The bands I want to see overlap on the festival timetable...

favorite_borderLast updated:2019/4/11

• The person behind Rockin’ Life
  The person behind Rockin’ Life. A late-twenties-ish office worker based somewhere in Kansai. I like music just a tiny bit more than most people, and within music genres, I like rock just a tiny bit more. I prefer Uniqlo over “Yabai T-Shirts Yasan,” delicious melon bread over the band “Oishikuru Melonpan,” and “Three O’Clock Rock” (as in a 3 p.m. snack) over “ONE OK ROCK.” My current dream for the future is to not go bald.

Introduction

In the past they used a two-stage setup, so if you wanted to, you could see every band.TimetableIn the past, many festivals focused on how they were organized, but in recent years, due to a priority on maximizing attendance, they build many stages within a single festival to attract more visitors.

In other words, a single festival now draws in more attendees.

That doesn’t mean they carried out a sweeping land reform and actually increased the number of people the main stage drew.

If, by any chance, the majority of participants end up coming to the same stage, we would reluctantly have no choice but to impose stage restrictions.

When introducing up-and-coming bands, people often use promotional lines like “They caused stage restrictions at a summer festival!!” as a barometer of the band’s popularity. But it could just as well mean the festival organizers misjudged the crowd size and venue capacity—in other words, there’s no denying the possibility that it was simply the organizers’ incompetence.

At Rockin’, there are far too many bands whose draw doesn’t match the stage capacity, and as a result, most popular young bands have essentially ended up accepting restrictions.

“Stage restrictions” can serve as a barometer of a band’s popularity, but for a festival, they’re really a badge of dishonor.

So, the basic strategy we came up with to reduce “stage restrictions” even a little is to assign stages in line with each band’s popularity, and also to schedule, behind a popular band, another band that’s expected to draw restrictions—in other words, a band likely to be very popular.

For reasons like this, it often happens that the bands you most want to see end up overlapping on the timetable.

From the audience’s perspective, you can’t blame them for thinking, “Why make a timetable like this? Are you idiots?” But if they don’t do it this way, it would just turn into a crappy festival full of restrictions, so in a sense it can’t be helped.

I understand reality.

But if I want to watch something, I want to watch it.

At times like that, I think there are many people who wish they could at least split themselves in two.

So in this article, I considered how one can 'split.'

Physical division

It’s the idea that, like the slimes that appear in Dragon Quest, the body splits cleanly into two.

If you can do this, you’re unbeatable.

Meanwhile, you also hear the realists saying, “If we could do that, it wouldn’t be a struggle,” but once you give up, that’s the end.

If you can’t do it, then let’s think about why you can’t.

Q.

What happens if the body splits apart?

A.

There will probably be a lot of blood.

Q.

What happens if a large amount of blood comes out?

A will probably die from massive bleeding.

If you die, you lose everything.

Some people say they’d be content to die at their favorite band’s live show, but if someone died because they tried to “split themselves” when the bands they wanted to see were scheduled at the same time, I can’t imagine their soul would be able to rest in peace.

If we had immortal bodies like 'zombies,' we could pull that off, but unfortunately, we're not zombies.

astral projection

It is the idea of sending only the soul outside while leaving the body as it is.

From a bird’s-eye perspective, you can take in every live show of the bands you want to see, and since your body isn’t being harmed, there’s no risk of dying.

Isn’t this plan the strongest?

I think so, but I imagine realists would retort, “If that were possible, it wouldn’t be such a struggle.”

Indeed, I’ve never seen anyone provide a scientific explanation for how to achieve astral projection.

I get the feeling that only shady psychics or occult-leaning paranormal enthusiasts have ever insisted they could do it.

I tried looking for a book at the nearest large bookstore that explains how to have an out-of-body experience, but I couldn’t find one that was highly useful and offered good reproducibility.

At this rate, it almost seems more realistic to wait until the 22nd century for the debut of the Take-copter, the famed secret gadget from Doraemon.

Astral projection might, after all, be nothing more than a pipe dream.

If we were an occult sort of being like zombies, we could do that, but unfortunately, we’re not zombies.

By the way, this keyword “zombie” has become an important term when thinking about contemporary concert etiquette.

I wrote about that in a separate article, so please take a look.

But I digress.

Lately, I feel like there are many songs and works that muse on parallel worlds.

Base Ball Bear’s recent release “Light Source” is one such work.

If this were a manga or a game, we could travel through every parallel world and choose the most optimal answer, but of course in reality we can’t do that.

So the journey through a “parallel world” seems alluring, but in the end, each of us can choose only one future.

All we can do is live the present moment to the fullest so that we won’t regret the choices we’ve made.

Pour love and kindness into the people you’re with; if you’re studying, get fired up and focus on it; and if it’s work, tackle what’s in front of you seriously.

It’s the same for live performances, after all.

It's precisely when there are two shows you want to see but their timetables clash and you're in a bind that it becomes a chance.

You should enjoy the live show you chose so wholeheartedly that you could almost say “serves you right” to the one you didn’t pick.

Then there will not be the slightest trace of regret.

Also, for the bands you chose not to see this time, your desire to catch them next time will build up, and in the meantime they’ll be polishing both their performance and their onstage talk. So there’s a chance you’ll get to see that band in an even better state than when you first thought you wanted to see them.

The futures we didn’t choose often end up having a surprisingly big impact on the future versions of ourselves.

Therefore, if we avoid becoming “zombies,” commit to living fully in the present, and refuse to be people who are led around by “time” in the form of timetables, the path will naturally open up—probably.

Good luck.