Originally published on metropolis.co.jp on August 2011
“You know buddy, I can’t think of anything better than standing one foot away from you in front of all these people right here right now,” said bassist Flea to frontman Anthony Kiedis of the Red Hot Chili Peppers in their climactic set of this year’s Summer Sonic festival. “Good friends aren’t easy to find, so if you have one, hold on to him.”
Amid the tumult since 3/11, the search for constancy seemed to define this year’s 12th Summer Sonic festival. Young acts seeking to break Japan’s market like “horrorcore” teen phenom Odd Future and UK sound-of-2011 anointee Esben and the Witch made their hopeful debuts. But more than new music, Japanese fans had the chance to reaffirm longstanding ties with many of the groups that embody its relationship with Western music in recent few decades.
A steaming weekend that jammed over 100 bands and 100,000 punters into the airplane hanger spaces of the Makuhari Messe and adjacent Marine Stadium launched with Friday night’s Sonicmania, rekindling Japan’s love affair with UK rave bands of the ’90s like Primal Scream and Underworld.
Saturday welcomed more figures Japan has taken to heart in recent decades such as pop-punk darling Avril Lavigne, former Oasis frontman and eternal ne’er-do-well Liam Gallagher, and louche New York bad boys The Strokes—like Lavigne now, all grown up.
Sunday saw reunions of post-punk outfits, Johnny Rotten’s Public Image Limited and the briefly influential UK unit Pop Group, while X Japan, the Village People and the Red Hot Chili Peppers had never broken up to begin with.
Amid crowd pleasers like “Under the Bridge,” which transported the band into the mainstream exactly two decades ago, and closer “Give It Away,” the Chili Peppers slipped in songs from their new album I’m With You, due out Aug 30.
The band’s first outing in five years and tenth overall marks the proper debut of former touring guitarist Josh Klinghoffer as a full member. It had to be with mixed feelings that he mimicked the trademark riffs of former axeman John Frusciante, but on new numbers like the tuneful if unremarkable “The Adventures of Raindance Maggie” he showed himself a serviceable replacement—and after years of Frusciante’s painful falsetto a better harmony singer.
The 50,000 or so fans were patient enough with the Chili Peppers’ fresh material. But in an era when the Japanese charts are dominated by industrial products like festival closers Girls Generation, and when the YouTube video single is the dominant form of music consumption, the mere fact that the Chili Peppers were patiently hawking a new album seemed somehow quaint.
In the end, it was elder statesman Bootsy Collins—the bassist who taught Flea his tricks—who really showed what playing a festival is all about. As the sun expired beneath the oily waters of Tokyo Bay behind the Beach Stage, he brought the house down with a searing set of psychedelic space funk. Few in the party-hardy crowd probably knew any of his songs—nor did they care. With a weekend’s worth of sun and alcohol softening up the nerve endings, Bootsy Collins and the Funk U Band were nectar for the central nervous system’s pleasure circuits.
