MeWi – Design

A Story by: “Wictor L. Faanes” as told by W. Dire Wolff

Drawings by and Courtesy of Norn Cutson (Use Limited by Permission)

On July 3, 1999, Cibo Matto performed at the Roskilde Festival (an annual 4-day music festival) in Roskilde, Denmark. The festival was born out of the great rock festivals of the 1970’s (i.e. Woodstock, the Isle of Wright, etc.). It is a non profit festival limited to 60,000 attendees. All profits from the event are, “donated to initiatives for children and young people, and other humanitarian, public utility or cultural work worldwide.” The festival also targets a specific representation of popular modern rock musicians. This is an account of one concert attendee’s Cibo Matto experience at the Roskilde Festival.

On the night of the July 3rd, 1999. Wictor and his wife, Mette, did what they enjoy doing most at the Roskilde Festival. They check out the names of the bands that they have never heard of before, and try out something new and different. They have done this every year for the past twenty years at the Roskilde Festival. But they have been attending concerts since 1974 in their hometown in Norway.

“Yes, I’m 50 years old,” explained Wictor. “We have heard and seen a lot in our lifetime, we are well trained in selecting and planning festival concerts and we have consumed the most of it.”

Wictor and Mette have an agreement on some basic principles and rules to follow during the Roskilde Festival. Wictor described one of their rules, “… If you choose a concert – stay – don’t leave – give the band a chance. If we don’t like what we hear and see after five songs – we say one more and then leave. If one of us then should say one more, it’s one more”

For some reason, Wictor and his wife found there wasn’t a description of a band called, “Cibo Matto” in the festival’s program guide. The program only said, “CIBO MATTO – White Stage – 23.30.” This unknown band was playing at the same time as “Suede” would be playing on the main stage. Suede was to be followed on the main stage by a sure to be killer performance by “The Chemical Brothers”.

At first they dropped the idea of checking out Cibo Matto. “How could they be worth missing the Chemical Brothers for?” they thought to themselves.”CIBO MATTO?!? What in…. is that?”

Mette managed to find out over the course of Saturday Night, that this Cibo Matto band was something Japanese. Japanese? Well why didn’t they say so in the program? So it was on that Saturday night in July, they decided to drop Suede and the Chemical Brothers to check out some unknown band from Japan. By the time 23:30 on Saturday night was approaching the couple had begun to feel five days and nights worth of parties taking a toll on them from head to toe. They began to think that something relaxing would be just fine at that point. So it was they found their way over to the White Stage to check out the Cibo Matto show.

“We always do find a place in the front,” Wictor explained. “We like to see people in their eyes. Have contact.” Thus, they sat down on the ground just in front of the stage. It was ten minutes before the concert started and they waited. The White Stage area was protected by large tent. They sat in the tent with fifty or a hundred other people, while the masses of the Festival were out with Suede on the Orange Stage. They enjoyed a beer while waiting and watched as some more people wandered in to see Cibo Matto on the White Stage. There appeared to be only some 200 people inside the tent, when Cibo Matto came on stage.

At first Wictor was puzzled by the appearance and manner of this strange new band. There were two Japanese girls (Yuka Honda and Miho) just as his wife seemed to have guessed. But the rest of band was not Japanese at all. The drummer looked like an American student (Timo Ellis) that had to cut some classes to attend the concert. Besides the preppy college kid, there was a dark mysterious figure shrouded under a large hat sitting behind some conga drums (Duma Love). And then there was some strange looking bass player (Sean Lennon). Wictor had no idea who these people were and didn’t know quite what to make of this strange collection of characters.

Yuka began playing some dreamy tones from the keyboard. But to Wictor it appeared that this Japanese girl had bought a keyboard that morning and just plugged it in for the first time. Amazed with the discovery of her new toy, she had become hypnotized by the first sound that came out of the instrument, and decided there was no reason to try any other sound. Then Yuka began changing tones, one by one, finger by finger, while Wictor watched the other girl begin singing. Miho was telling the song’s story with her hands as if performing some sci-fi hula ritual. He watched her bend down on her knees sometimes as she continued the hand movements and singing. And what was this strange Japanese girl singing about with her thin voice?

“About what?” thought Wictor. “Food? Apples? Carrots? Ice Cream? Oh no.. no.. no..”

Wictor got bored. And having decided he was bored, the show started to seem more and more boring. “Is this just another empty, tricky band that I’ll never understand,” he kept thinking. Then for a moment he paused and listened again, “Or is it something else.. Is it something there, was it the bass playing, the drums, the sudden changing in harmony and rhythm? Did the keyboard girl know what she was doing after all? Maybe…” He began to listen to Sean and Timo locking together with Miho on their tight vocal harmonies. “The way they sing?” he pondered. “The choring?”

But poor Wictor just couldn’t catch it. He gave it five songs as the couple’s rule dictated and after the fifth song he turned to ask Mette, “Do you want to leave now?” His wife turned to him with a surprised look that seemed to say, “What? Are you crazy?” But, it was after all a question by the book…and there was still time to catch the Chemical Brothers.

“No, I won’t leave this!” Mette exclaimed to Wictor’s question. She was getting into the band’s groove. “Can’t you hear it?” she asked him. “Can’t you hear it?”

“OOOoooo…KKKkkkk,” Wictor replied to Mette. Chemical Brothers or no Chemical Brothers, their rule said if one wants to stay. They stay.

By this time the tent had filled up with people and still more were crowding into the tent and pushing the crowd together. The rain was falling steady during the beginning of the set, and Cibo Matto’s music suddenly began to seep into Wictor. He described this moment of clarity by saying, “The music began to … move. It was like the ground was slipping and sliding, first slowly then faster, slowly and more faster again. After fifty minutes with chickens and birthday cakes or whatever, I was grasped by the neck and shaked like a omnigo!”

“I don’t know what it is but that’s exactly what I felt. Something must have happened to all the others too because after an hour I was jumping, screaming, dancing and singing along with a thousand others or more. I don’t know, but it was nearby something crazy, and it didn’t stop. And then we began to sing about BEEF!!!! Or was it BEEF JERKY or something? It all got crazy. What an energy! And the singing and choring from all the other bandmembers, even the bass player could sing and the drummer with his high falsetto. Great!”

Here they were at 50 years of age out ramblin’ to four o’clock in the morning on the sixth night of a Rock Festival. “Only true and intelligent music can do that to me,” Wictor explained later about Cibo Matto’s music. “And that’s what it was. True music lovers who enjoyed playing, long engaging turnarounds in extremely good arrangements, not only in each song but in the whole concept.”

And then the dark mysterious figure rose from the shadows behind the congas. Suddenly he was standing on the monitor right over Wictor holding a microphone. The shadows of the lighting and his hat covered the man’s face so Wictor and Mette could only see this huge dark shadow that pulled the microphone to where Wictor had to guess his face would be. They couldn’t see the man’s face in the darkness and shadows, but they could hear his words come roaring out of him like an avalanche, rolling against them. As Duma and Miho locked their voices together in a wild exotic rap, Wictor was taken by the way they communicated and they phrased their words together. It was like a thrilling drama exploding above him.

Of course by now Yuka was laying into some much more funky keyboard riffs, while Sean was ripping up the bass lines. By then Wictor had figured this out about Yuka, “She turned out to be a master of the organ, and the rest of her equipment too… I don’t know what I should call it other than – cool.”

Sean was fueling the band as he often does, with his high energy and animated stage presence. “Pushing the band higher and higher,” Wictor noticed of Sean. “Even when he sat on the floor he managed to join these great drummers and came up with the most outstanding crescendo that I’ve ever heard on Roskilde. And I have heard a lot. A lot.”

“The best of it all was their ability to make changes along the way,” Wictor reflected about Cibo Matto’s performance at the Roskilde Festival. “Feel the mood of the audience. Give response, take messages, being so sincere. Take chances, great risks and land safely on their feet with their audience left high up under the tent roof. I will never forget this concert which is truly ranged among the best experiences I’ve had. And I’m very thankful for my wife’s great female intuition and sense for finding gold in the mud… Cibo Matto is stuck in my mind forever!”