(日本語版
)
Summer
Sonic is a two-day summer music festival held in Chiba’s Makuhari Messe and
nearby Marine Stadium. It is a huge event, with probably around 80 bands
playing over two days, and unofficial concerts on the side as well. This
was my first time every going: I really wanted to go last year since
We Are
Scientists were playing, but I had a conference to attend and was back in
America at the time. This year, I didn’t have as much of a connection to
the bands, but there were some great acts, and it is a real value for your money
compared to the standard Japanese live show fare, which is about $45 for a
ticket to see one band (maybe two if you are lucky.) The two-day Summer
Sonic Pass was about $275, and you can see about sixteen shows if you are tough
enough…
I had to wake up at about 7am to get to Makuhari. It takes about an hour
if you hit the right trains, or an hour and a half if you get the local ones,
taking Oiimachi line to Oiimachi, transferring to the Rinkai line to Shin-Kiba,
then taking Keiyou line to Maihama Makuhari. At the station there were
crazy numbers of people, and they were making announcements about how it is
crowded, buy your return ticket in advance, etc. Exiting the station there
were lots of people with hand-made signs asking to buy tickets and so on.
Also, there were lots of older guys (almost positively Yakuza) doing ticket
scalping trying to sell tickets. They were also buying extra
tickets. I have no idea what the markup on this kind of thing is, but
those guys were around for the whole festival. I don’t think they could
have made that much money because I never saw anyone buy from them, but who
knows.
It was a pretty long walk from the station to Makuhari Messe (the convention
center), where I exchanged my ticket for a two-day wristband pass. I
wandered around for a bit and then headed over to the Marine Stadium since the
bands I wanted to check out in the morning started on that stage. It was
crazy hot, probably about 36 degrees celsius very humid, not a cloud in the sky
with a fierce sun beating down. I had put on lots of sunblock since I’m
whiter than a scared ghost, but I was still worried about getting
sunburned. Over at the stadium I walked around for a while, bought a
Pokari
Sweat and kept wandering around. Completely by coincidence I ran into
Lisa and Kana, who I knew were coming, but didn’t expect to easily be able to
find in the massive crowds. We had more than an hour before the first act,
so we headed over to the Beach Stage (literally on the beach!) where Lisa said I
should be able to get a small towel from the Tower Records stand (to help with
protection from the sun!)
“Onsoku Line (Speed of Sound Line)”
While at the beach stage we saw the opening act
Onsoku Line, a
three man group of rap-style music. They were pretty good, and certainly
were fitting for the beach stage. It was lots of fun even though I hadn’t
heard of them before.
We headed over to the Marine Stage and got a spot very close to the stage –
maybe like 6 rows of people back. It was crazy hot. I had my towel
wrapped around my head and under my hat so my neck wouldn’t get burned.
Almost everyone else did too. Did I mention that it was hot? Before
the shows really started to get going, some dude came out to warm us up. I
didn’t know who he was, but he was maybe half or something because his English
was quite good, although the whole thing was mostly in Japanese. After he
did his thing (MC in charge)
Nishioka
Sumiko (you can see some of the other characters she has played, as well as a
bit as her current SM Mistress character in this youtube video) came out and
did a kind of routine. It was kind of funny, but like most Japanese
comedians the comedy comes from just shouting at people something vaguely
inappropriate (you guys are all pig bastards!) She has a kind of
leather-wearing Mistress like domination schtick.
“The Pipettes”
Next up was
The
Pipettes, a female singer trio from England. They had a backing band
who wore cute monogrammed sweaters, but the act is just the three women, who are
singers. They are like a blast from the 1950s, wore cute polka-dot
outfits, and had completely choreographed dances with intricate hand movements
for each of their songs. The really funny thing is that their song lyrics
were mostly completely at odds with their poppy happy sound. They reminded
me of Lily
Allen in a way because of that. I really thought they put on a great
live show, although I’m not really interested in buying their album because
musically I just wasn’t grooving that 50s sound too much. It isn’t bad, it
is just at the price of albums out here, I’ve got a lot of other things to spend
my money on before I head after these girls. I really did enjoy the show
though. Lots of fun.
“OK Go”
Next up was OK Go. I knew of them because of their
Youtube
Video for Here it Goes Again, which is really great. I didn’t know
much else about these guys, but they put on a good show, had some pretty heavy
rock sound, and weren’t bad at all. I like their style.
“The Editors”
I first found out about
The
Editors when they toured through Japan with
We Are
Scientists. I really liked them then, they reminded me a bit of Joy
Division. Actually, when I was chatting with Keith from the Scientists he
introduced me to the guitarist and the bassist of the band. They seemed
like nice guys. This time the guitarist was wearing a kind of
Power-Rangers type shirt that really went over well in Japan I think. The
Editors put on a really great show, and the lead singer was crazy nuts with his
strange arm movements and stuff. He was twisting his arms around behind
his back, moving around strangely, all that stuff. It was pretty
cool. They really rocked it hard, and if you don’t have their album “The
Back Room” I recommend you pick it up.
After the Editors, I was exhausted from hours of standing in the hot sun, so we
all headed back to the indoors Makuhari Messe area for a break and lunch.
I really wanted to check out
Puffy
AmiYumi, but instead I had lunch and took a bit of a break. If I had
really killed myself and ran around like crazy I probably could have seen a few
more bands, but that makes things seem more like work. It was more fun to
relax and see the bans that I really wanted to see and not worry too much about
scheduling, just try to have a good time. Lunch also involved waiting in
lines and just took too long. I did have a nice lunch though: Fried Yaizu
don, which was a fried maguro fish on rice. It was really good too.
While the convention center was air conditioned, it was so hot and there were so
many people that it wasn’t really all that cool. Still, after about an
hour, I had finally cooled down a bit and quite sweating. That wouldn’t last for
long though, since next up was
“Interpol”
Interpol
was playing on the Sonic stage, a medium sized indoor stage. I’ve always
like Interpol since their first album “Turn on the bright lights” (still their
best, IMHO) and since they are also a New York band I have a special place in my
heart for them. Their show was really good. I was up front so had a
really nice view, and they played lots of songs that I knew so it was really
great. I really think that Editors and Interpol make a pretty nice
pairing.
“Dinosaur Jr.”
After Interpol I stayed at the Sonic stage for Dinosaur Jr. I used to
listen to these guys way back in high school, I would remember Eric and I in the
car driving back from track practice after school with these guys on the
radio. They broke up a while ago, but recently the band has been re-formed
with new members apparently. I should have known this, since it is their
style, but the distortion and feedback was just crazy. The volume wasn’t
any louder than any of the other bands, but with all of the feedback the high
pitched sounds were just unbearable. I really needed some earplugs for
this one. I closed my ears and listened to the first two songs – including
a surprising cover of the Cure’s “Just Like Heaven” – and then went next door to
relax and sit down for a while.
“Modest Mouse”
Probably the band that I was most looking forward to was (or second most, hard
to tell) was
Modest
Mouse. I really love their new album “We were dead before the boat
even sank”. I was really amazed that Johnny Marr, the famous guitarist
from The Smiths, was playing with them, and right up there on stage in front of
me. I never thought that I would have the chance to see Johnny Marr live,
but there you are. They played a lot of songs that I knew and just put on
a great show. One funny (or sad?) thing that happened is that the lead
singer Isaac Brock went down into the crowd once, and when he came back up to
the stage someone had taken his hat. In between every song break he was
talking about his hat. First it was “Hey man, give me back my hat” and
then it progressively got more aggressive like “Man, do you know how hard it is
to find a hat that you like?” and “You can’t just go taking people’s hats for
nothing!”, “This isn’t the Isaac gives away his hat 2007 tour!” and “Man, I
don’t care if you say you can just comp these things, it doesn’t matter if it
costs $20 or $1, you can’t just go taking people’s stuff” and finally “Fuck you
in the face, motherfucker!”. I’m with him on that sentiment: that’s just
shitty to take some guy’s stuff just because you want it. It really sucks
that fans act like assholes sometimes. The show itself was really great
though. They put on a hard-rocking show, and sang a lot of good stuff, and
oh my god, Johnny Marr! It was great. They were my favorite act of
the day, and probably of the two day festival.
“Travis”
I finished things out with
Travis
I don’t really know Travis well; I’ve heard them on the radio and various
podcasts that I listen to, but I don’t have any of their albums. They
really sounded great with a nice sound and very good harmony. I am
interested in picking up one of their albums, but I don’t know where to start
really.
After Travis, I headed home on the super crowded trains. It took about an
hour and a half, and of course the train was super packed. By the time I
got to the Rinkai line though I was able to sit down. There is at least
one good thing to be said about taking a super expensive line that normally
people don’t ride: you can sit down. I collapsed into bed, hoping to rest
up these old feet for another day of the same punishment tomorrow…
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