I'd missed the last couple of Kitchen Gorilla shows but when I read on their website their drummer U-co was leaving the band and playing one last show, I felt I had to be there. It wasn't so much a devoted fan thing but more of a desire to see a spectacle, the teary-eyed farewells, the final bow, etc. Unexpectedly though, the departing drummer U-co made it through the evening with her eyes dry, and instead the singer Kayo was the one who came prepared with big goggle-like glasses to hide any tears, tossing them aside during the set, but then losing it during the encore, moving her face away from the mike, unable to sing for a few bars.
No one ever seems to take my word for this, and even I forget sometimes, but The Kitchen Gorilla is a great band, one that play beautiful rock melodies with an intensity I've hardly ever seen anywhere else, and listening them that night I became glad they will continue performing.
***
The biggest gorilla in the kitchen thing these days in Tokyo is that our neighboring tyrant could rain down nuclear armageddon on us one day, a year from now or a decade later, who can tell, so that the city feels like someone who isn't quite sure if he has cancer. Looking at Tokyo's elegant, contented people (who mostly appear to be apathetic or in denial), and the great metropolis they've built up, I feel a sadness thinking all this might be lost one day, though that's also a rehash of the dread my generation grew up with.
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