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

This blog goes back to 2006 and we aren't stopping now, but after years on the MT platform we are moving to WordPress and taking all our inside info with us. We also have a shiny new URL so you can now find us, the FujiRockers, at www.fujirock.com.

Party time starts early and finishes late!

If you look at the fine print on this flyer, and past the Taipei date, you will see a very big clue about who is playing Fuji Rock's Thursday night party.

I, for one, think it's a great choice because they are loud and rock out! Start listening to The Inspector Cluzo now as they bring rollicking funking madness without no damn bass player!

//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...

Inspector Cluzo are two Frenchmen, Phil Jourdain and Malcomt Lacrouts. They are are both loud and funky, so much so that they often tour and record with Fishbone. Their debut album led to 123 consecutive gigs and the label "garage blues" which is something they hate. I think they're are a good bet to play Thursday’s opening party cuz they can rock the house.

Here’s an abbreviated email Q&A I did with them ahead of their Taipei show next week. It covers all kinds of things such as various clichés (a French word), playing at 105db, and how one French journalist described the band "as if the Melvins f@%^* Marvin Gaye!!”

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.

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.)

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.

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