Plectrum Unplugged... Or, Rather, Amplified Lite

Plectrum at Mona Records.

Japanese rock quartet Plectrum was playing tonight at Mona Records, a combination café and record shop in Shimokitazawa, western Tokyo.

The show was billed as an acoustic set, a sort of Plectrum Unplugged, but a more accurate way to describe it was Plectrum Amplified Lite: although it wasn’t as loud as a typical rock show, all the guitars were still connected to amps.

Whatever you'd call it, the show was another excellent one by Plectrum, one of the best live bands in Tokyo. At moments, when the band was ripping up the joint playing great songs of theirs like ‘3pm Lazy’ and ‘30 Boy’, I felt it made little difference where these guys played. They could be playing in a big concert hall, or a small rock club, or outside of the southern exit of the Shimokitazawa train station among all the people waiting to get drunk with friends, and wherever they are they’d rock the crowd.

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IN THE AUDIENCE: was Jang Yaeri, a music lover from Seoul and organizer of the ‘P is for Pop’ Seoul shows last month featuring Plectrum and Swinging Popsicle from Japan. She’s visiting Tokyo, and said the crowds here are too quiet compared with those in Seoul (and she’s correct).

Also in the audience were all four members of piano pop band Orange Plankton. Actually, I invited them to the show, because I found out the bands knew each other from back in the days a few years earlier when both Plectrum and Orange Plankton were based in Osaka. With the two bands’ meeting tonight, will this mark the historic start of a long and fruitful musical collaboration? We shall see.

And, as I expected, Dr. I, a psychiatrist who has frighteningly similar musical tastes to me, came to see Plectrum too.