And, well, let’s face it, even I’m not crazy enough to travel halfway around the world for a concert,
even a really good one

As spring slowly turns into summer and the polluted air of Hong Kong gets hotter, wetter and smellier, my thoughts turn to rock festivals. It’s not so much that I enjoy the thought of camping out for three days in the mud as it is the opportunity to get to see a whole lot of bands that I like at one time. And since they don’t come here, I have to go there.

I’m old enough to have just missed Woodstock: I was 15 years old that year and in a summer camp just 20 miles or so away from Yasgur’s farm. That weekend, I tried organizing a group to sneak out of camp and hitch to the festival. We got caught within minutes. So we had the rain and the mud but not
the music.

A few years later, I found myself in London in the summer, so my friend and I took the train up to a town called Chelmsford for a three-day folk festival. The acts that I can recall include the Strawbs, Al Stewart, Stefan Grossman and, best of all, Sandy Denny. Two nights camping out in a cow pasture but we saw about 30 different acts and the incredible Ms. Denny offered my friend and I a ride back to London, but my friend was afraid to get in the car with her dogs. (He was also afraid to go to Amsterdam, the land of legal pot and prostitution, but that’s another story.)

That same summer we went to an all-day show at the Crystal Palace that typifies just how weird festival billings can be. The headliners were Yes, doing the world premiere of their Close to the Edge album. The other acts on the bill that day included the original Mahavishnu Orchestra, Gary ‘Dream Weaver’ Wright, Spooky Tooth and Lindisfarne.

Okay, that reminds me of a story that has nothing to do with this but some of you will enjoy. Around 1971 or so, there was a double bill at some dump in New Jersey with the Mahavishnu Orchestra and opening act Harry Chapin. I worked up the courage to invite a really cute girl to go with me. Chapin came out on stage and did Taxi (thank God he hadn’t come up with Cat’s Cradle at that point – I’d met Harry a few times and liked him as a person but never had much use for his music) and the girl looked at me and smiled and nodded her head. Oh, this was going well.

Then the Mahavishnu Orchestra came out: the original line-up – John McLaughlin, Billy Cobham, Rick Laird, Jan Hammer and Jerry Goodman and they were all dressed in white. McLaughlin stepped up to the microphone and asked the audience for a minute of silent meditation before they started. My date looked at me optimistically and that had me thinking optimistically. And then the Mahavishnu Orchestra started to play. If you’ve never heard them (and you should), they played electric jazz louder and harder and faster than any heavy metal band before or since. They got about 30 seconds into the first song and
my date screamed in my ear that she needed to go to the ladies’ room.

About 30 minutes later, when my date still hadn’t returned, I looked around the audience and saw that every alternate seat in the theatre was empty. I made my way out to the ladies’ room and saw a solid wall of women, frantically pushing their way in, trying as hard as they could to escape the horrors of the sonic torrent being unleashed on stage. “Is Vivian in
there?” I yelled. “Tell her we can leave now!” She came crawling out of the ladies’ room and I drove her home. Not only didn’t I get to hear the end of the set, you won’t be surprised to learn that I never had a second date with Vivian.

Anyway, the last festival I went to was just last summer. It was the Udo Music Festival, held each year at the Mount Fuji Speedway, a couple of hours outside of Tokyo, and the headline acts were Santana, the Pretenders, the Doobie Brothers and Jeff Beck. I went with a friend from my company’s Tokyo office who made a point of warning me, “You won’t be able to meet any cute girls there. This is a concert for old people.” And even though he turned out to be very right about that, it was great to see and hear so much live music in the course of a single day. The capper was when Jeff Beck came out to jam with the Santana group at the end of their set. Jeff and Carlos just went at each other for 10 minutes, allowing me to (almost) completely forget about the girl I’d spotted with butt-length hair and a huge tattoo running down her back.

So now it’s another year. Glastonbury has already sold out, even before they’ve announced the line-up. “The only thing definite is that U2 will not be playing,” according to the web site. And, well, let’s face it, even I’m not crazy enough to travel halfway around the world for a concert, even a really good one.

Closer to home, the Asian granddaddy of rock shows is the annual Fuji Rock Festival, which this year takes place from July 27th through to the 29th. About 75 performers have been announced so far, including the Cure, Kings of Leon, Yo La Tengo, Iggy and the Stooges, Kaiser Chiefs, Kula Shaker, Lily Allen, Chemical Brothers, Jonathan Richman, Joss Stone, Mika and Vincent Gallo (Chloe Sevigny is not listed, so hopefully we will be spared a live re-enactment of the final scenes of Brown Bunny). Really none of these acts alone (well, maybe the Stooges’ reunion) would get me excited enough to fly to Tokyo, sit on that bus for two hours from the airport and then ride on the train for an hour and a half to spend three days outside surrounded by thousands of people and possibly 10 portable toilets. But all of these bands together? That could be a very different story. If you go, look for the Spike Tent, which will be set up halfway between the beer and the porto-potties.