Make Believe Bonus: Fuji Rock 2023
The "Woos" And "Boos" Of The Fest
WOO! — Fuji Rock As Regular Summer Festival: It’s painfully predictable, but true…Fuji Rock Festival 2023 signaled the true arrival of normalcy back to the Japanese festival landscape. A year ago, every set saw staff stroll out on stage before the artist came out to rundown rules with the energy of a police officer forced to oversee the D.A.R.E. program at an elementary school. “No screaming, no singing, no moshing, no crowd surfing, I guess clapping is OK…” This year though, they came out with a spring in their step, offering only health warnings (“please drink water…don’t booze too much…it’s so hot…”) before hitting a line they knew would get people riled up. “And this year…you can shout out all you want.” That they did.
I loved Fuji Rock this year precisely because it felt like a sort of elevated return to normal after three years where the gathering up in the mountains of Niigata was anything but. Fans and artists just went for it all weekend — lots of screaming, singing along to lyrics, slamming into one another upfront, tears, middle fingers thrown up — and everything about it felt right. I wrote more about that in The Japan Times for something resembling a proper review…if you subscribe to this, you’ll surely see me link it somewhere once it is up…so here’s some other thoughts from an event where woos (and I guess boos) were welcome.
BOO! — The Heat: God damn it was hot all three days up at Naeba Ski Resort. I won’t bore you with the climate change angle — you have skin, you know how bad it is this summer — but rather add that the ecological saving grace of every Fuji Rock never came this year. You can usually count on a mild rain at a few points during the festival weekend, sometimes mutating into something much more severe (one of my fondest live memories was watching Aphex Twin headline the 2017 fest in something approaching a typhoon…the closest a set has ever felt like the apocalypse to me). Usually, it lasts a few hours, and helps cool down overall temperatures the rest of the event. But that never came in 2023, save for some sprinkler-light showers lasting like 30 minutes on Friday.