Yesterday was day 1 of the 2004 Summer Sonic music festival in Chiba. It was a great line up and is similar to an urban Fuji Rock festival, as half of the stages are indoor at the Makuhari Messe the rest outdoor in the Chiba Marine Stadium, or on the beach. In an added twist, the two-days are swapped with a twin venue in Osaka, so Chiba’s Saturday bands play Sunday in Osaka.
We spent a couple of hours checking out some of the smaller bands at the indoor stage, but they weren’t as interesting as the smaller bands from FujiRock. Then we headed out to the sweltering Marine Stadium to watch some of the bigger bands.
Pennywise were on when we arrived, and they did an OK set. I was looking forward to seeing The Darkness, but unfortunately they cancelled earlier that morning so the organisers got another band in to play – old British rockers The Wildhearts, who I haven’t seen live for about a decade, but I have to say that even though they’d only landed at Narita a few hours before, and minus a lot of their own stage gear they actually did a damn good set.
Inaba (one half of the group B’z) did a great set too – the guy is pretty good on stage, and mixed with rock and more blues influenced songs. Next up were Canadian band Sum41 who I’d never heard of, but to their credit they did a pretty good set, with some good festival music. Then the first of the ‘headlines’ came on – Avril Lavigne – but I was a bit disappointed – it all sounded and looked like it was straight off the album to me – I’m not saying it wasn’t good, but it was a bit formulaic, especially for a festival.
Finally the day’s headliner came on – Green Day, and they didn’t disappoint – a rocking 90minutes of fun and good music and stage work. They did many of their top songs, and now just from the last ‘Warning!’ album. They also got a guy out of the crowd to play guitar on one of the songs. All in all, it was a great set, complete with a couple of fun cover versions, ending on Queen’s ‘We are the Champions’.
The venue itself was very good indeed, but suffered from a complete lack of decent signposting and staff who knew where things were, but overall summersonic is a great festival to check out. Is it better than FujiRock? Maybe not – it feels more ‘corporate presentation’ than festival, but it’s proximity to Tokyo (and Osaka) make it a pretty simple way to see quite a few bands over a weekend.
Hey – I checked out the first day of SS as well. Pretty much agree. Avril was a disappointment – Zero crowd interaction; she didn’t seem to have a care of where she was or who she was playing too. Was basically already headed off stage by the last cymbal crash. Who knows, maybe she was having a bad day, but I think fans expected more. The All American Reject who opened on the Marine Stadium were GREAT. Good tunes, good repoire with the crowd; impressive. As was Sivertide. Not sure if you caught these guys or not, as you said you headed to Pennywise; we left Pennywise and headed indoors, and just caught the last tune of ST. REALLY impressed. SAD SAD SAD that I missed their set. Kind of straight ahead, 70’s style rock. What I heard reminded me of the Black Crowes first album (in the sence of classic, olderstyle rock). Solid singer, rock/blues riffed guitarist, and they don’t even have a full length album out. They were almost as excited as the crowd; singer thanked them all afterwards, brought out the previous band and thanked them, then came back onstage 3 times while the crew was taking down just to video tape the audience, toss some EP CD’s to the crowd, then finally to toss his vest into the crowd. Check out silvertidemusic.com – looking foward to their album.
Yes, was also d’pointed that the Darkness in all of their falsetto-hood cancelled as well – they would have been good to see.
Greenday was impressive as well. I’ve liked their hits, but wouldn’t consider myself a CD buying fan. They level-up a few notches for sure though – GREAT interaction with the crowd; smooth set. To hear the whole stadium singing, and then chatting OOOOOOOooooooo for the encore was something else. The guy-out-of-the-crowd-stand-in guitar’s song-ending guitar jump was classic, and finishing with Queen’s WRTChampions, and then fireworks; will see them live again if given the chance.
Hi Ben,
Thanks for the posts!
Yeah, the temperature has been pretty hot this summer. I’m hoping for a matching cold winter for the snowboarding, but I’m not sure if it follows. I’ve been using the fan where possible, but the humidity is what seems to get me.
I’m wondering if my electricity bill goes up when they do some more checks on the powerstations and realise they all need rebuilding. I was pleased actually at SummerSonic that I didn’t get any sunburn for being out all day (factor 50 and a good hat!). Can’t wait till the end of the month for the Kamakura Beach Party.
Graham