Japan’s Summer Sonic music festival may have been mainly about the stadium-sized bombast of Jay-Z and a slate of cranking, angry, angsty rock bands from 90s alternative icons Smashing Pumpkins to nu-metal heroes Nickelback, but it’s a testament to Stevie Wonder and his marvelous singing career that a performance whose predominant musical emotion was joy could carry the weekend.
The now-legendary 60-year-old blind musician has been laying low in recent years, but the last few months have seen both major festival appearances and a gig at the White House for US President Barack Obama. Sunday night in Tokyo, almost everything about his performance differed from the musicians who’d taken the stage before him. There were no DJ booths, amplifier stacks or projected visuals giving every song a music video feel. Instead, there was a band of 15 or 20 players, including backup singers who danced in sync, a full horn section and a covey of hand-drummers. This was Motown at its peak, and it was on stage at Chiba Marine Stadium near Tokyo in 2010.
Wonder ran the show like the musical godfather he now is, calling out his sons and guest singers for solo spots, preaching happiness to the audience and even giving a musical shout out to Jay-Z, the previous night’s headliner in Tokyo. Saying that there is a song he’s really been liking a lot lately, he encouraged the crowd to sing the chorus to Empire State of Mind — though they didn’t really get it — for just a few moments before digging back into his catalogue.
And what a deep catalogue it is. Wonder’s voice has hardly changed an iota since when I first began hearing it on American pop radio stations in the 1980s, and while he naturally sang hits from that era like I Just Called to Say I Love You, he skipped no part of the song book, and especially jammed up a number of tunes that helped take funk mainstream in the early 1970s, like Higher Ground, Superstition and Signed, Sealed, Delivered I’m Yours. The closer was the deliriously joyous Happy Birthday, followed by a drum jam and fireworks exploding over the stadium.
The night before, Jay-Z similarly lived up to his top billing. I started out watching it from the VIP skybox, mainly because I figured that’s where Jay-Z would be if he somehow had the ability to watch himself, but his jams were so rocking I decided to hit the pit in front of the stage. And anyway, there was no Petron on ice in the VIP, just waitresses in cheerleader uniforms.
Live, Jay-Z uses a lot of power rock to put oomph into his music. Though his set began playing up the solitary genius image — Jay-Z in a spotlight, alone save a microphone, dark sunglasses and designer ear plugs — a DJ and a full backing rock band slowly emerged, and the band cranked an extra layer of power chords on top of recent tunes like On the Next On and Death of Autotune. Classic riffs from the Doors, Aerosmith and others pervaded the set, and Jay-Z even sung a chorus of Where is the Love over a sample from U2’s Bloody Sunday. But whatever you think about the rapper’s string of appropriations, his sense of showmanship left no room for disappointment. What we saw on stage was both Jay-Z the rapper, and Jay-Z the CEO of the enterprise that’s turned his own persona into a mass entertainment commodity.
Smashing Pumpkins and Hole were perhaps the most anticipated 90s rock acts on tap, though much of that was related to offstage drama. Hole’s lead singer Courtney Love continues to live in and out of drug rehab, and Smashing Pumpkins only just reformed after 10 years, with signer Billy Corrigan as the only remaining original member. Hole’s inclusion mainly added another big name to the festival schedule, and while the Smashing Pumpkins were far better, their sound was sometimes murky or simply noisy, and only on a few occasions did it provide the pure explosive impact they are known for.
The Pixies and Pavement were by contrast everything their 30-something fans wanted them to be: deep in their classic song books, full of the same old stage power, and knowing how to mix things up musically and give tested songs a live improvised feel. Pavement’s lead signer Stephen Malkmus was on his game, giving his lyrics that wonderful sly delivery that defies poppishness and plays up a sense of continuing poignancy.
So what about new music? Or, to quote every other song in hip-hop these days, what about that next level s---tuff? Well, if there is anyone out there delivering it, it is the South African rap crew Die Antwoord. Whether they are just severing up a truly bizarre schtick, or whether they really are white trash from a parallel universe where MC Ninja really smokes weed nonstop and has had a child by his sex-bomb sidekick and stage partner Yo-Landi Vi$$er, they are an act to behold. Their shake-the-room techno beats, raps in English and Afrikaans, and sometimes pornographic visuals could work at either a club party or contemporary art exhibition. The new UK rock trio Band of Skulls was not as theatrical, but its set on a relatively minor stage opened up a big ol’ can of rock-your-ass-off.
Taking place in Tokyo and Osaka last weekend, Summer Sonic drew a total of 158,000 fans, capping a 10-day stretch that saw Japan’s largest musical events of the year. A weekend earlier, Fuji Rock drew 137,000 fans over three days.
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