Piano pop trio Yuyake Lamp is releasing a new mini-album, Yuyake Ballad, on Aug. 29, and to mark the occasion they are throwing, on Sunday Sept. 16, a Tokyo Streetcar Live!! The show will be on an Arakawa-line train, Tokyo's only remaining streetcar line--I don't think I've ever been on it and have no idea what listening to a gig on a streetcar will be like, but it's such a wacky idea and, besides, Yuyake Lamp is one of my favorite bands, so I'll definitely be aboard. If you are in the area and are interested, you can send for tickets here--the deadline is Sept. 10.
Spangle call Lilli line, back from a long hibernation, is doing a double-header show at the Shibuya O-Nest on Oct. 27. More info here. Actually, if you were in Taipei for this year's Formoz Festival, you might have already seen them do their first gig after their hiatus. Anyone? (Unrelated, but I've heard that Ging Nang Boyz was at Formoz too, and vocalist Mineta did the Full Monty on stage again, and got in trouble with the Law AGAIN for that--and in the report I read he gave the Taiwanese cops some lame excuse like, 'oh, I didn't know that that was illegal in your country...'! My internet traffic blipped up for a few days, and I wondered what was behind that until I saw that everyone was googling "Ging Nang Boyz" and ending up at my post about Mineta's last scuffle with the law, in Japan. Funny guy, that Mineta... I'm really starting to dig some of Ging Nang's music, btw, but that's a topic for a future post...)
The girls of macdonald duck eclair (who I gushed about here), Yuki and Michi, are DJ-ing on Saturday (Sept. 1) at an Usagi-Chang Records event in Shibuya. Info here on Tokyo Gig Guide. I wish I could make it, but I'm going to a friend's event that night in the same part of town, at the Shibuya Cyclone, featuring Humming Parlour, Caraway, ghq and solange et delphine--this will be a blast too. If anyone goes to macdonald duck eclair and talk to them, could you please beg them make another album? I need a new macdonald duck eclair fix.
Osho, the vocalist/bassist of hard-marching retro-ska rockers Asakusa Jinta (whose album Sky "Zero" was my #1 favorite of 2006) will be playing in one of several RC Succession cover bands at an RC Succession cover night at the Kichijoji Mandala on Sept. 9. What is RC Succession? Grass-Hopper! You don't know what you are missing! RC Succession is one of the greatest Japanese bands of the 70's and 80's, and was led by Kiyoshiro Iwamano, the make-up-wearing, electro-shocked-haired middle-aged guy who appears on Japanese commercials and music programs from time to time.
And finally, something that has truly blown my mind: several years ago I wrote a post about a girl rock band called Teeny Frahoop whose two albums I loved, but who seemed to have disappeared without a trace. I wondered who they were, and what became of them. They left the scene in a different era, around 2000, before the internet was so big and MySpace and mixi and blogs had sprouted all over the place, so it was harder to get more info about them, making them all the more enigmatic.Anyhow, one day when I was looking through the website of K.O.G.A. Records, Teeny Frahoop's old label, I saw an ad for an upcoming K.O.G.A. event, and one of the bands listed was ... Teeny Frahoop! Also, Patrick of chipple.net was kind enough to point out that another K.O.G.A. girl band compilation was coming out, featuring new tunes by Hazel Nuts Chocolate and Micro Mach Machine, and when I looked through the other artists playing on the compilation, I saw the name ... Teeny Frahoop!
So...does this mean Teeny Frahoop is back? I can't wait to listen to their new song and see the band. Maybe it's not that unusual for a band to make a comeback after a few years' away from the scene, but to me, this is huge, unexpected news, as if a new planet was found or there was actually a little room I didn't know about in my apartment, or something like that.
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