When the opening notes to the Rihanna hit "We Found Love" played over the QVC Marine Stadium sound system Sunday night, the packed-tight crowd erupted louder than it had at any point in the show. Glow sticks were thrust into the air harder and bottled waters launched into the sky as the climax of the Summer Sonic music festival approached. As the beat tranced out, fireworks exploded overhead and balloons and glitter shot from the stage. Moments earlier the headline performance had featured a Sphinx firing green lasers out of its eyes, but this topped it.
This spectacle, both visual and aural, defined the 12th edition of Summer Sonic, held simultaneously in Chiba and Osaka. Though the festival featured many older groups trying to reclaim past glories, this year's lineup stood out from the busy Japanese festival circuit by boasting many artists who are intent on creating new sounds and blurring traditional genre lines. The fans that made the trip out — two-day passes and Saturday individual tickets sold out for the Chiba leg — were treated to a diverse assortment of acts and over-the-top performances.
Green Day's Saturday night headlining set wasn't as flashy as Rihanna's, but the California trio's energy had just as many fans hurling their bottled waters into the air. After spending the last decade as overly serious political punks, Green Day's Saturday night set found the band embracing the slacker-fun attitude that helped turn them into one of the most successful alternative acts of the 1990s. The set leaned toward the catchiest cuts from their earliest albums, the crowd fist- pumping hardest to "Basket Case" and "Longview." The group still played some of the poorly aged political pop-punk (lead singer Billie Joe Armstrong's Arnold Schwarzenegger impersonation in "Holiday" should be left in 2004) and new songs like the repetitive "Oh Love" weren't much better, but Green Day seemed anything but uptight. They pulled punters onstage, wore silly hats and engaged in call-and-response chants in the middle of songs. Armstrong, in particular, could get the entire stadium screaming just by making a funny face.