Fan Diary: Summer Sonic Festival – Chiba, Japan


Kasabian at Summer Sonic Festival

Kasabian at Summer Sonic Festival




Day 1 (7/8/09):

It was my third visit to the mega festival, which is held just outside of Tokyo, Japan. I saw Oasis and Kasabian for the first time in 2005, in 2007 I enjoyed The Enemy, Kasabian, Manics, Arctic Monkeys and many more, and 2009…?

Summer Sonic is a 3 day festival, held in Chiba and Osaka (just like Reading and Leeds). It was a 2 day event until last year, but was expanded to 3 days to celebrate it’s 10th anniversary this year.

We arrived at a very crowded Kaihin Makuhari station at around 10:30, a couple of boys were asking for tickets to buy as it was sold out. I ordered my tickets for day 1 – just to see The Enemy and Kasabian – via the festival’s website and I didn’t receive them until the day of the event. I was so worried that I was going to miss those bands that I bought another ticket upon my arrival in Japan 2 weeks earlier! Of course my original tickets showed up 3 days before the festival was to start , obviously I now had no problem selling the extras to the Japanese fans I ran into. That saved me a fortune!

The ticket booth was just in front of the Marine Stadium (Oasis played there in 2005), but we had to be in Makuhari Messe where The Enemy and Kasabian played in the evening, so we took a free shuttle bus to Makuhari Messe. In the early evening (18:30 – 17:00), Kasabian gave an autograph session in Makuhari Messe. “You’re allowed to stand in a queue here from one hour before the session,” we were told. There were so many people in the queue 2 hours before the session and only the first 30 could get their autographs. Fans who bought one of Kasabian CD’s at the HMV booth that day were allowed to stand in the first queue, then those who had a Kasabian T-shirt on, then those who had the festival programme, and lastly those who bought ‘nothing’ at the festival booth that day. Serg, Chris and Ian were quite friendly and nice, especially Ian. Tom was arrogant. I had my ‘Oasis European Tour’ t-shirt on and Serg and Chris looked at my T-shirt and mentioned it to each other when I walked by.

I went to Shibuya AX where they had played a sold out show 2 days earlier to check the venue. I saw them coming out from the backstage door and went into the venue. The guitar player Jay came out of the venue alone earlier to chat with a couple of fans. He was really nice.

Anyway, back to the Summer Sonic…After Kasabian’s autograph session, we had to run to the Mountain Stage as The Enemy would be on the stage in 5 minutes. Luckily we could find a good place – 2nd queue from the barrier:

The Enemy – Mountain Stage 18:45 – 19:45:

I saw them at the same festival in 2007 and twice in Amsterdam in 2008 and May 2009. Although I was quite disappointed with their new album, their live performances have  improved every time. In one hour they played songs from both albums. We sung ‘We’ll Live And Die In These Towns’ along with only a couple of Japanese fans (C’mon, don’t be shy next time!). Trust me, they’re a really great live band and I think they deserve more recognition

Kasabian – Mountain Stage (Headliner) 20:15 – 21:30

Starting their 4th performance at SummerSonic with ‘Underdog‘, and finishing with ‘Vlad The Impaler‘ and ‘L.S.F.‘ (encore) the Leicester band had the audience totally under control. Brilliant band, brilliant gig. It really is a shame that Tom got ill afterwards, he probably felt unwell at that moment as he didn’t move much on the stage and sat next to the drums now and then. Thank god he’s better now as he just played at Lowlands festival in Holland last weekend.

(Sent in by reader mimmihopps)


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One Response

  1. Wireless 27 August, 2009