Fermin Muguruza is from the Basque country and he’ll never let you forget it, though if you’re expecting some sort of Andalusian ballads you’ll be in for a shock. Muguruza plays the punkier sort of ska, the faster the better. His midnight set at the Naeba Shokudo was relentless. Fronting an excellent band of local musicians, he played classics and some of his own tunes in his own language, which tend to be political in nature. But there wasn’t a whole lot of politics going down during the set. It was just a big party that sucked in everyone who happened to be passing by.
The Foo Fighters headlined Friday night for a reason. And not just because they’re now the biggest rock act in the world, though that has something to do with it. Dave Grohl’s accident in Sweden, which made him a temporary invalid and a media darling, was milked to the extreme at their headlining appearance. Everyone knew about Dave’s broken ankle and the “throne” he had built to continue the band’s world tour, so there was no surprise. What was surprising was the dedication that Dave would apply to his two-hour show.
He would continually refer to his situation, pointing out how much he was endeavoring to keep his fans happy, because he was a fan first and foremost. He identitified with the audience, and wanted them to understand that. Every song had that urgency, and the packed crowd in front of the Green Stage responded in kind..It was a phenomenally right concert.
No matter how conventionally you found Dave’s hard rock songs, in concert they sounded very important. Standing on the hill stage right I was reminded of the Rage Against the Machine show in 1999, when the crowd on the ground responded as one. I wouldn’t have thought it possible.
Rafven | Mark Thompson photo
But then I wandered over to the Naeba Shokudo stage after the show and caught Rafven’s much smaller performance. The crowd was also smaller and thus much more intense. It was galvanizing in a way the Foo Fighters show wasn’t.
Based on everyone I talked to at and before the festival, the act that everyone was most interested in was Motorhead, which is both strange and predictable. Strange in that such straightforward commercial acts rarely appear at Fuji, predictable because Fuji is supposedly suffering financial woes, so having such a band will draw more people.Given that they’re playing at several Asia festivals together, it seems the Motorhead gig is connected to the Foo Fighters’ headlining appearance. Maybe not.
But in any case, we were surprised at the sparseness of the crowd when the power trio hit the stage. Lemmy Kilmister, the only original member and a legend in his own time, was visually frail and though he sang all the songs as required, seemed slightly out of it. In any case, few people, native speaker or otherwise, could understand a word he said, which thus required the lead guitarist to do much of the communication.
But rock prevails, and as the set progressed and the sun set duly in the west (not visible, but setting off a strikingly subtle evening light) more people showed up and rocked the way they were meant to. In the end, things always work themselves out for the best.
Kitty, Daisy and Lewis are white English siblings dedicated to the idea that African-American music is the only music that matters, but they aren’t so doctrinaire that they limit their influences to Southern soul or Harlem jazz or urban quiet storm. They pretty much cover everything with a refreshing insouciance that incorporates a winking knowledge of what it takes to please an audience. They’re also a kind of underground cult fave in Japan, which is why the Field of Heaven was packed for their late afternoon show.
Kitty, Daisy and Lewis | Mark Thompson photo
Both Kitty and Daisy were dressed in form-fitting lame outfits, and brother Lewis in a bespoke suit. What that means is anyone’s guess, but obviously they meant to cover all the bases. Each one rotated through all the required instruments – guitar, keyboards, drums – thus demonstrating how they grew up in a home that valued such things.
Kitty, Daisy and Lewis | Mark Thompson photo
More significantly, they played with calculated attention to the crowd’s response. This was old-fashioned R&B, the kind of revue show spontaneity that got audiences on their feet. The people were relaxed but in the groove, under a cloudy sky and coaxed by cool late afternoon breezes, courtesy of the forests surrounding the stage.
As the afternoon progressed, hotter and humider but not rainier (no rain, in fact, though clouds kept threatening such), it dawned on us that the crowd was a bit smaller than usual. The bottlenecks that usually occur between sets on the path from the White to the Green Stage were still in evidence, but hardly as punishing, and we expected more of a crowd at the White for Sunny Day Service, a hugely popular J-rock act with a built-in fan base.
The crowd for Drenge at the Red Marquee was even smaller, which could have been expected using conventional logic. They only have two albums out and are hardly a household word here, but the brothers Loveless are one of the better drum-and-guitar rock duos in the business–smart, sharp, melodic. Even better, they hired a bass player for their live shows, breaking a kind of industry taboo that has been in place since the White Stripes made drum-and-guitar duos the shit. Their set was criminally tight, with no fat allowed for gratuitous audience identification and self-aggrandizement. The crowd was small, but potently into it.
Joey Badass was similarly stripped down over at the White Stage–just him and a DJ, and three songs in he took off he shirt to make the stripped down adjective more literal. For a while he seemed out of his element. As the only purely hip-hop artist at the festival he seemed to be trying to compensate for everyone else who wasn’t there. It took him a while to find his groove. As much rapping as he did, he was equally bent on invoking the crowd to “make some noise” and provide the standard gesticulations indicating interest in the performance. He seemed distracted and diffuse, and couldn’t generate a groove.
But then something clicked. Maybe the crowd finally got what he was doing, but everything fell into place, and as incoherent as his flow often was it connected. The groove took care of itself, and by the end Joey was exhausted and grateful. He thanked the audience sincerely, surprised that he could make a connection to a group of people who probably couldn’t make heads or tails of what he was trying to communicate, but nevertheless grokked his emotional engagement. It was a fine afternoon after all.
Cloudy with a chance of R&B. The coffee at the hotel sucked so we needed something to wake us up. Stone Foundation, a largish British band that plays original tunes that borrow heavily from Southern soul, opened the Red Marquee on Friday to a crowd that was up for that sort of thing, and so were we, even if the vibe was a bit too preppy for our tastes. Also, the horns used tablet PCs for their charts. Is nothing sacred?
Consequently, we left before the set ended so we could catch Charanporantan again at the Field of Heaven. We want to amend our previous comment. Charanporantan doesn’t strictly play kayokyoku, unless your idea of vintage Japanese pop is actually a mish-mash of all forms of pop, which is what they play. Fronted by sisters Momo and Koharu, the former born in Heisei, the latter in Showa, the group is dedicated to a very Japanese idea of showmanship, sharp, silly, and more irreverent than you might expect. With their all girl horn section and Koharu on button accordion, the arrangements are simple and flexible, and they moved easily from chanson to rockabilly to boogie woogie and even klezmer with tongue either firmly in cheek or wagging salaciously at any ridiculous taboo that occurred to them. At one point Koharu, who acted as sardonic master of ceremonies, introduced a song for “minorities,” in this case shut ins which in Japan are called “hikikomori.” The song, set to the Bay City Rollers hit “Saturday Night” exchanged the titular chant with “Soto de nai” (“always inside”). “We hate summer, too,” Momo added.
The crowd, relieved from the hot humidity by a cool, welcome drizzle, loved every minute of it, and were energized anew when the group was augmented by a real klezmer band, the Norwegian maniacs Rafven, for a version of “Hava Nagila.” Momo promised to drop in for the band’s set the next day. It will be another early show. Who needs caffeine?
