The recession has reportedly made concert promoters' lives miserable, and yet it doesn't seem to have affected the flood of foreign acts rushing to these shores.

Take the summer festival scene. Festivals are notorious money losers, but that hasn't stopped Creativeman from challenging Smash for the supposedly finite festival-going yen by staging Summer Sonic the week after Fuji Rock. And more than a dozen smaller promoters have filled every weekend from now until early September with more festivals than you can shake a J-Debit card at. Unlike the Fuji Rock and Summer Sonic blowouts, these smaller festivals stick to themes so that they can distinguish themselves from one another. Some, however, demand detailed scrutiny to figure out just what it is they're offering that the other guys aren't.

A week or so ago Creativeman announced that James Brown would join the Summer Sonic lineup. This is known as the "ringer" strategy, which says you add one act to an otherwise thematically consistent slate (Sonic's seems to be alternative rock) that doesn't belong there in order to draw those few people who will see that particular artist under any circumstances.