Things got off to a memorable start at England's Glastonbury Festival in 2002. Revelers were roused from their tents on the first morning to find the main Pyramid Stage overrun by a 40-strong Japanese big band, complete with costumed performance artists, butoh and go-go dancers. The late radio DJ John Peel, long the nation's arbiter of leftfield musical taste, deemed it the highlight of the event. Headliners Coldplay couldn't hope to compete in comparison.
If there's one thing you can always rely on Shibusashirazu Orchestra for, it's spectacle. The group is an ever-shifting collective of jazz veterans, rockers, cabaret performers and avant-garde dancers in various states of undress. They're led by Daisuke Fuwa, a shaggy, Sapporo-born bassist who spends concerts smoking furiously on clove cigarettes and swigging beer, in between conducting the carefully channeled mayhem.
"We were already going to Europe at that point," Fuwa recalls of the festival. "But with Glastonbury, I think it was thanks to a lot of" — he pauses, giggles — "bad gaijin (foreigners) who were coming to Japan at the time and taking home stories about this crazy music they'd heard. It was like word of mouth."