These days the annual Yonezawa rock music festival goes by the name of the Yonezawa Rock Festival. There was a time when it was named "Doors to Freedom"...I'm not sure when the name change happened. I suspect the name change came about when it started taking place at the Nishijo Tenman Park in town as opposed to the Onogawa Ski Slopes on the outskirts of the city.
This year's lineup featured the usual suspects such as Locofrank and Low IQ 01. Less frequent participants on this year's card are SheTurnsMeOn and Good4Nothing. Yama Arashi's debut was last year and the remainder are first timers (if I'm not mistaken). Interestingly, this year included a spoken word/beat poet/rapper in the person of Muroha (sic).
The good thing about this year's festival was that we had good weather. My guess is that the majority of times it's held it's raining. One year it was cancelled thanks to an incoming typhoon. This year's good fortune weather-wise came in spite of Locofrank's track recod of bringing rainy weather with them.
Here's a shot of the festival site the night before the festival....
And here it is on the big day....
I had a hamburger for lunch and a bowl of imoni (potato stew) as a light dinner....
They have signs up requesting guests not to photograph or take video of the acts when they're on stage. Thus no photos of the performers in this blog post.
The night was clear and once it got dark the temperature dropped a bit. Oh yeah, the variety of yellow flags around the site named sponsors and supporters.
For me, the highlight of the festival was the last band, G Freak Factory. They invited kids to come up on stage for one song that was about the future and essence of community. And they had members of other bands on stage to do adlib raps with them in their encore performance.
Addendum: Forgot to add a ohoto of my CD purchases at the festival....
