No worries - there is still all the info sitting here on this site, and from tomorrow (woo-hoo!) we'll be sending all the info as it's happening from the 2009 Fuji Rock Festival!

You can get the all the info you can handle in English (and some French) at Fuji Rock Express.

We'll see you up there!

Jeff

Party time starts early and finishes late!

Starting this list, let's look at the Official after party at Warehouse 702. This will see Basement Jaxx spinning a DJ set, with Crookers, The Bloody Beetroots, and The Shoes all up to the task the day after the festival finishes. Get in fast, as this one usually sells out in advance.

Thursday night on the eve of the festival, catch the Funky Meters at Shibuya Ax from 7pm.

ASA-CHANG & 巡礼 do duty at Club Metro in Kyoto on Sept 7.

See Comeback My Daughters at Unit in Daikanyama on Sept 26th.

According to my sources, De De Mouse will play at Liquidroom in Ebisu on September 27th, though I can't find any official link to give you.

Yokohama outfit (and faves of Jeff) Asparagus head the BKTS tour of Osaka (Oct 12), Hokkaido (Oct 24), and Tokyo (Nov 1), along with Comeback My Daughters, The Band Apart, and Lostage.

I'm led to believe that Franz Ferdinnd will play three dates across Japan in early November.

And finally, The Birthday play Yokohama on Oct 18, Chiba on Nov 21 and Tokyo on Nov 27.

Former FujiRock artists playing around town over the next few months include Boom Boom Satellites on July 28th at Shibuya O-East, Kasabian playing in Shibuya on Aug 8 (sold out, sorry!), Flower Travellin Band in Osaka on August 26, Ken Yokoyama in Sapporo (Aug 13) and Osaka (Aug 27), Frontier Backyard playing nearly every city in Japan during September and October, and Bloc Party doing a slew of dates in November.

So if you miss(ed) them at FRF this year (or years past) get your arse down to their local gigs!

Dom.

//dave

Last year in Taipei before a show by The Musik, the well known Britband, lead singer Rob Harvey walked up to me and asked about the Taiwanese opening band. I had some vague idea that he was with the band, but otherwise couldn't place him. We had a short, polite conversation, but at the same time, I was having inklings of deja vu. It was only later that I realized I'd seen him somewhere before...

"I love acid too much" -- an unnamed, tattooed Japanese man, when asked why he punched The Music's vocalist, Rob Harvey, in the face during the regular early morning after-party at Palace of Wonder. The punch cut Harvey's face.

Ahhh, the Palace of Wonder. Yes, that is my FRF Staff Pick. Even though it has practically become a mainstream stage -- I seriously have no idea how Takyuu Ishino and Diplo can be scheduled for a tent that holds only 250 people Saturday latenight -- it is still a magical place, a place where anything can happen. Once, a group of Japanese girls there even believed that I was one of the Chemical Brothers. But that's a totally different story...

//dave

So since then, I've been an avid believer in insect repellent. It is kind of like deodorant in Japan though, bloody hard to find. So when a friend came out last May I got him to bring some of the World-Famous-In-Australia Aerogard out. Sorted. That will take care of you nasties.

But then today, I found this little ripper in my local drug store! The NoMat V 130. Now this puppy looks like she'll do the trick, all day long. For 22 days, if you believe the hype. But I don't, so I got a two pack of refills with it. Straps to your wrist (or ankle) so you don't have to worry about reapplying in your drunken stupor after the sun goes down and the nippers come out. All told ¥1100 and I'm set for the weekend!

Also available in girly baby blue, but I opted for the manly black version.

Dom.

Seebach won the Danish Melodi Grand Prix with the song “Disco Tango” and reportedly died of alcoholism. Disco Biscuits? They named themselves after a slang term for Ecstasy (and danced all night long).

Blasphemy.

You want a mashup? Try AC/DC vs. Apache mother.

You have to be dancy? Try Chemical Brothers vs Apache (at least there’s menace)

This explains so much: Duran Duran vs. Apache

And holy shit, Children of Bodom vs. Apache

And oh there is so much more.

-- Donald

Soul Flower Union have a great back story. The band rose out the ashes of two Osaka-based punk groups, Mescaline Drive and Newest Model, back in 1993.

Combining traditional song writing and instrumentation with a jam band spirit, SFU are almost like The Pogues for Japan. Ok, if Billy Bragg was fronting The Pogues, and he was sober of course.

-- Donald

At the very beginning of Jon Helmer’s DVD Tents & Bugs and Rock N Roll, we see a dreadlocked Aussie or Kiwi or Brit (damned accents) standing outside the Naeba hotels getting totally blitzed about the fact that, somewhere within the walls of that hotel is Limp fucking Bizkit (profanity added by the present writer to better portray said excitement). This first section having been filmed in 1999, I concluded that either a) this was exactly the sort of time-warp nostalgia experience you look for in a DVD like this, because clearly the memo from on hipster high that the Bizkit suck hadn’t yet been circulated, or quite possibly b) this gentleman just thinks for himself. (For the record, I still think “Break Stuff” is one of the top 5 greatest raging angry songs ever.)

If it’s the latter, then the DVD is performing another valuable function, which it does fantastically throughout, of showing just what makes the Fuji Rock Festival special. In this case, it’s the fact that Japanese people, and consequently their premier outdoor festival, are just plain not cooler than thou. They just love music and love to party, and they love to do it in a safe, clean and inclusive manner.

(Member of Minneapolis hip-hop group Atmosphere: “Sometimes people try to lock us in [to a genre], but they can’t, and here they don’t give a fuck, they just want to shake their ass”.)

This point is demonstrated on this DVD a few minutes later when we see the head of security, a massive North American guy, mention that they have 80 staff on security detail, but that they’d have to have twice as many if this fest were anywhere else. Reason number 2.

Elsewhere in the bin we see the lost and found guy explaining their honor system for picking up your lost items from the cardboard boxes (pan over to festival goers freely digging through the boxes) carefully sorted into t-shirts, sunglasses, hats, etc. “We believe people”, he says “A little bit different from other countries, but we do.” (Sometimes a little nationalistic exceptionalism is alright in my book.) There’s even a clip at the beginning of Joe Strummer grousing about the idiot slob British who can’t seem to handle throwing a can in the bin instead of on the ground at their festivals, while the Japanese have such things completely sorted (my pun). Reason number 4.

Since the man behind the camera is a Brit, this ends up being a gaijin’s-eye view of the festival, as even the Japanese folks usually bust out with their best English for their observations (or, more often, drunken screaming). It’s a unique thing, this perspective, being that even though half the acts are Western and the headliners almost always are, attendance at the fest is surely well over 90% Japanese (and other far Easterners). So you end up as a Westerner stepping into a Japanese world that’s trying to step a little into the West, and that is composed of the outsiders and artists and the folks who know how to cut loose. Very different from the every day world that exists in Tokyo. This is one of the things that gets Westerners everywhere raving about the Fest, is that it’s really the best of both worlds, consistently from year to year, and it shows no signs of changing.

And this DVD captures that energy excellently. None of the billed musical acts are featured of course, but instead it is a series of clips of the festival goers and behind the scenes workers and the sideshows and the roving conceptual art and the spontaneous music and dance outbreaks (and one helicopter ride, in ‘06, to boot), alternating between people talking to the camera and musical and conceptual montages.

There is a roughly equal amount of footage for every year between 1999, when Helmer first had the camera shoved in his hands and was told to “point it at something”, and 2008. The DVD is easy to navigate too; just click the year you want to watch.

At 245 minutes, I didn’t think I’d be watching the whole thing in one afternoon, but I almost did, as the succession of clips just kept pulling me along, stoking my excitement for ‘09 happening a mere two weeks hence. (The disc sleeve recommends watching 30 seconds every morning before you go to work; seems reasonable.) I can’t think of a better way to promote the essence of Fuji Rock to the Western world than this DVD, so long as the tossers continue to stay home. (That is, the garbage tossers, i.e., the ones who toss their garbage on the ground. Of course that’s what I meant.) I hope it sells and plays in little corners the world over for years to come.

You can buy a copy for 1500 yen at the fest, or email info@vibeylibrary.com (or check the website of one of the producers, www.vibeylibrary.com; no info on the video posted there yet, though).

-Kern

(Screenshots courtesy of Jon Helmer)

As the gender theorists have been telling us for years, simple dichotomies never give the whole picture. (And they are usually instruments of power wielded—knowingly or unknowingly—by those with a vested interest in maintaining the dominant paradigm, but that’s surely a discussion better left to the Tokyo Ska Paradise Orchestra post). So too with the current debate among FRF staffers as to whether wellies or sandals are the better choice of footwear for a three-day outdoor festival with a good chance of rain.

I’ve never been able to walk in any kind of sandals for more than about 15 minutes, and large rubber boots just seem risky in all three elements of the term. So I’m sticking with my tried and true Saucony Jazz, which I wear everywhere; I’m just making a concession to the weather by bringing more. Luckily I have three raggedy old pair. I may have wet feet all day, but at least every morning I’ll be able to start each day afresh. And isn’t that what the gender theorists have been fighting for anyway?

-Kern

If you are looking for Japanese rock 'n' roll swagger at Fuji Rock, one of your best bets this year is The Birthday.

Like compatriots Guitar Wolf, who open the White Stage on Friday, The Birthday are scheduled first thing in the morning -- Green Stage on Saturday at 11 a.m. -- so expect the smell of hot leather, gun powder and tequila to get you going at the start of the first day of the weekend.

-- Donald