The Tokyo Concert Experience

If not entirely, the sun did come out for the last day of this year’s Fuji Rock Festival. Got to the site earlier than usual and skipped the tororo at Oasis because, for the first time, I caught an act at the Pyramid Green stage, not so far from where the buses drop the commuters every morning. I Got to walk around the camp site and was surprised for not seeing any damage from the previous night ravishing storm. In a very small stage for the festival standards, decorated with chandeliers and drapes, I saw Yakushima Treasure , a project that’s a collaboration between the lead singer of Wednesday Campanella and the lead singer of Asian Kung-Fu Generation. They both released an EP earlier this year that showcases their more experimental side. Maybe that’s why instead of the packed place I was expecting, there were roughly 100 people there, maybe even less than that. A surprising fact considering that I saw Wednesday Campanella at the Red Marquee along with a huge crowd two years ago

The weather is always an issue at the Fuji Rock Festival and this year was no exception. On Saturday, on our way to catch the festival shuttle that took us from Echigo Yuzawa station to the site every morning, we heard from the hotel owner we stayed at that we needed to be careful because a typhoon was on its way to Niigata and some collateral effects were going to be felt at Naeba, the festival site. That didn’t turn out to be wrong, to the point that at the end of the day we decided to skip one of the acts and head back to the hotel a little earlier than we planned, but this was not due entirely to the weather, I’ll explain later. After the obligatory tororo we stopped by the Red Marquee to catch the Taiwanese band Sunset Rollercoaster already in progress. We only stayed for about ten minutes. Their music was a bit on the Soft Rock side of things, taking inspiration from acts of the seventies like The Doobie Brothers and Bread. The six-piece band was tight and the arrangemen