Just uploaded a few vid clips from the Fratelli’s show at Shibuya AX last week. Reminded me of that wave pool I mentioned recently. Wow. Amazing what one iPod ad can do for your career, huh?

One of my favorite acts this year was Marva Whitney with Osaka Monaurail, Japan’s finest funk outfit. These guys do a note-perfect impression of the JB’s, and have all the moves down cold.

Whitney was in James Brown’s backup band, and she is still a show stopper. Check this out: that’s her walking in from the left - hard to see, but she trips on a wire and wipes out.

Then what does she do? Pops right back up and bring the house down, that’s what she does:

Here she is back in the day:

Here’s a quick video rundown of highlights from the last party at Fujirock’s Palace of Wonder 2007 area. The Sunday Night/Monday Morning party at Palace is arguably the best moment of the fest each year, because it brings everyone together: staff, press and many of the acts on the bill (Chem Bros, !!!, Kaiser Chiefs, etc) end up here drinking with the locals and regular ticket holders, usually till long after the sun is up (I left at 9am because it started raining, and it was still going).

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Here’s a few clips of the final acts in the Crystal Palace, a kickass tent on the Palace of Wonder grounds.

After killer funk DJ, Lincoln, finished his set, on comes Kwabana Lindsay, aka “Fiddler on the Rope”

Next up is Lil’ Fats and the Swingin’ Hotshot Party, a great Tin Pan Alley act complete with washboard percussion.

They had these costumes made especially for Fujirock (last time I saw them they were dressed as French Sailors from the 30’s). No vid of it here, but Lil’ Fats does an incredible Louis Armstrong impression. The crowd loved it. Here they formed a conga line:

A few glasses of champagne later it was the JVC Force DJs. This year they had a squad of American-style cheerleaders.

They’re spelling out “Arigato” if you didn’t catch it.

Amazing what short skirts and pom poms can do to a crowd (we’re dancing to the Bay City Rollers, ferchrissakes). Shouldn’t be surprised, tho. The JVC guys are the ones who brought the incredible Murasaki Babydoll burlesque team last year (English site here, Japanese site here).

A few more drinks and then it was off to the swing outside:

I still have a few bruises under my arms from wiping out like the punter in this clip. Then it was on to try to convince Fi from The Whip that she should climb one of the Palace sculptures for my own amusement. It doesn’t work.

That’s a wig she’s wearing. Most of us were wearing them since they were handing them out at the entrance.

One of the most pleasant surprises at this year’s Fujirock was stumbling upon Panorama Steel Orchestra: over 25 young Japanese playing covers on massive array to Caribbean Steel Drums.

Personal faves, “Somewhere Over the Rainbow”

and the Jackson 5’s “I Want You Back”

Completely made my morning

You may have heard about Iggy Pop falling - hard - off the Green stage last weekend, but the man is made of iron. He was gone for a while, and he even played “I wanna be your dog” AGAIN after the fall (must have whacked his head somethin’ good), but the guy got up, cranked into “No Fun,” and pulled about a hundred frothing fans up onstage:

Notice he’s sitting down for most of this…

The Palace or Wonder area has always been my favorite part of the festival. I’ll add more details later, but here’s what your confronted with upon entry:

Giant sculptures made out of scrap metal, trees made out of mufflers, freaks of all stripes and usually some kind of carnival act that revolves around pain and/or danger. This year it was the “Globe of Death”

That’s THREE motorcycles in there. Great cheap thrills. And if that wasn’t enough, the bottom opens up. I caught it as it closed.

I’m finally recovering from my Fujirock hangover and catching up with life in the real world, so I’ll start posting a few clips I took last weekend at the festival.

Here’s a couple of Deerhoof. They played two shows, but I chose to see them on Naeba Shokudo stage, a little chunk of plywood attached to a lounge area near the food stalls (you can see people sitting/laying down behind them). This was a great move, cause the crowd was into it and Deerhoof’s jerky thrust-and-pause songs were tighter than I’d ever heard them.

If you’re not familiar with their song, “Panda” then this may sound like nonsense, but to see them stop and lunge forward without even looking at each other was pretty amazing.

A few highlights so far:

The boys from !!! turning a few thousand people into frothing lunatics

The Cure playing 2 hours and bringing back a thousand high-school memories

A steel drum orchestra covering the Jackson 5

Deerhoof playing a muddy side stage the size of my living room

Iggy Pop nearly breaking his neck only to get up and wail some more

Omar Rodriguez Lopez touching the moons of Saturn

Kaiser Chiefs vocalist leaping the stage gates to lead a fan-chase onto an unsuspecting Pocari Sweat stand

A didgireedoo and three drummers making kickass techno/trance

A crowd for the Lily Allen show that you couldn’t wedge an icepick into

Alien mummies on bamboo stilts.

Cavemen with sharpened sticks rolling a boulder down footpaths

and that’s just off the top of my head…

back to work. No time to upload any vid clips now, but my reports (under “jinki”) and many, many others HERE

The Red Box events are a great example of where club culture and art collide. Carlos Gibbs, the guy behind Deep House Project and Red Box, pulls together killer DJs, VJs, painters, photographers, sculptors, etc and throws them all in a room for the evening, with the image of a Red Box as the common thread (add your own symbolism here).

HYPTYO faves, Rimpa Eshidan were there, too (you may know them from their intro to Youtube Japan.). I wondered how they would translate their sped-up painting exercises into a live performance. So what did they do? Red Boxes, of course. BIG ones:

These rotated throughout the evening, taking on different images and patterns. Great stuff. Only problem was this jackass wanted to perform with them.

Everyone tried to avoid the guy (he started hugging people), but it was unavoidable that someone got house paint on their clothes. Myself included (and on my favorite shirt, dammit). Once they got under control, the painting continued:

Been getting geared up for FujiRock next week. I manage the English-language component of Fujirockers.org, and one of my duties every year is to write the schedule - basically, telling writers where who they should cover. Everyone gives me their top requests and alternatives, and every year I’m always surprised that one particular band either lacks requests or is inundated by them.

For example, this year I was SURE there would be at least 3 or 4 writers wanting to cover the Cure. Nope. Only one, and it was his alternate.

And who would be the most popular this year? It’s a tie between Blonde Redhead and Battles.

Both on my list, as well, but c’mon! Have you seen the schedule?

My money’s on !!! to bring the serious party.

Great night this past Saturday (7/14): Asobi Seksu, Sphere and Cruyff in the Bedroom. This show was put together by On the One, a new promoter connecting western indie bands with like-minded local acts. They were spot-on here, all three acts and the DJs in-between flowed seamlessly together.

The common thread between all three bands is their shoegazer influences. Cruyff in the Bedroom perhaps most of all:

Sphere were a pleasant surprise, but they’re working it a bit too hard.

The visuals projected over them in this clip? Pretty cool stuff, except that text would roll across every so often: song titles or lyrics, and then at the end “SPHERE, NEW ALBUM OUT NOW!”

Nice try.

Asobi Seksu sounded great in a small club like Chelsea.

My memory card cut off at the end, which is a shame, cause tiny little Yuki Chikudate got behind the drumkit and bashed something fierce while strobes flashed in seizure-inducing mode. A sight to behold.

Samm Bennett wears many musical hats: bluesman, avant-guardian, percussionist extraordinaire. He and his wife, Haruna’s project, Skist, is a dark and mellow affair. Here they are performing at Loop-line, a cool little gallery-cafe in Sendagaya:

Sequencers and percussion are the basis, but they also played bells, a jew’s harp even candy wrapper. Here they are using little electric fans for effects on the mic:

I want one of these drums Samm uses:

So…do white people have soul? The verdict’s still out, but they do know how to have a good time. Just look at spasmo Yacht here:

He had NO problem doing the white-boy dance. Au Revoir Simone were a little more subdued, but lots of fun:

a recent video here

The promoters at Smash have always had a soft spot for both Latin Rock and local talent, so I’m surprised we haven’t seen Copa Salvo on the FujiRock lineup, but I guess it isn’t too late.

Here they are rocking Quattro:

That’s the saxophonist from Ego Wrappin’ back there:

And the piano player’s a banger:

Mitsuyoshi Azuma is a bigwig at NTV (Nippon Telebi), one of Japan’s top broadcasters. He and his band, the Swinging Boppers, are entertainers in the classic sense, and possibly the country’s best purveyors of old-school rock n’ roll and R&B.

Their site

I mean, the guy is just a geezer salaryman having a blast, right? But he connects with young Tokyo hipsters in a way rarely seen. Too bad he performs only a few times a year. Their last performance sold out a month beforehand, but I was able to see Azuma-san perform with a trio at Club Quattro’s Orbit Blender event a few weeks ago. The only vid I caught was of Azuma breaking and fixing a string, but even this relays why people flock to his shows. Here he is playing jazz standards, his string breaking just as the vid ends:

Handclaps and the upright bassist take over during repair:

The crowd, unprompted, stays with him, keeping the beat:

String fixed (sort of), and Azuma plays it for laughs: