International acts coming to play in Japan in Jan/Feb 2011

January and February are always the best season to enjoy international acts live in Japan. Many international acts aim to come and play in Japan in either months. The season is always good for most of the international acts who play at Australia's music celebration "Big Day Out"taken place in January. Also there are many smaller festivals and bands' own Australia tour around the time. They go to Australia anyway so it's more convenient and cost-effective for them to stop by Japan before/after the festival.

There are tiny but great Japanese promoters for international acts. However, these two biggest promoters are always the most influencial: Smash and Creativeman. They organise Fuji Rock Festival and Summer Sonic respectively. The bands coming to Japan in the winter tend to play at either of the festivals as well. Offers for these bands seem to be a bundle of their own Japan tour in Jan or Feb (or possible in Spring) plus a festival slot. The theory doesn't apply to all cases but to the fair number of the case.

So, who are actually coming to Japan in the next Jan/Feb? As far as I know, this looks like this:

<Smash>
January: Digitalism, Donavon Frankenreite, Local Natives, Mice Parade,
February: Foals(special guest: Holy Fuck), Mae, Moe, No Age, Scissor Sisters,
Info: smash-jpn.com/index.php (Japanese only)

<Creativeman>
January: Klaxons, Hurts, Crystal Castle, Jamaica, Sleigh Bells, Firewild,
February: M.I.A., Taylor Swift, Two Door Cinema Club, MGMT, Halloween, Nas / Damian “Jr Gong” Marley, Bring Me The Horizon, Skillet, I'll Be Your Mirror (curated by ATP!!!yay! Lineup is to be announced)
Info: www.creativeman.co.jp/english/

<Others>
January: 4AD evening (Deerhunter, Blonde Redhead, Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti) (info: Contrarede)
February: Mogwai (details are to be announced)

Gosh! Too many bands to come! Please note that each of the gigs are so expensive. The price range will be Iguess approximately 5,000-8,000 JPY (50-80 US dollers/ 40-65 pounds). Therefore Japanese international music fans are now all contemplating which gig they should go with their own limited budget. Regarding that, I would say coming to Japan in Spring can be possibly better than coming to the winter so that your fans can afford to buy their own tickets and go to your gig.. But touring in Spring might cost bands more. It's like a hell in heaven and we never can get away from that.

Snoop Dogg: who could know about that?

Snoop Dogg was supposed to come to Japan at this weekend and do several live performances across the country. However, now it's cancelled due to performance fee unpaid. Snoop explains in the video beneath that all payment to him should be done before all the Japan dates but the promoter Positive Production didn't make it.

So here is the brilliant video:


It seems that his Japanese DJ friend @dj2high put Japanese subtitles on and uploaded the video to youtube on behalf of Snoop (great work!).

This thing is brilliant. In this sort of case, how a promoter explains the reason of an artist's cancellation is "due to unforeseen circumstance...". This is what Positive Production did as you can read here. However, the video was uploaded and the real reason was revealed. What happened to Snoop and what he has then brilliantly done should be openly discussed as it's a rare that such matter is revealed. Nevertheless, the most of the Japanese music media and music journalists haven't mentioned it as the promoter hasn't revealed it. They just don't want to get in trouble. Japanese music journalism is dying really. So I hope music fans who watched the video all understand it's a business matter and when a promoter says "due to unforeseen circumstance", it means something.

From a label point of view, the video is also nice as he explains that it's a promoter - booking agency matter. Mechanism of booking an artist for a gig is unique here in Japan (I'll explain if I have a chance to do so). Partly because of that I think many Japanese music fans believe that artist's record label in Japan is heavily involved in a concert deal but it's not. That's why his Japanese label EMI surprisingly put the youtube link on Snoop's feature webpage here, which no music online media did! To me it feels like EMI gets angry about the promoter's failure so that put the link...


I hope Snoop will find a better promoter and come to Japan in the near future.

*edit (10/10)
Here is a response from Positive Production:

Source: www.positiveproduction.com/cansel.html
Well, it seems a problem between the promoter and Snoop's agent. Is it going to court? Nobody knows...