Fujirockers: The official Fuji Rock Festival blog

Now there’s a title worthy of a Lolcat.

For the last few weeks, I’ve been doing a lot of digging. I’ve looked into bands I’m pretty familiar with as well as bands I didn’t know so well… and bands that were off my radar completely.

Often, admittedly, the latter category includes genres and styles that I’m not always super-interested in. I probably like it if I listen to it and that’s pleasant enough, but… it’s not what gets me excited.

These guys?

Oh yeah.

There’s some excitement there.

And surprise.

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Ra Ra Riot Provide A Rich Romp Through "The Orchard"

Music festivals are popping up everywhere and one of the newest, the Music to Know Festival, set in the glimmering summer resort of East Hampton NY, where my sister lives incidentally, is more of a VIP fashion catwalk rather than a  rock show. The NY Times has written about the pop-up boutiques appearing at the festival  (read here) and top end tickets offer parking privileges, air-conditioned restrooms, a curated food service and plenty of delicious cocktails.  While all of the creature needs will be met, organizers still face the vexing question of  what type of music do these super rich people wanna see?

Vampire Weekend are an obvious choice, and they indeed headline the festival on  Saturday, and also appearing is Ra Ra Riot who are frequently compared to this better known,  gold- selling artist.  Both bands play  upbeat music led by a high pitched male vocalist.  Musically, however, Ra Ra Riot tend to experiment more than Vampire Weekend, with compositions performed more like a classical chamber quintet, Continue Reading…

HERE BE LOTSA OKAMOTO'S

Q: How many Okamotos does it take to make a band?

A: 4 talented kids and one dead artist.

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It’s hard to imagine anyone knowing the lines to Cornershop’s 1997 mega-hit “Brimful of Asha” because of its many Bollywood references, including a tip of the hat to the grande dame of  playback singing, Asha Bhosle. That didn’t stop the song from becoming a decade long hit, aided by Norman Cooke and Fat Boy Slim remixes. Topping the success of this tune would be a tough task for any group, but when your band contains 2 brothers named Singh and a sitar player, it verges on impossible.

Speed the clock forward another 14 years, and the band has released 4 subsequent albums but slowly faded from public fame. Things got so bleak the band resorted to crowdfunding it’s last release “Cornershop and the Double ‘O’ Groove Of,” on Pledge music including the above heartfelt plea on YouTube.

But like all good Bollywood movies,   Continue Reading…

There were are few dozen people huddled around the stage when Ogre You Asshole came on. They completed what sounded like a short, sharp sound check and then immediately ran into their open track, a blazing guitar beat with falsetto lyrics like Modest Mouse or Clap Your Hands Say Yeah.

I can tell you that I was impressed and stuck around, even rising from my seated position about halfway back in the audience. More audience trickled in and many people started dancing. It was much better than I thought though I noticed the soundman was strangely still on stage and looking at the equipment.  Right then and there it dawned on me, this was only the soundcheck!

After a ten-minute break with some lovely interlude music, the band came on stage again and the place was half filled. There were equal numbers of foreigners and local Japanese in the audience and everyone was dancing about. This band has quite a following in the US, and it seems that every band from the Pacific Northwest who comes to Japan requests Ogre You Asshole as their opening act. In fact, they probably even got their name from one of the bands they admire, read it here in our earlier post. Anyways, they sounded great today, and the Red Marquee was mostly full by the time they made it halfway through their set. Its power pop at its best.

John Butler Trio

This will be John Butler’s third stint at Fuji Rock, having done the 2005 and 2007 festivals. Now touring with a new(ish) pair, hot on the heels of April Uprising (released in… erm… March this year), Butler and his boys have been quietly moving up on the FRF Fame-O-Meter: 2005 saw them on the Field of Heaven, 2007 the White Stage, and now this year they’ll be filling in the early Saturday timeslot on the Green Stage. Continue Reading…

The Entrance Band

Writers of this blog annually award the Field of Heaven “Best Stage” for its snug  mountain location, crystal clear acoustics, and firm gravel underfoot. For the weary, the stage is flanked by politically correct vendors offering covered seating along with hemp products and coffee w/Kahlua.

Unfortunately, the remoteness of the stage makes it overlooked by the masses leading to light attendance for otherwise big names such as My Morning Jacket and Ryan Adams, leading the artist line-up on this stage to be scaled back in subsequent years. This year, one of the best performers on this terrific stage will be The Entrance Band, a highly regarded LA trio that careen between jamrific tunes to delay-sotted guitars ala early 80’s acts such as U2, The Cult, and Echo & the Bunnymen.

The track “M.L.K.” is equal parts the Edge and Jerry Garcia, a wild traipse into the stratosphere that is so perfectly suited to the Field of Heaven that I can imagine some of the vendors selling rough hewn ponchos for a minute to look up, and jam along with an invisible guitar.

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Scissor Sisters @ Zepp Tokyo, Jan. 2007

Scissor Sisters are slated as being “special guests” on Sunday night on the Green Stage, which would seem to indicate that they’re going to close the festival. Some may find that blasphemous, since, originally at least, that slot was reserved for some rip-roaring “world beat” act with all sorts of PC cred. Either that or a bona fide electro-dance artist. SS is neither PC nor particularly electronic. They’re the campiest rock band on the planet, and I think that’s exactly what this year’s festival needs, especially after two hours of Massive Freaking Attack. Continue Reading…

Atoms For Peace: Thom Yorke can't catch a break

Seems like everyone is slagging Thom Yorke lately. I was watching the current BBC series I’m in a Rock n Roll Band last night, and Gene Simmons of KISS went out of his way to specifically name Yorke as a bland performer, a singer who disrespected the hard-earned money his fans spend on a show by just standing around—at which time the program dissolved into a cartoon-based motion graphic sequence depicting sullen Radiohead members slowly rocking back and forth on stage like starving, scurvy infected sailors. Yet, follow that up with a review of any of the new Atoms for Peace shows, and the first sentence in some way jabs Yorke’s “new” incessant and spastic dance style. This guy just can’t catch a break.

And these people just don’t get it.
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Derek Trucks

I didn’t pay much attention to Derek Trucks when his name first started getting tossed around about a decade ago. Being kin to the Allman Brother’s Band (nephew to drummer Butch Trucks) and being neputized into service for the band as the ghostly replacement of Duane, I assumed that he was another one of those electric blues-loving mama’s boys to the baby boomers like Jonny Lang or Kenny Wayne Shepherd, showing up every once in awhile to noodle a fretboard and grimace appropriately at one of those very special tributes to B.B. King that Eric Clapton and Bonnie Raitt seem to put on every two months.

But Trucks really is a bit of a new breed, covering Coltrane and Miles on his first album and sitting comfortably alongside modern jazz fusion players, and also branching out from Americana by playing with the likes of Nusrat Fateh Ali Kahn. Playing slide behind Kahn’s South Asian Qawwali, he echoes Continue Reading…

Melbourne's The Tote Re-opens

While this doesn’t affect bands plaing directly this year, it’s worth noting that Melbourne music institution the Tote is reopening tonight after a long battle.

For the last 30 years, the Tote hotel has provided a venue for the craziest of touring and local bands. It was, along with the Corner and the Espy, one of the cornerstones of the music industry in a city that became, through these and a slew of other great venues (as well as no small amount of help from the two excellent independent radio stations RRR and PBS), the centre of Australia’s live music scene, and the incubator for many of the best bands Australia has produced. It all threatened to come crashing down in the mid 90s when Victoria allowed hotels to hold gaming licences, and we lost many venues to the insidious pokies. Only the strongest willed of operators managed to resist the temptation to sell their souls to this cash cow and keep doing what they knew was right. Bruce Milne of the Tote was one who will be going up, rather than down, when his time comes. Continue Reading…

Ian Brown

I smoked a joint with Ian Brown once. If my mum or members of the constabulary are reading this, I totally made that up. If not, it’s completely true.
It was around the time that he was launching his solo career. It was 1997 or maybe 1998 and Unfinished Monkey Business hadn’t arrived yet, but we’d heard it was coming. He was playing a charity gig at a club in London where I worked. Also on the bill was Jarvis Cocker and it wasn’t hard to see who the crowd favorite was: the gangly Sheffield girlyman was flavor of the year in Britain back then, and the people were more interested to stare at him Djing than to pay much attention to Brown. Continue Reading…

Zach de la Rocha

Colossal oil devastation, endless wars, global economic meltdown—tough times, yes, but no better time than right now to see Zack de la Rocha rushing the stage and preaching his brand of political activism to the choir. This surprise late addition to the FRF lineup could not be more relevant.

De la Rocha has lately been louder than ever, and more often than not, his voice has been amplified not over speakers but through megaphones. When he and fellow Rage member Tom Morello ignited the protest at the Republican National Convention in 2008 with a set that was literally unplugged by the police, the subsequent youtube video became for many the most potent symbol of that resistance movement. And then there’s Sound Strike, his campaign for a musical boycott of Arizona due the recent immigration policy reform changes in the state.

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MGMT

In “Kids” and “Time To Pretend” (2008)  MGMT may have had two of the best indie rock dance singles since the genre coalesced out of the collective consciousness of the yungins (thank God they didn’t invent a music style I hated, I might start feeling old), but since then they seem to be more bent on confounding expectations than endlessly repeated attempts at creating celebratory fellow-feeling. Actively eschewing the fame the club singles have brought them, their new album, Congratulations (2010), has been, shall we say, polarizing. Continue Reading…

Foals

From house parties to Glastonbury stages, Oxford five-piece, Foals, have carved themselves a nice little niche in the UK indie rock establishment. As one of 2008’s NME darlings, the band had exposure and a growing tour schedule. For their sophomore effort, however, the band’s sound moved in a significantly new direction. What began as spastic no-wave on their debut has now unfurled into shimmering chords that seem to soar through space rather than fill it. Why the different sound?

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One Day As A Lion

Another bunch of new acts were added to the list last night, as well as stage information. You should be able to start forming your plan, as this will be the approximate order, from bottom (start) to top (headliners)… But “Special Guests” play after the headliners… Confused? I am…

Some interesting additions here, including a second Foo Fighter playing on the Friday, Taylor Hawkins & The CoatTail Riders. With Dave Grohl doing duties with Them Crooked Vultures later in the day, can we expect a cameo on stage? Perhaps, as he has given his time as a guest vocalist (along with a slew of all star guests) on their April release Red Light Fever.

More information and full list after the break. Continue Reading…

“I can’t recall the last time I looked back at the crowd and saw so much teeth during a concert.” So wrote a brilliant young writer with an artist’s mastery of mass and countable nouns about Flogging Molly’s 12:45 pm Friday afternoon (which is really first thing in the morning in Festival time) White Stage set in 2006. The seven of them took the stage, Dave King barked “Hi we’re Flogging Molly and this is what we do”, and within seconds at least 75% of the crowd was grinnn’ an’ bouncin’ an’ jiggin’. Reserved culture my ass.

As you can see from that video, they had actually kicked off the fest at the free Thurday night Red Marquee show, which clearly also rawked, but sadly I missed it.

Something about bacchanalic beer-soaked Euro-trad Continue Reading…

Anyone who has seen !!! will admit that vocalist, Nic Offer, looks and acts a lot like Hollywood funnyman, Will Ferrell. Both have the same slightly hulking build and curly brown locks, and dare we say, an affinity for short, shorts! The video above, though poor in quality, captures Nic Offer at his finest. Expect some of the same moves when the band takes the stage at Fuji Rock. I am guessing that it will be sometime in the afternoon on the Green Stage. I was fortunate to catch them play at Fuji Rock in 2007 in such a setting, and I can tell you that their rambling, sprawling sound did a good job of filling the huge, muddy void this stage generally sees in the afternoon.

And if you wanna discuss !!! with your friends, it is usually pronounced Continue Reading…

At least midwest from Japan. This six piece indie guitar pop ensemble actually hails from the north of England, Newcastle upon Tyne to be exact. Lead singer David Burn came up with the band name to describe his musical influences: a mix of Michigan’s MC5 and The Stooges with the Social Club repping his northern influences with a big Verve UK sound. I’d say there is healthy dose of Kasabian in there as well, though it is probably reflected somewhat in the choice of Jim Abiss to produce their debut album Existence. Abiss is better known for his work with both Kasabian and the Arctic Monkeys.

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Matt & Kim

This video [after the jump...] for 5K by low-fi dance punks Matt & Kim was banned by MTV in the US but broadcast in the UK. Ordinarily that would be the cue for eye-rolling and a chance to knock the puritans across the Pacific who won’t show boobs on network telly at any hour. But I’m with the States on this one. Not that this vid is likely to inspire violence — it looks as realistic as Bad Taste or that bit at the end of the first Nightmare on Elm Street where the girl suddenly and obviously becomes a rubber doll just before they yank her through the window, but it just seems a bit unnecessary to stick knives in each other. Continue Reading…

Ash

I remember when Ash hit the scene in Australia, back in 94ish. They were the darlings of indie radio, with everyone gushing “Can you believe they’re only 17??” and the like. I have to admit, the first few times I heard their first (Australian) single Petrol, I didn’t twig that they were so young. I heard the influence of all those early fuzzy guitar and navel gazing bands of the late 80s and early 90s, and they struck me as a more serious version of Brisbane’s Custard. But they certainly seemed beyond their years. Thrust into super stardom, they kept up a great energy for the difficult second album.

1977 was on high rotation at mine through the summer of 96/97. Girl From Mars still stands as one of my favourite songs of this era, maybe because it struck a chord with my own primary schooling. This and Kung Fu had me thinking maybe they weren’t so serious after all. But after that wonderful extended honeymoon, I’m afraid Ash & I parted ways… Continue Reading…

Akasaka Blitz, last fall

On the eve of last year’s Fuji Rock Festival I was having a drink with a local record company owner who had quite a few acts playing that year. However, the group he really wanted to talk about wasn’t playing. It was the Cribs, the British guitar band made up of a trio of brothers. He confirmed rumors I had heard that the former Smiths guitarist, Johnny Marr, had joined the band on what sounded like a permanent basis. He already had an advance copy of the Cribs’ upcoming album, Ignore the Ignorant, since he would be releasing it in Japan, and he said flatly it was the best thing he’d heard in years. Of course he would say that since he had a professional interest in the record’s success, but I’ve known the guy for a few years and he isn’t one for the sort of empty hyperbole you often get from record company one-sheets. Continue Reading…

Vampire Weekend

The first time I heard Vampire Weekend’s second album Contra (released in January), I was disappointed. They had coaxed a new modern vocabulary out of throwback analog sounds on their first record, and here they were edging toward the hipster mean by bringing in electronics, as if they thought they were at risk of becoming tired-sounding so they decided to ape TV On The Radio. It seemed counterproductive.

But, God bless ‘em, they kicked my ass out of that whiny purism when I deigned to give it a second shot. If you don’t hold the first record as a gold standard you’ll notice that the electronics are actually well-placed and not as pervasive as they seem at first blush. More importantly, the glorious pop hooks are all still there, as is the joyfully energetic playing.

And so is the winking gleeful celebration of old-money privilege. In an era when nothing violent, sexual or blasphemous could be shocking enough to titillate, VW found the new locus of our shame, the coveting of a relaxed and self-satisfied mid-century opulence, and reflected it back to us so we could wallow in this dirty secret. And we all pitched collective tents in our collective madras shorts in gratitude.

(It’s both disappointing and encouraging to find out the guys in the band are Continue Reading…

2009 was a year of unprecedented cooperation within the North American indie music scene. Not only did super groups such as Broken Social Scene and New Pornographers record new material despite the growing success of their solo careers, but audiences were also treated to the inconceivable alliance of slow folk, indie guitar gods, Jim James, Conor Oberst, Mike Mogis, and M. Ward as a recording and touring act known as the “Monsters of Folk.”

This context may allow us to understand why Broken Bells came about, a collaboration between acclaimed producer Danger Mouse (Brian Burton) who has worked with mega-selling artists such as Gnarls Barkley and Gorrilaz, as well James Mercer of The Shins, a group that Natalie Portman in the film Garden State, famously said, “it’ll change your life.”

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