FUJI ROCK FESTIVAL 2006 REPORT @ NAEBA / DAY 02
DATE : 29th July, 2006 (Sat)
PHOTOGRAPHER : Masanori Naruse / Yasuyuki Kasagi / uchuutaishi star
TEXT : Matt Cotterill (HigherFrequency)
The Hives, Green Stage, 15:05 Swedish garage rockers turned ubercool trendies The Hives provided the perfect antidote to the afternoon drizzle and a lesson in the the delicate art of crowd rapport. Donned in trademark arty black shirts, white braces and cowboy masks, they saunter onstage and bellow "This is a stickup!!" Zero out of ten for originality perhaps but a straight ten for blistering confidence and searing rock and roll showmanship. From there on in they had the crowd by the short and curlies, frontman Howlin' Pelle Almqvist building the ever appreciative audience with admittedly hackneyed tactics ("do you like The Hives?" -yeah! "do you LOVE The Hives??" -YEAH!!!), but delivered with a swagger and adrenalised verve that few acts of the weekend would pull off. It culminated in an impressive freeze-frame mid set, precision timed and lasting long enough to convince us that these boys are rarely late for band practice. Favourites "Idiot Walk" and the fervid guitar havoc of "Main Offender" were the eminent crowd-pleasers, and they finished with "Two Timing Touch and Broken Bones". We forgot it was raining. Honest. | |
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Yeah Yeah Yeahs, White Stage, 20:30 There are many interminable questions in the world of rock. Why does Thom Yorke release a solo album and insist it isn't a solo album? How do Coldplay succeed in making music so vapid? Why do aging Manchester musicians become DJs? And where oh where does Yeah Yeah Yeahs resident screecher Karen O find outfits that are so amazing ...ly stupid? No, seriously, she looks like the Predator. She looks like that nasty squid guy from Pirates of the Caribbean 2. Get it off. Now! Mercifully she does (she always does - part of the performance, you see) and cue the tortured screeching as she opens with "Fancy" from their latest album "Show Your Bones". Theirs is a visceral show, a mounting, snarling mass of energy that Karen O channels through her palpitating, tormented vocal range - a manic foil to the paucity of instruments. An art-rock marriage of barbarism and desperation wrapped up in a hyper performance that has the White Stage faithful heaving. By the time she's squealed through "Cheated Hearts", "Warrior" and "Black Tounge", she's down to something not far off a swimsuit. For good measure, she mangles the mic at the end of the set and lobs it into the crowd. Cephalopodic pantomime costumes aside, a thoroughly gleeful, shriek-riddled dose of the YYYs. | |
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Red Hot Chili Peppers, Green Stage, 21:30 The Red Chilis are stayers, you have to give them that. And with an estimated 40,000 strong crowd turning out this drizzly Saturday evening, they still pack a punch, some 23 years after forming and a good 15 since their popularity spiked with the funk rock extravaganza that was "Blood Sugar Sex Magik". The fastidious onslaught of time and a minefield of drug addictions might have seen the renowned six-packs gradually morph into spare tires, but this was nevertheless a blistering performance that saw a wired Anthony Kiedis storm into the set with "Can't Stop" to a roaring, ecstatic crowd. Any animosity that may have lurked between bassist Flea and fretboard maestro John Frusciante was absent as the pair's cheek by jowl guitar/bass combo (one of the best in rock history) sizzled through the angular, frenetic grooves of "Scar Tissue", "Throw Away Your Television", and the seminal "Californication" in note-perfect unison. A set very much thought out with the fans in mind (and there were plenty of them here), hinging around a beautifully rendered solo of the Bee Gee's "How Deep is Your Love" by Frusciante, but one that took the pointless verbal banter, all too familiar to Fuji, to perilously absurd heights. Flea's frequent ramblings on the mic and an inane rendition of "If You're Happy and You Know It" only serve to make them look like... erm, twats. No more so than when, in an apparent attempt at comedy, singer Anthony Kiedis duly informs us in sleazy vocal timbre and the wrong language that three days after coming to Japan he accidentally "got Hello Kitty pregnant. I thought she was on the pill. Sorry. But it's gonna be a cute baby." Forty thousand people don't laugh. Junkie XL/Soulwax/2ManyDjs, Red Marquee, 00:00 - 03:30 With some notable exceptions (last year's Evil Nine springs to mind), late-night sets at the Red Marquee tend be the antithesis of All Night Fuji's spirit of experimentation - formulaic and pedestrian party sets that languish in the realms of DJ desperation, pandering to the crowd's lowest common denominator. Not that Higher Frequency is against party sets, lord no, this is a festival, surely that's what the crowd wants? But there is a shelf life to how many times you can listen to Nirvana or Blur at 258 bpm. In this vein, Amsterdam-born Junkie XL (Tom Holkenborg) doesn't pull any punches - what with his lip synchs, air guitars, drudging pop anthems and big beats, this is a one man show in the very literal sense: he'd probably be having just as much fun in his room on his own. No, it pushes the buttons, the crowd love it. Less turgid bits were a remix of Depeche Mode's "Enjoy the Silence" and his own production "Breezer". The set was sandwiched by a double-bill of the Belgian duo David and Steven Dawaele, who saw in the morning with a set as 2ManyDJs, and who earlier performed as Soulwax with a live rendition of last year's album "Niteversions" using the aid of a band comprising Stefaan Van Leuven, Steve Slingeneyer and Dave Martin. The energy of the live instruments added a rawness to the rock/pop textures and electronica flavours of the album. Highlights were "Miserable Girl", "E-Talking", and "I Love Techno". | |
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