Jisan Valley Rock Festival

On Friday, we went to the first night of the Jisan Valley Rock Festival to see Belle & Sebastian, Vampire Weekend and Massive Attack! A quick glance at my lastfm account will show how much I love Belle & Sebastian and Vampire Weekend, so I was really, really looking forward to the show. The festival was actually a 3-day event and we had originally planned to stay all three nights but we were only really interested in Friday's bands and we didn't know anybody else who was going, so we decided Friday's show would be enough for us.

There was a bit of confusion about how to get to the concert because the festival's website had said "shuttle bus information will be updated soon" right up until the day of the show. Actually, I just checked and it was never updated. So, we took the subway to Ori Station, where the buses were meant to leave from and found a line of foreigners waiting for a bus. We correctly guessed that that was where we should wait.

When we got to the festival site we bought our tickets and then entered the concert grounds without anyone ever checking to see if we had a ticket! Note to 2011 Festival go-ers, tickets are optional.

We thought we had lots of time to get there for Belle & Sebastian's 5:30 set but we only got there with 15 minutes to spare before they went on. The band, which is obviously styled by the fine folks at Reitmans, has a huge catalog of great songs to choose from, but they didn`t play any of them aside from "Step Into My Office Baby". It was a pretty good show because they`re a great band, but the set list left a little to be desired. No "Dog On Wheels"? Really??

After Belle & Sebastian finished their set we got a cold kimchi noodle soup for supper; which is obviously a popular festival snack all over the world. There were lots of burger, taco and sandwich stands but it was hot out and the cold naengmyeon really hit the spot.

The festival took place at a ski resort so there was lots of room for camping and a lot of built-in amenities to enjoy. There was even a huge pool to relax in, which would be especially great if you were staying all weekend.

These guys in Ghostbusters costumes walked through the crowds at the concert selling draft beer and Jager from their backpacks. Isn`t that an awesome idea?

By the time we finished our noodles it was time to go watch Vampire Weekend, and they didn`t disappoint. Since they had a full hour to play and most of their songs are about 2 minutes long they were able to perform almost their entire catalog of music- it was great! They were full of energy and the crowd loved it. It was one of my favorite concerts ever.

Ezra!

Click to watch a great rendition of "A-Punk".

We had a bit of time before Massive Attack was starting so we explored the festival grounds a bit more. There were a bunch of tents set up to sell food, merchandise and (luckily for Mel) pointy straw hats.

There were some promotional stages as well. These models (with very strangely shaped faces) posed with these cars for hours on end. "Do you come with the car?" "Oh you, hee hee hee."

Our official opinion on Massive Attack. I love electronic music, but they were so one-note and sleepy that we found ourselves wandering off (we noticed a lot of others doing the same) to buy kebabs and sleep in the grass.

Then we waited in a near-empty parking lot for our shuttle bus home. The buses had to be reserved in advance and from the longing stares our bus got from the approx. one million people waiting for transportation to Ori, they could have made a lot more money off of those buses if they continued selling tickets at the site.

So, Belle & Sebastian were pretty good, Massive Attack was massively boring, and Vampire Weekend were fantastic. All in all, I`m going to give our evening at the Jisan Valley Rock Festival my official rating of:

Woo!