while playing on the nearby Green Stage)

Best Orange Court Performance: Dirty Projectors (uplifting choruses during a steady rain and being far away from everything)

Best Field of Heaven Performance: Taylor Hawkins and the Coattail Riders (Dave Grohl sat in and did a session, hells yeah, drum summit! )

Best Naeba Shokudo Performance: Rory Mcleod (he opened the festival 11 years ago, and definitely embodies the spirit of Fuji Rock).

Best Dj: Rusko (Not many turned out but I have the sneaking suspicion that we will be hearing more of him in the future)

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 Continue Reading…

Best feat of engineering

Best show
John Fogerty: After seeing Stevie Wonder at Summer Sonic last week, I was refortified in my opinion of what a rare and wonderful treat Fogerty’s Saturday evening set was. Though Stevie can still ram and jam with the best of them, it’s clear that those classics, as great as they are, mean less to him with every passing concert. He’s just played them too many times. Fogerty, on the other hand, went almost three decades without playing his classic CCR tunes in front of people simply because he didn’t own the publishing and didn’t think he should pay for the privilege of performing them. Now that he’s got the publishing back, it’s like he’s discovered these songs for the first time: fresh, tough, eminently sing-alongable. Now it’s our privilege to hear them again.
Runnerup: Moriarty, the best France-based, Anglophone, Irish-American-roots rock group with female lead singer. Every festival should have one. Continue Reading…

Plenty to cheer about this year

Another Fujirock has come and gone. Here are a few of my most memorable moments:

Best performances of 2010:

Alberta Cross: Whoever was working the boards of this show should be given a medal. The band’s 3-guitar attack sounded perfect, and vocalist Petter Ericson Stakee proved he could hit the same notes live as he did on album. Jeff’s review here.

Beardyman: Magic comes out of this dude’s mouth. I saw all three of this beatbox/DJ’s shows, and aside from the occasional meandering club thump, was blown away every time. Reviews here and here.

The Human Cannonball: Yes, you read correctly. This guy, in a blaze of smoke and thunder, flew out of a cannon and into a nearby net. Nightly. More on him here and here.

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Thom Yorke

What I do like, of course, is Thom Yorke, a genius whom I had never seen live, and Flea, also quite great, so I don’t fault myself for making the mistake of requesting to cover this set. But still, The Eraser? This was a dull, dull record. Not a bad record, mind you, just a niche record, a bedroom record, to be greatly beloved by a few, and certainly not meant for the Green Stage on any night of the weekend.

So, you know where I’m coming from here, and consider yourself warned that you might prefer reading Clay’s excellent preview if you liked the show (or if you just like bagging on Gene Simmons). (And you are not a good human being if you don’t like bagging on Gene Simmons.)

My first time to see him live, it is clear that Yorke must have long since been welcomed by Dylan and Springsteen into the pantheon of unlikely superstars. Looking like a hobo John McEnroe (unshaven, unkempt, headband, etc.), his movements are not graceful, but hunched and greasy, almost golem-like. He struts about a bit like a slutty 1970’s secretary who knows she is too smart for the glass ceiling (a.k.a., Rod Stewart). Except, again, he looks like a hobo John McEnroe golem, which makes it a little creepy. Good thing talent still counts for something in this world. And shame on you all for thinking about such low matters.
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A-Seed volunteers. I believe the young man in the corner is doing his job and picking something up, in spite of appearances.

My friend Sarah reported earlier about her experience as a garbage sorter at the Summer Camp music festival north of Chicago, as a comparison to our experiences in Japan, and I finally managed to rustle up some concrete info on the Fuji Rock side of things this past weekend, thanks to Tokiko Djakovacki from A-Seed, the Japan-based international NPO that has managed the refuse at Fuji since the beginning (and that manages it at many other music festivals and ‘youth culture’ events), who graciously agreed to speak with me during her dinner hour Sunday night.

At Fuji, the mantra is “gomizero”, “gomi” meaning “garbage”, indicating their desire to recycle 100% of the waste here. To accomplish this, A-Seed has a staff of 230 volunteers there just for the festival, plus 50 permanent A-Seed volunteers. The volunteers work two four-hour shifts on small teams, and have the rest of the time to enjoy the festival.

Needless to say, the operation runs pretty smoothly and seamlessly; the most obviously public activity of the volunteers is to stand at the garbage and recycling stands and direct festival-goers to place each item in the correct bag. This results in most of the garbage being sorted at the outset, a stark contrast to Sarah’s experience at Summer Camp, where she felt she accomplished little at the stands and did most of the work sorting garbage after the fact at the vomit-inducing sorting tent.
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Naruyoshi Kikuchi

9:50pm at Orange Court on Sunday night can be a lonely place to be, but a band like this sextet is tailor-made for this world. It’s avant-jazz of the type that drives many people to madness, and others to slack-jawed awe.

They are actually a pretty straightforward acoustic jazz quintent at bottom, with piano, upright bass, drums, trumpet, and sax (bandleader Kikuchi). The sex- arrives with the “Dub” part of their name, a fellow named Kimura Purdum behind a massive 25-inch monitor and who-knows-what toys connected to it. He produced squeals with sudden staccato stops, with bits repeated, backtracked and twisted about, presumably all in the service of upping how jarring a standard acoustic ensemble can be.

And they were most definitely doing it right, because it wasn’t polite. The dynamic range was huge, and the horn players were busting lips. The number I walked in was the definition of slinky, with periodic walking bassline breaks that had me looking for the raccoon-masked 1960’s diamond thief in our midst. The rhythms mostly swung like the early 60’s, but altogether the proceedings had the darkness of late-60’s fusion.
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Best voice: Moriarty's Rosemary

Best shows
Ozomatli
John Fogerty
Rustic Pans

Best voice
Moriarty

Worst voice
Ian Brown

Best new thing
The hammocks

Worst new thing
Getting eaten by vampire forest beasties, probably while sleeping in the hammocks

Biggest disappointment
Hearing that Matt & Kim canceled the Naeba Shokudo show because they didn’t like the look of the stage.

Best food
The red tomato curry

Best drink
Atsukan sake at the tokoro tengoku

Worst drink
Hot rum coffee at the tokoro tengoku

Weirdest celebrity sighting
James Murphy at 5am, shirtless, bragging about how fat he is

Lessons learned
Wellies. Not sandals.
And insect repellent.

Scottish group, Belle and Sebastian took the stage during a night where downtempo music was bouncing around everywhere, and many were hoping the band could provide a little pick me up on a day that was turning out to be quite bleak for those that like uplifting music.  There was a palpable sense in the audience that something special was going to take place, and many braved steady rain to see this act.

It was also an important show for the group who are getting set to start their 2010 tour, with the Fuji Rock performance being the first deployment of some new numbers, arrangements, and compositions done on the fly. Known as classically trained musicians, the group bring a slew of instruments ranging from French horns to a 4-person string section, synthesizers, and a quiver of guitars. So many instruments in fact that front man, Stuart Murdoch, seemed slightly uncomfortable on stage at the start of the set without an instrument in his hand. He had taken a page from Suede and other Britpop acts with this dancing and crooning, though some of the old time fans of this Glasgow band would have preferred to see the group’s original composition that mostly features acoustic guitar.

Eventually, they would get the old Belle and Sebastian sound as Murdoch would pick up the guitar and strum the song “If you are feeling sinister” as his voice blended nicely with the guitar notes and backing harmonies. It would be a good while later when the band would dig into their back catalog to bring out hits like “Boy with the Arab Strap” and  ”‘I’m a Cuckoo.” In this type of festival setting with so much music all around, many simply don’t want new surprises or new material.

As the set progressed, the rain steadily grew in intensity, and despite some audience interaction and singalongs , it became increasingly difficult to sit passively through the whole set. It was a pity, but I would have liked to see more from this group. Perhaps more older material would have held my interest longer. On a night dominated by early 1990’s trip-hop and downtempo music, Belle and Sebastian really had an opportunity to make a difference though it was lost in the shuffle of new material and getting a new tour performance together.

Despite garnering high praise internationally, Quasimode drew only a few hundred fans to Orange Court for their Sunday evening performance. Unfortunately, the gents were slotted at the exact same time as LCD Soundsystem (White Stage) and Hot Chip (Red Marquee) and a mere 50 minutes before the local debut of Atoms For Peace on the Green Stage. All of which likely deterred many from making the long hike to Orange Court.
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Rory Mcleod played the Mokudotei today – that fun little stage in the woodlands. It was like being at his house as he sang story songs, and prefaced all his story songs with stories about what the story songs were about. As you spend time at Fuji Rock and see the crowd respond to “Yo FUUUJIII, are you enjoying yourselves?”, it’s easy to think that people pick up most of the chat, but I’d wager that most of it was lost on the people here. Rory told us about Pauline, a girl he went to school with, before beginning a tune about Pauline, the girl he went to school with.

Without a doubt, it didn’t matter than nobody knew what he was saying. Half the time, Rory didn’t seem to know what he was talking about. He’d begin a story, go off at a tangent, then end with “well, anyway, let’s see how we go.”

At one point, Rory borrows a water bottle from one listener and pretends it’s a telephone and he’s talking to his mum. That sounds crap on paper, but it’s charming in real life. He plays little gags with his harmonica, and then every so often he thumps out a danceable folk song that one moment is about Pauline, and the next moment about the odds against him being alive being the exact number of his dad’s sperm that didn’t make it to the finishing line.
On the one hand, I can’t imagine anyone better for this stage than Rory McLeod. He held the crowd just by tapping his foot and blowing his unplugged harmonica. On the other hand, if people had space to dance, they surely would have. I didn’t catch any of his other sets here, but I bet there was some stomping going on. Hope he’s back soon.

Rory ★ ★ ★ ★ ★
Stories ★ ★ ★ ★ ★
Glory ★ ★ ★ ★ ★

I walked from Orange Court to Green Stage to catch the back end of Atoms For Peace Sunday night set.  Audiences at Orange Court, Field Of Heaven, and Gypsy Avalon were sparse after 7 p.m.  LCD Soundsystem had a large crowd when they started playing at 6:20 p.m., but it had thinned out by the time I trekked through White Stage.  Having seen all of this it came as no surprise that the area surrounding Green Stage was absolutely packed with bodies for Thom Yorke and company’s performance.

Know what I mean?

JJ Grey is from Jacksonville, Florida, and man he sure sounds like it: A drawl as thick as molasses, a courtly Southern attitude, and a sentimental streak wider than the Okefenokee Swamp. He sings the blues, and every offshoot you can think of, from swamp funk to country soul to Memphis R&B. And the guy’s got the voice to handle it all, a big, brash instrument with a bit of gravel at the bottom. Continue Reading…

Every few hours, a truck pulls up to the White Lodge with a large cardboard shipping box full of these little treasures. The Japanese and English teams here quickly investigate what’s underneath the meticulously wrapped packages.
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A few of my mates have been begging me to reconsider Mustang after slagging their Thursday night festival kick-off at the Red Marquee. I gave them their shot at redemption (like they care) for their 1:30 am Crystal Palace set. Because, hey, if you can’t rock the palace, what can you rock?

Philosophy aside, I think I’ve distilled the essence of Mustang: rockabilly attitude without rockabilly energy. But then, what do you expect from the French, Dave Grohl? It’s probably my expectations that are out of whack, demanding that they be something they didn’t set out to be, just because someone attached the term “rockabilly” to them. I mean, what kind of rockabilly band gripes about their drum machine being down? (You can take that question any way you like). It’s me being the curmudgeon in the corner, whilst everyone else has their good time without over-thinking it. The crowd wasn’t moving like they did for Räfven last year, but I reckon what they were doing can still be called movement.

-Kern

photo by naota

A few songs into Dirty Projectors Saturday lunchtime set at Red Marquee, band leader Dave Longstreth summed up a Fuji Rock afternoon perfectly offering, “It feels a little early to be rocking, but it’s never too early.”

Originally tapped to perform only on Friday eve in Orange Court, Parachute’s cancellation a few weeks ago opened up a Red Marquee slot that Dirty Projectors graciously filled.  A definite treat, the New York sextet turned in a fantastic 45-minute set of experimental rock and art-pop.  The backup harmonies provided by Amber Coffman, Angel Deradoorian, and Haley Dekle on the likes of “I Will Truck” were absolutely killer.

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Flogging Molly at Red Marquee

Let’s face it, if you love Irish rock, there just aint a lot of these bands around anymore. After the legendary and mostly retired Pogues you got the young bucks of Dropkick Murphys, but thank heavens Flogging Molly is something that you would be proud to wave your Irish flag, or Japanese flag if you brought that along.

Minutes before the band came out, the crowd was changing “Ole, Ole, Ole” and when frontman, Dublin born Dave King came out with a can of Guinness in hand, he commented on the enthusiasm of the crowd, and also tossed out a can to some lucky fan in the audience.

Together they ripped into classics like “Requiem for a Dying Man” and a track from their latest album, “Float.” He also introduced the song “Tobacco Island as being dedicated to the Irish sent to Barbados in 1659. Other hits got the crowd worked up such as “If I Ever Leave This World Alive” and “Seven Deadly Sins.

Between songs there was lots of beer drinking, beer tossing into the hot roiling crowd, and lots of good cheer. King also noted the two flags flying in the crowd (Ireland and Japan) and urged everyone in the audience to come together during these difficult economic times.

He also paid homage to rock n roll past, noting the spirit of Joe Strummer in the audience, and a number of t-shirts that the band had seen around the festival. King also gave credit to the rest of his band especially wife Bridget Regan who plays tin whistle and fiddle, and who he wed at a Shinto shrine in Japan some 2 ½ years ago, or their last performance at Fuji Rock.

Third Eye Blind at White Stage

My friend Kern (read his article about the band here) said that Third Eye Blind was a band his girlfriend liked, and to appease her, he had to purchase and then listen to their eponymous release in 1999. It’s the type of music that is easy to dance to, especially chicks who are wearing midriff revealing clothes and throwing up a hand and waving it like they just don’t care, especially to the hop along hit, “Semi-Charmed Life.”

The band had a bunch of hits with this record and their follow up, Blue, in 1999. This lead to much touring and performing on stages much bigger than the White Stage. You could tell that frontman and vocalist Stephan Jenkins who looks very much like he could appear on the MTV hit reality show, “Jersey Shore.”

Jenkins have a rough, gravelly voice that is resonant and carries easily out across the crowd. His voice is one of strongest parts of the performance, a little bit of Bruce Springsteen and John Fogerty. And for this he is a hit amongst the ladies despite lyrics that are crude, and downright curmudgeonly when it comes to the opposite sex.

He’s also quite candid on stage, and some of the zingers he threw out are as follows. “

“ I love this, I am so happy you can believe it”

“This is the prettiest song we know, Wounded”

“Let’s singalong to this one. Fuji Rock is like one big camping trip”

“I think this is the most beautiful festival is the world”

“ 12 years ago we played the first Fuji Rock, and now we are back. My heart is right here, right now, this is the song God of One”

And man, people were eating this stuff up. In front of me were like 6 frat boys wearing like Abercrombie fitted t-shirts and spitting beer at each other (snaking, according to my friend Clay) and their chicks were grooving to the music and not minded their inane behaviour. Also, you know how you when a good act goes on and you may grab a couple of beers so that you can enjoy the entire show, well this lil group had about 8 beers laid out in front of them (2 for each person) and the girls had a similar stack of vodka tonics. By the end of the show, everyone was getting a groove on good, and it almost turned into a situation.

It was a late night on Friday and for those lucky enough to be around the Crystal Palace they were treated to one helluva performance. Baby Soul started off the show spinning some classic 45’s and Entrance Band bass player, Paz Lenchantin, danced around and waved her arms to these classics. Meanwhile, guitar player, Guy Blakeslee took off his shirt and readied his Stratocaster, strung and tuned upside, Jimi Hendrix style.

It didn’t take long for the band to kick into high gear with drummer,Derek James, swirling his hair and pounding a mean beat.

For those that haven’t seen The Entrance Band, their music is a cross of amped up psychedelic rhythms of yore. The best example I can give is The Cult and some of the early 80’s groups that explored the outer limits of music such as Butthole Surfers. The music is experimental and is voodoo stuff, where you just put your head down and groove to the vibe.

And my gosh it was loud. Loud in a good, glorious way where it was a pleasure to be engrossed in music as lovely and flowing as the Entrance Band. They played the song which was later turned into a video, and they also did a darn fine version of Big Star’s “ I Can’t Seem To Make You Mine”, a fuzzed out blurry version that should have made old Alex proud. One alt-music tribute to another musician who influenced so much of the much we listen to nowadays.

Riva Starr had one of the sweetest sets a DJ could ask for at FRF 2010, 11:30pm Saturday night and just after the main stages shut down. So there were 40,000 people ready to party and one sure place to go. Riva Starr did not disappoint!

The Italian beat jockey tossed out his usual mix of fun-energy house, and if you’re familiar with his recent stuff, there’s a healthy dose of camp, or at the very least tongue in cheek. The capper right at the end of the set was the track “I Got Drunk” (to a house-up polka beat, an Eastern European sings in English: Yesterday I was drunk/ with some chicks in the club/ I don’t remember who came back with me/ And tonight I will drink/ With some chicks in the club/ I’m not sure I want to la la la). It’s a great, funny anthem and a super party tune. And with a Red Marquee full of dance headz ready to rollick, it struck a perfect note.

A true natural?

See them every day of the festival at 4:30pm.

I meant to see the Cro-Magnons on the White stage around 6:30 tonight but I couldn’t. Someone old me they were canceled, or got in a car accident on the way up  here, or there was food poisoning involved, or something. Well, that’s what I thought I heard when I was talking to another Fuji Rock staff wri–err, I mean friend–at the Green stage watching John Fogerty. There are times at a festival like Fuji Rock where the festival takes over. You have no control. Circumstances are dictated to you. Such was tonight and the wonderful Fogerty performance on the Green Stage. While I hade every intention to watch only half of the set, and then duly hit White stage for some awesome Cro-Magnon-ness, I just couldn’t do it. John Fogerty was the feel good hit of festival, belting out songs that are not just hits but STANDARDS at this point in time with a voice that has on ly gotten stronger with time. “Just one more song.” That’s what I told myself. Then one more. I kept waiting for “Fortunate Son” while Nick was hanging out for “Proud Mary”. We got them as a one-two punch right at the end. From the moment they came on stage til the last barre chord I had shit eating grin on my fest. This is the way way music at the festival is supposed to make you feel. You dance like you just don’t care. You sing just because you wanna. You play a little air guitar. Sorry but sometimes the best laid plans get overruled. I asked Shawn about the Cro-Mags. He said they were “awesome,” and that it was “packed to the tits.” So there you go.