The Tokyo Concert Experience

I don’t think anyone was expecting Bob Dylan to be one of the headliners. As far as I know, he rarely plays festivals. It turned out that his performance at Fuji Rock was a milestone, as it was either his 100th or 101st performance in Japan; the first one resulting in one of his many live albums from the seventies: Bob Dylan at Budokan. The announcement caught me off guard, I was expecting Arctic Monkeys or Jack White, but Dylan is something else. Last time I saw him was four years ago and it was as good as always. I was looking forward to which songs from his catalogue I will hear live this time around and I was not disappointed. On the morning of the festival’s third day some remnants from the previous night typhoon were hitting the grounds. Mountainous areas have that kind of unstable weather, one minute it will be sunny and the next one it’ll be rainy, but it went through extremes during that morning. My buddy and I were catching the Taiko drums ensemble Kodo perform...

Back in February, when the first lineup announcement was posted on the festival’s site, the name of Kendrick Lamar stood out and gave me high hopes for this year’s edition. I was curious and did some research on previous lineups. I found out that N.E.R.D. and Kendrick Lamar were the first black artists to headline Fuji Rock in its 22 years of history. Before some of you  might think that’s not so unusual for a rock festival, let me remind you who headlined the biggest one. Jimi Hendrix did, in Woodstock, 1968. If there was one criticism I had for the previous edition, the only one I attended before this year’s, was the lack of hip hop. Death Grips was the only act remotely representative of the genre in the festival that year. This year, other than the two headliners, there were Anderson Paak and Kali Uchis; and each one of their performances -can’t speak for Uchis’, unfortunately I missed it because I was saving my spot for Bob Dylan- were packed. I can’t understand the o...