Fujirockers: The official fansite of the Fuji Rock Festival

PROTECT THE DANCE CULTURE!

Petitioning against the preposterously irrelevant prostitution law passed back in 1948 outlawing late-night clubs and other questionable activity that has recently resurfaced in order for the powers that be to crack down on all-night dance clubs.

There are the usual conservative arguments against a late-night dance (rave?) culture. For example, kids doing drugs or committing acts of violence. Although, if you have been to these clubs, you would realize first-hand that 1) because this is Japan, a country notorious for very strict narcotics legislation, there really is not any drug use to speak of and 2) dancers take their angst out on the dance floor! Let’s DANCE members pledge against these divisive and dangerous acts nonetheless.

In Osaka, and the entire Kansai region actually, cops have been enforcing the curfew and killing the party scene and music clubs as early as midnight. Businesses losing money, countless talented DJs out of work, young people with nowhere to let loose, and now rumors that the same conservative notion is headed for Tokyo has turned up this heated debate to the breaking point; party people are really worried and thus spurred into action.

Changing these outdated laws will require strength in numbers. Apparently 100,000 signatures is the threshold that Let’s DANCE is seeking. If two-thirds of the attendees here at FRF this weekend alone signed the petition they would succeed in reaching that goal. To protect the dance culture, head over to the FujiRockers tent in the Shokudo and sign up. Do it for the children.

THE SHIRTLESS WONDERS

The shirtless wonder troupe versus the post-show banter duo; it is quite the conundrum for me to pick my most entertaining people of the evening, so maybe you can help me.

Congotronics vs Rockers playing Orange Court tonight had festival-goers freaking out in a whole new groove. The stretch of songs for up to 15 minutes, and the booty-shaking and stuff struttin’ displayed up on stage encouraged some new moves out in the crowd. The 6 guys in front of me dancing in particular. I think it was the skinny one who first decided to take off his T-shirt, then one buddy followed suit, and the next. Soon even the most conservative friend was bearing nips front house left, and dancing like werewolves around a backpack sitting in 2 inches of mud with all their shirts piled atop. Anyway, they had a little synchronization going on in a circular rain dance spectacle that had tons of paparazzi snapping shots at their bony bods. I can’t really explain in words here the hilarity of their moves, but just imagine convulsing, ska steps, and ‘the creep’ mixed in with kalimba-fueled rhythms and evolving into truly modern modern-dance over the course of 10 minutes. One guy eventually collapsed onto the backpack and shirt pile in exhaustion, favoring a mud puddle over keeping up the dancing energy that Congotronics vs Rockers commands.

After the show, the exodus out of the far depths of Orange Court hosted my other funny people episode of the day, this one heard, not seen from a few people behind. As soon as we reached FOH, Panic’s “Fire on the Mountain” was playing, and promptly got log-jammed in two American festival-goers heads. From then on, “Fire, Fire on a mountain!” was shouted, without ever any Japanese or other input, aside from eventually some comments about “Singing alone OK, you can do it is OK!” So after the Fire on a Mountain had spread beyond awkward measure, to hilarity, and finally to OK, that’s-enough-pal frequency, the pair out of nowhere began singing the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air theme song, courtesy a young Will Smith. The song, butchered as it was, was nostalgic, however the commentary that followed was surprisingly insightful. “Like, who rides a cab all the way from Philadelphia to California?” Or, “Man, if I was a cabby, and somebody told me to ’smell ya later,’ you know what I would do…?”

I don’t think it was that these two dudes were actually that funny, but rather that the shuffling muddy silence after all their ridiculousness, and I think a few crickets, magnified the humor for me, and quite possibly me alone. So use your imagination about the dancers, and tell me, who will it be for number one Saturday night funny?

(Poor) Photo by J Muzacz

This song and video first came to my attention when I got a text from my Serbian friend Sasa that said something like “Basement Jaxx! OMG U gotta hear this!”. I’m not as big a fan of dance music as Sasa, but he was right of course, just like he was about Royksopp. So what makes this tune so great?

Partly: Banjos. BANJOS MAN! Also, it’s a club song about wanting to get the hell out of the club and go someplace warm and cuddly. Being that clubs tend to just piss me off at about the 3 a.m. mark after the alcohol starts to wear off, I can relate.
And the cartoon Siberian Soviet Russia in this video is of course priceless.
Judging from these two blog posts, many of the hard core don’t quite get it, expressing surprise that this was the choice for a single. But that’s what makes Basement Jaxx the club group even for people who don’t like clubs (apparently there’s been more grumbling from the fans about their new single Raindrops; see Coglione’s previous post here). As in previous hits Red Alert and especially Romeo, they usually find a way to go outside the expectations of the endless chicky thump thump thump thump of an average night out.
(See also my post on The Greatest Man That Ever Lived

-Kern

This is a pretty fantastic remix. I liked the song better when I heard it without the video on MySpace, but the video is pretty great too. I can’t figure if this newscast is real or not. At any rate, it just proves what grandma always said: white people sure are funny!

Continue Reading…

Takkyu Ishino is all over the board in electronic music, from chirpy pop to minimalism to the sort of dirty repetitive trance you’re supposed to space out to on a beach in Thailand. But I first noticed him for his pop music, which is usual for me since I don’t like to space out on beaches in Thailand. This one, Stereo Nights, is great electronic pop like Four Tet filtered through some J-Pop light goofiness/kitsch.

Continue Reading…

Röyksopp aren’t the most prolific of European electronic groups; they happen to be releasing two albums this year, but they are only the third and fourth since their formation in 1998, and they don’t release a lot of rare and special edition EPs and singles in between like many of their peers. It’s been four years since their last album, The Understanding, and it was four years before that for their first, Melody A.M.

Continue Reading…