Puffy at Rock in Japan Festival 2008

It's summer, and that means one thing for Japanese musicians: time to hit the festival circuit.

Puffy's a mainstay at ROCK IN JAPAN - they've been there at least the last four or five years straight (if not more). This year's festival was held August 1-3, with Puffy appearing on the Lake Stage. I haven't seen too many blog or other reports around the net that really talk much about Puffy, but I did at least find a set list. English and/or romanized below:

01.Basket Case
02.Nagisa ni Matsuwaru etc.
03.Hi Hi
04.boom boom beat
05.Kore ga Watashi no Ikirumichi
06.My Story
07.Boogie Woogie No. 5
08.Tokyo I'm On My Way
09.Asia no Junshin

Pretty standard stuff, at least compared with the recent All Because of Live tour.

Just a personal anecdote here: I don't know how many of you have been to a big music festival like this, but it sucks. You spend hours standing in the heat waiting for the one band you want to see, then they only play 9 songs and you're done. And since by definition most of the crowd is there to see somebody else, it seems like nobody's even paying attention when the band you like is on. It's just a terrible atmosphere.

Things might be a little different in Japan than they are here, and I've only been to American festivals. But the footage I've seen from Japanese festivals looks the same. It's just no fun, even if you like a few of the bands that are playing. The crowd never gets into it, the bands themselves are rarely all that into it, and there's no connection between the band and audience.

Last year when we went to Japan, we knew we were going to miss either Puffy or Kaela or both (I don't remember anymore) at some show by like 3 days. We actually thought about adjusting our schedule so we could go, but then realized it was a festival show. We kept our original schedule and didn't regret it.