The Good

I was pleasantly surprised to see they'd completely redone the entrance. The first year they used a very enclosed area at the entrance to the Jisan Forest Resort. It was really a "U" shaped set of snowboard shops that was re-purposed for the weekend. Nothing was labeled very well or visibly. This year they moved back into the lower parking area for the Resort Hotel, and spread out. The labeling was much better and more organized. This was a definite step up for the Fest and shows a real commitment to making the experience better.

They also added a pool to the front end of the area this year, which was pretty pimp. If I remember correctly, it was 12,000 Korean Won for a plastic braclet that was good for the entire weekend. A one time buy got you into the pool all three days. From what friends said, it was in pretty good shape all three days. I'd really meant to try it, but in the rush to get to the Fest on Friday I forgot my suit. Quite a few people ended up with burned out cell phones. I'm not sure if they offered short term lockers, but that would be a nice touch if it wasn't available in the pool area.

They also did a great job (like last year) with the food and cleaning up every night for the next day. They kept the staple food stands from last year: the New York Hot Dog vendor that had a decent Chili Cheese Dog, a good (for fest food) Taco place that had some pretty good burritos, and the stand from last year that had kabob wraps. The Kabob place was nearly as good as the place in Iteawon. Last year the NY Dog stand and the kabob place got most of my money. This year it was split about evenly between the three places.

The last positive for me was the addition of the Cover Band stage. This ran about an hour after the Main Stage closed at 11pm. Thank the Flying Spaghetti Monster for this stage. With the drop off of the Electronic Stage from last year this saved the night session for me. The first night had a Ramones and ZZ Top cover band. The other nights had Beatles, Beach Boys (rocked the house), Bob Marley and the Wailers, and Deftones cover groups.

The Bad

The Jägermeister Stage. To me it looks like they replaced the completely dope Electronic Stage that ran from midnight to 4am with this corporate mess. Last year they had it under a hard case dome and brought in some sick DJs like Dieselboy from South Africa. Nothing like that this year. It was all just noise to me all three nights. The DJs every night ran repetitive beats for longer than I've heard for awhile. They'd stick on one baseline and not move off it for minutes at a time. Even the canned music of the back-of-the-park Jägermeister Tent was more enjoyable for me. At least they had a soap covered dance floor for most of the time.

The flow of the bands was also dicey for me. Friday night especially seemed all over the place. They went from a higher energy Korean band to Belle and Sebastian, who were very low energy in a folky way. Then they go to Vampire Weekend, who took the energy up quite a bit. From there they went into Massive Attack, who stayed extremely low energy with almost entirely ballad type tracks until the last song of the night.

They also ordered the international bands badly, in my opinion. The one night that most foreigners could reasonably travel (Saturday) had only one big international act, The Pet Shop Boys. Incidentally, they rocked the house. But all of my friends commented on not being able to make it through Seoul traffic and the bus system in time for Vampire Weekend and Belle & Sebastian for Friday night. On Sunday for Muse, Kula Shaker, The Hiatus (great Japanese band), and Third Eye Blind, they would have to fight through even fewer travel options getting out after for work on Monday. Having one super solid act on the one easy travel day is bad planning. You could definitely tell the difference in attendance for Saturday versus the other two days.

Also, after being at this event last year there was a much different feel. The entire event seemed to be one big promotion. As stated above, the Jägermeister was only the most visible and loud example. They also had Cosmopolitan tents, and few artist gear. Instead almost everything geared around promoting the festival. The headliners only had two shirt options, everyone else only had one. But... they did manage to have about 10 varieties of Jisan Valley Rock Fest shirts, posters, handouts, stickers, keychains, and phone bling available.

The Ugly

The line-up in general wasn't bad enough to be ugly, but considering the sister festival they promote with, the Fuji Rock Festival, we got shafted by a lack of sharing. They got our top acts Muse, Massive Attack, Vampire Weekend, Kula Shaker, Mutemath, Belle and Sebastian, Third Eye Blind, and Corinne Bailey Rae.

The acts that didn't make the trade trip? I'm so annoyed I'm going to break this down in a list for you.

• Them Crooked Vultures - Dave Grohl's current side project
• Ken Yokoyama
• John Fogerty
• John Butler Trio
• Atoms For Peace
• Donavon Frankenreiter
• Asian Kung-Fu Generation
• Scissor Sisters
• MGMT
• LCD Soundsystem
• Flogging Molly
• Fishbone
• DJ James Murphy (LCD Soundsystem) did a separate DJ session late at night.
• Ozomatli - Played two separate nights here.
• Dweezil Zappa

I got bored sticking all the links in there. To put this in perspective for you, Third Eye Blind got on there at 3pm. They were on at dusk here. We got scraps. Last year we at least had a good spread and better balance/flow between the acts. This year it seemed like it was a bit hodge-podged. I really hope they fight harder for us next year. After the lack of any international acts at Pentaport and Busan likely only having Lifehouse, they're the only Festival with draw power and acting professional.

To close this up... it was good music. I just wish it had been more evenly distributed. If I hadn't gone to all three days, it wouldn't have been nearly as good. Only when I took the entire thing as a whole did it come out positive.

Band by band reviews coming later this week.