How To Go To A Tokyo Rock Show

Shibuya clubs Chelsea Hotel and Take Off 7.

You’re coming to Tokyo on vacation. During the day you will go to the Imperial Palace, see a piece of traditional Japan in Asakusa, take a trip to Kamakura to visit ancient temples. But at night you want to unwind and have fun. How about catching a rock show?



Posters for events in Shibuya.

On any night, there are dozens of clubs where Japanese rock bands are playing. The best clubs, or ‘live houses’ as they are called here, are concentrated in the western side of the Yamanote train line, which circles central Tokyo. Shinjuku, Shibuya, Shimokitazawa and Ikebukuro are where the finest live houses are. Each of those areas has its own character, its strong and weak points.

SHINJUKU

Advantage: Home of the Loft, one of Japan’s most famous and oldest rock clubs, Shinjuku live houses feature some of Tokyo’s best bands. There are lots of punk shows.

Disadvantage: Most Shinjuku live houses are in Kabukichou, Tokyo’s premier red-light district. Expect to dodge touts for various adult entertainment to get to shows. It’s like walking through a brothel for some rock ‘n’ roll. (This might not be a weak point for some readers, to be sure.)

SHIBUYA

Advantage: There are great shopping and record stores in the area (including the Grand Temple of Japanese music, the seven-floor Tower Records Shibuya).

Disadvantage: The live houses don’t have much character.

SHIMOKITAZAWA

Advantage: A short train ride away from Shibuya or Shinjuku, Shimokitazawa has its own scene, and many in the audience are themselves likely to be musicians and appreciate good music. The quality of bands playing at clubs like the Que and Shelter are usually high.

Disadvantage: Sometimes the audience is nothing but musicians, making for a boring (and incestuous) crowd.

I hardly ever go to Ikebukuro, further north from these three music centers above, so I don’t have anything to say about it.



Street between O-East and O-West in Shibuya's love hotel district.

One thing about most Tokyo rock clubs is they’re hard to find. They’re in the basements or upper floors of characterless buildings. But don’t let that discourage you, because there’s an excellent on-line resource called Tokyo Gig Guide, put together by a Tokyo resident named Craig E.

Tokyo Gig Guide gives detailed instructions on how to get to the major live houses, with some photos.

Another extremely useful thing Craig does is put together a calendar of good shows. The gigs he lists are all worth watching.

Or, you can simply head to one of the clubs and take a chance on the bands playing that night.

My experience is that shows at the Que and Shelter in Shimokitazawa, and the Loft and Red Cloth in Shinjuku, usually showcase decent-to-great bands.

***

Most Tokyo rock shows start at 6:30 or 7 at night. I think this is so that the shows can end by around 10PM, allowing fans living far away to catch the train home. (Trains stop running between midnight and 1AM.)

Except for very popular acts, you usually don’t have to buy tickets in advance. Typically, tickets cost about 2,500 yen at the door, or around US$25, and you need to pay another 500 yen or so for the first drink.

If there’s more than one band playing, the ticket seller will ask you which band you’ve come to see. Even if you hadn't come for any specific band, it’s a nice thing to do to tell the ticket seller the name of any of the bands written on the program. That’s because the clubs divide up part of the revenue from the show based on which bands the ticket buyers say they have come to see. (That is, if 20% say they’re Band X fans, then Band X gets 20% of the payout.) So, if one band has a particularly crazy name that you like, or is low on the roster and probably consists of starving musicians, you’d be doing them a favor by telling the ticket guy that’s your band, even if you have no idea who they are.

Of course, if there’s only one band playing that night, you don’t need to tell the ticket seller you’ve come to see that band. If you do, the ticket seller will nod politely, wearing a serene expression, but will be thinking: "yeah, no duh."

I talk to the ticket sellers in Japanese, but they should be able to understand English, considering they must have graduated from high school and therefore studied English for six years. Ask first if the person speaks English and then talk S-L-O-W-L-Y (as rust may have set in to their English comprehension skills in the years since they last studied the language).

Shows end about 10PM. Band members often come to talk to fans on the floor when the shows are finished. If you liked a band, by all means talk to them, say you loved their music, buy their CDs and so on. Most musicians live for those kinds of encounters.

Enjoy!



Christmas is just around the corner...

Photos From Tibet

Tibet mountain scene - from 22catcher.com

I'm taking a break from the usual talk on the Tokyo rock music scene to bring your attention to the excellent Chinese photo-blog 22catcher.com. Its most recent series details a trip to Tibet by the blog's creator, Zhao. Zhao took stunning photos of the remote land.

I love looking through 22catcher because Zhao captures China in all its grittiness. Zhao's subject is people --children, the newly affluent, beggars, laborers, young hipsters, and everyone else who populates China's streets. In some of Zhao's pictures the people in them appear annoyed or angry at getting photographed; these are guys who in real life you could only glance at, not look at in any length. With such photos, 22catcher lives up to its slogan, a quote by war photographer Robert Capa: If you're photographs aren't good enough, you aren't close enough.

Take a look.

Farmstay, Throw Curve, Hoover's Ooover at 251

Throw Curve at Shimokitazawa 251.

Tonight I went to see some Japanese rock bands I used to listen to a lot but have neglected recently, for one reason or another. They were: Farmstay, Throw Curve and Hoover Ooover, playing at the Shimokitazawa Club 251 in western Tokyo (another band called Onsoku Line, who I only heard the name of, also performed).

Farmstay is a quartet, led by singer and guitarist Masatoshi Asauchi, who is handsome in a reptilian way. Every once in a while he hops on the stage monitor, staring into the darkness of the club like a predator.

The one girl in the band, bassist Yosiko, looks like a young Japanese version of the Pretenders’ Chrissie Hynde. With an unchanging look of relaxed concentration, she plays fiery bass licks.

Farmstay (meaning of name unknown) borrows heavily from the musical vocabulary of punk and hardcore -- aggressive and heavy guitar and bass chords, and fast rhythms. But they aren’t a punk band (there weren’t any spiked motorcycle jackets and mohawks in the audience), and you also hear influences like funk and new wave in their music, while Asauchi sometimes raps hip hop-like.

They’re an energetic and exhilarating band to watch. I remember being ecstatic after several of their shows last year. But then at some point I realized that some of what looked like exciting and spontaneous action on stage, such as Asauchi’s jumping on the monitor, was actually done at every gig, and I became bored. Now after about a year’s absence, the band seems fresh. For the near future, rather than home stay, think I will Farmstay (sorry).

***

I saw Throw Curve once or twice before, and have a CD of theirs, but I never got into their music enough that I wanted to make a major effort to go to their shows. Tonight I did, and it was worth it.

Throw Curve has a Shimokitazawa sound: not too heavy, musically adventurous, but without taking themselves too seriously or getting carried away. Their songs remind me of the way that in some traditional Indian music, the sitar and other instruments go in separate directions in long passages but come together at key moments. That’s the way Throw Curve’s guitars and bass parts sound. In other words rock music-wise they don’t go for the straight pitches, and that makes them an interesting band to listen to.

***

I have one of Hoover Ooover’s CDs, but had never seen them live, and the show tonight didn’t impress me that much. The music was pleasant pop, but the female singer and the rest of the band didn’t try that hard to connect to the audience, and their songs weren’t good enough they could stand on their own without any help from the band’s personality, which I didn’t get any feel for tonight (except that they are a shy band, maybe).

***

NUDS, NUDS, NUDS: I wrote a couple of times about the great, but now defunct, Japanese rock band Burger Nuds, and now about half of the people that come to my blog using search engines are looking for home pages about "Asian nuds", "big nuds", "female nuds", etc. Nuds, nuds, nuds, nuds.

Speaking of which, I saw on a flier that two of the Burger Nuds’ three band members have formed a new band that will perform at the Shinjuku Loft. I must check them out. (Oh, I get a lot of hits from people looking for info about the Shinjuku red light district too ((since that’s where several of the Shinjuku rock clubs are located, the red light district)).)

Orange Plankton at Harajuku Rekio

Orange Plankton at Harajuku Rekio.

Tokyo piano pop band Orange Plankton played three shows this week, a busy schedule, and last night was the last of the three performances. They will play one more show in Tokyo on November 24 and then will take December off.

"We’re going to recharge," drummer Tamarou told me.

A good idea. In addition to doing shows about every other week this year, Orange Plankton has gone on a national tour, released a single and a new album, on top of holding jobs to support their musical activities. Taking time off sounds like a wise plan.

But all those shows they did this year have paid off. At last night’s gig at a club called Harajuku Rekio, the band’s performance was tight, and they were a joy to watch.

They have a new, rocking tune having to do with bacteria that produced oxygen on earth at the dawn of time. (Singer Yumi gets ideas for some of her songs from science programs on TV. She’s the only musician I know who can make wonderful songs out of our planet’s beginnings...) It’s a call and answer song – Yumi sings "yeah-ah" and then audience is supposed to answer, "yeah-ah". Unusually for Tokyo's reserved rock audience, when she called out, the small crowd around me replied to her, though quietly and shyly. Maybe because it was such a swinging, nice tune. And getting a response boosted Yumi’s energy level even more, it seemed.

***

The Rekio is a tiny club in the middle of nowhere in Harajuku, a mutiple-personality town in western Tokyo that combines: haute fashion boutiques like Gucci; teenybopper stores selling British punk and goth outfits and teen idol photos; trendy restaurants and bars; and one of Japan’s most important Shinto shrines, the Meiji shrine.

Rekio’s bar specializes in awamori, the potent liquor from the island of Okinawa. Behind the stage there was a movie screen, which had animation movies by Hayao Miyazaki playing between shows, and during performances showed the bands playing live in various angles. It was a bit meaningless (I mean, you can see the band right in front of you one meter away), but fun in a way too.

The Goods - Lucy's Red Bicycle Tape

Lucy van Pelt's Red Bicycle tape.

At last, at last, I got to listen to Lucy Van Pelt’s Red Bicycle tape.

This is the historic first recorded work of the brilliant Tokyo rock band now called advantage Lucy (they used to be Lucy van Pelt but changed their name to avoid copyright problems, Lucy being the cartoon character that always pulls the football away from Charlie Brown at the last second).

The band members made the tapes themselves at home and sold them at shows in the mid-90's, so the only existing copies are those owned by fans. If you asked me which would excite me more, getting my hands on the butchers and dolls cover version of the Beatles’ Yesterday and Today album, or the Red Bicycle tape, I’d have to say, the latter.

Lending the tape to me was another diehard Lucy fan, Dr. I. He’s vague about how he acquired the treasure.

We and his girlfriend had dinner after an Orange Plankton show, and after we clinked our glasses, he brought out from his bag the tape, carefully wrapped in plastic, and handed it to me.

There is was, as I’d imagined it. The green tape cover had a woodblock picture of a baby sleeping in a cradle. The tape gives singer Aiko’s full name (she goes only by her first name now) and the contact address listed was that of guitarist Takayuki Fukumura’s home in Saitama prefecture, next to Tokyo. I went home and copied the tape on a mini-disk.

In Red Bicycle, Aiko sounds very young (it was about eight years ago, after all) and sings with less skill than she does now, but the bright guitar pop sound is unmistakably Lucy. The tape contains a live recording of the classic early Lucy song, Red Bicycle. At shows like those recorded here, Lucy attracted a following that eventually led to their being signed by major label Toshiba EMI.

(Though they ended up leaving Toshiba EMI and returning to being an indies band. I know there are some partisan fans who stopped listening to them when they went major label. What a waste! These fans are missing two outstanding Toshiba EMI-era albums, Fanfare and Station, and two great mini-albums for Lucy’s own label, Solaris Records. And, judging by their recent shows, Lucy’s newest songs are some of the best they’ve created.)

Day of Culture, Evening of Orange Plankton

Orange Plankton at the Garage.

Today was Day of Culture, a Japanese national holiday originally meant to celebrate the birth of the Meiji Emperor, but now a break for citizens to enjoy ‘culture’.

I decided to use the day to appreciate culture of the pop variety – specifically, Japanese rock ‘n’ roll.

It was a beautiful autumn day, and I went on a walk though Todoroki creek park, home to a Buddhist temple, to Tama River, where people played baseball and soccer, had barbecue parties and walked dogs on the wide banks of the river. During the stroll, I played on my iPod the Japanese bands Spangle Call Lilli Line (a recommendation of Scott Mackie of LA) and Orange Plankton. That’s one form of cultural activity.


At a Buddhist temple in Todoroki creek park.

Later I went to Shimokitazawa to catch a show by piano pop band Orange Plankton at the club Garage.

It was Orange Plankton’s first real show in Shimokitazawa (in Tokyo they play mostly in Shibuya), and they were in top form.

They must have made new fans tonight. I know that my friends Dr. I and his girl friend were impressed enough about the band’s performance that they bought a copy of their new album, Wakusei Night.

As I watched them, I wondered what made their shows so gripping. They aren’t a flashy band: No costumes, no crazy stage antics, no show-off solos. But they make you pay attention.

Singer Yumi is one big reason why Orange Plankton shows are exhilarating. It’s strange, but in Yumi, a petite woman from the rural prefecture of Ehime (she grew up by the sea), I sometimes see the image of an American jazz or blues songstress.

Like a performance by a good blue singer, when Yumi is singing and is on a roll, she can pound the audience with the emotions of her songs. She hardly ever stops moving during shows, walking from one side of the stage to the other to reach out to the crowd. But she never looks restless, and instead her moves seem to flow magically with the music.

There was warmth and excitement in the Garage after their show. Maybe it was the start of their break into the Shimokitazawa scene.


Orange Plankton's Yumi.

Chieko Nakane, a female bassist/singer, formerly of the band Campanella, was another act at the Garage show that stood out. She sang shyly but with a lot of joy, and she had an attractive low, semi-husky voice.


Chieko Nakane at the Garage.

The final act and the organizer of the event was a rock trio called Life Time, who were fun to listen to and even funner to watch. The drummer wore a big rainbow clown wig and a shining bow tie, while the mohawked bassist had on a T-shirt saying "Samurai" in Chinese writing.


Life Time at the Garage.

Lilo, the advantage Lucy cat

Lilo, the advantage Lucy cat.

There’s a park in Suginami ward in Tokyo that’s notorious for the number of unwanted pets left behind there by delinquent owners. To find a home for these animals, the park has been giving them away during weekends to anyone who is interested.

It was on one of their trips to this park that rock band advantage Lucy’s Aiko and Ishizaka saw the kitten that they’d later name "Lilo" and fell in love with at first sight. The cat was being washed by kids, who rescued it after it fell of a cliff into an oily creek, Aiko writes in her Internet diary.

"The kitten was stiff and its eyes were wide-open after the accident, as many kids washed it and it became covered in bubbles. I couldn’t forget the sight of it, and went to adopt it the day after the last show," she says. They went to the park to see if it was still available, and it was.

Now advantage Lucy’s Internet diary is filled with stories about this kitten that has found a home. They seem to be a bit ambitious about the cat’s future though: they say they want to make it the band’s new keyboard player.

But it’s clear Lilo will at the least serve as a Muse for a new advantage Lucy song or two. One of their musician friends said it’s great to own a cat because thinking about the cat, you can write love songs without being embarrassed or self-conscious. (Japanese are generally sentimental people, but usually not very romantic, at least not publicly.)

The Clicks at Shimokitazawa Que

The Clicks at the Que.

This is my third time seeing all-girl rock ‘n’ roll trio the Clicks, tonight at the Shimokitazawa Que, in western Tokyo.

They were playing with three other bands at an event organized by K.O.G.A. record label owner Mr. Koga, who, vague rumor has it, likes good-looking women.

The Clicks are certainly a pleasure to see as well as listen to. They all wore striped tanktops and mini-skirts, each with her theme color (green, red and blue, I think). They play basic, uncomplicated, pop-ish rock. The band probably won’t change the world. They probably won’t end up in the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame either (though, one never knows). But still, I listen to their album a lot, and always have fun at their shows.

I mean, if you are three pretty girls, are in a rock band, can play your instruments well and have a lot of spirit, it’s hard to go wrong.

***

UPDATE: Just realized this is my 100th Japan Live post.

Punk band Jr. Monster at the Que

Jr. Monster at the Que.

Jr. Monster is a humorous, testosterone-driven, pop-punk rock band that I last saw open for the Osaka band Moga the Five Yen. They were playing tonight at Tokyo’s Que with the Clicks and two other bands.

Punk rock subdivisions sometimes confuse me, but Jr. Monster isn’t one of those groups that inspire its fans to slam-dance, stage-dive, crowd-surf and engage in other punk antics. Instead, most of their fans seem to be girls who hop around in place to their songs and shoot up their arms once in a while. The fans are well-behaved.

But Jr. Monster’s (what a wonderful band name...) music itself is fast and energy-packed. Sweat pours off the band members as they head-bang to the music.


Jr. Monster at the Que.

I like their stately plump guitarist, who has a bleached Kurt Cobain haircut and plays an eye-hurting day-glo orange Gibson Les Paul. He’s the guy to keep the crowd entertained between songs, saying crazy things and kissing the microphone.

"Do you love punk?" he asks the crowd at one point.

The girls in the audience murmur ‘yes’ and giggle.

The guitarist pretends to be taken aback by the crowd’s modest response, and says, "OK, this time, when I ask you if you love punk, say ‘YES!’ in your head!"

He asks again, "DO YOU LOVE PUNK?"

A split second of silence later, as the girls think 'YES!' in their heads, he shouts, "Thank you!!", and the band moves on to their next song.

Stay Tuned For Orange Plankton TV Commercial

Orange Plankton single 'Ai no Youna'.

Tokyo pop band Orange Plankton’s singer, Yumi, e-mailed me tonight to tell me her song, ‘Weather and Music’, which I translated from Japanese into English, will be used in a TV commercial to be aired from early next year in mountainous Yamanashi prefecture, Wakayama prefecture, famous for its tangerines, Shizuoka prefecture, renowned for its green tea, and other parts of central Japan.

The song will be the background music for a commercial that advertises, of all things, a chain of pachinko parlors. Pachinko is the name for stand-up pinball machines that too many Japanese spend hours sitting in front of in hopes of winning buckets-full of silver balls, which they can then convert into cash in little trading stations down the street from the parlors. (In other words, it’s a form of gambling, a mindless time-killer like slot machines.)

To think that the song ‘Weather and Music’, which sparkles and flows like molten snow from a mountain, will help promote pinball gambling... It’s actually amusing, and makes me wish I could see the commercial (though it won’t be airing in Tokyo, from what I hear).

***

Speaking about amusing things, this passage from the book Between Meals: An Appetite for Paris by A. J. Liebling, made me smile:

Following the publication of some of the foregoing papers I had an avalanche of letters–perhaps a half a dozen–asking scornfully whether, in my student days in Paris, I did nothing but eat.

An avalanche of half a dozen letters. I know the feeling.

Friends sometimes tell me they read Japan Live often. But they hardly ever leave a trace in the form of comments or e-mails. Which is fine, and I don’t expect a tsunami of comments, but if you do have a question or you feel like saying something about, oh, anything in the whole entire world, don’t be shy! Just click the word ‘comment’ under this or other posts and go from there. (Between Meals, by the way, is classic, a tiny feast of 185 pages for anyone who loves food and good writing on it.)

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.

***

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.

Hi-5 at the Shibuya O-Nest

Hi-5 at the Shibuya O-Nest.

Playing tonight at the Tokyo rock club Shibuya O-Nest were Hi-5, School Girl 69 and Condor 44. The first two of those bands are both from Kita-Kyushu, an industrial city in the southern island of Kyushu. (Wonder what the deal is with Japanese bands and their love of adding numbers to their names, by the way?)

The musicians in Hi-5 and School Girl 69 all went to the same Kita-Kyushu university, where they were members of a school rock music club (a common place for rock musicians to meet and form bands in Japan).

Hi-5, a synthesizer-guitar-drums trio, was School Girl 69's sempai in the university club, that is to say, they are older and began university before School Girl’s guys did. It’s a very Japanese concept – the sempai is supposed to lead by good example the kouhai, the younger ones, and give advice about how to succeed in school, club activities, and so on.

So, tonight, Hi-5's singer and synthesizer player said: "Since we were School Girl 69's sempai in university, we feel we have to set a good example" by playing a rocking show. Which they did, but they played so hard the guitarist was panting by the end of the third song. It was great rock ‘n roll.

Throughout the show the singer gave something like a Black Power salute, pounding his chest with his fist and then raising the fist in the air. I have no idea what’s behind that.

School Girl '69, Condor 44, Kao at O-Nest

School Girl '69 at the Shibuya O-Nest

School Girl '69 is a quartet from Kita-Kyushu that plays pop-punk-New Wave tunes. Their main singer, a guy, has such a high, helium-ingested-sounding voice that when I first heard one of their CDs, I wasn’t sure whether it was a guy or a girl. But that voice goes well with their cute pop sound. And they are a good live band. It’s always a pleasure to see them when they visit Tokyo.

(For some reason, I think this blog might get more search engine hits after this post gets published about a JAPANESE band named SCHOOL GIRL 69 playing in TOKYO. Just a wild hunch.)


Pianist/singer Kao playing between sets.

Between sets, a girl named Kao played solo piano songs. Listening to her tunes was a nice way to pass the time while bands set up on stage.


Condor 44's bassist.

It took longer than usual for the last band of the night, Condor 44, to set up, because they had to move the drum set to the right side of the stage. Condor 44's musicians like to be positioned in a semi-circle on stage, with the drums on the right, keyboard in the center, and guitar and bass on the left. The website Rock of Japan describes their sound well – "thoughtful spacy pop". They are an understated band. At the end of their good set, they shuffled off the stage, and when the applause became a modest request for an encore, they shuffled back onto the stage to play one more song.

Orange Plankton at the Shibuya Plug

Orange Plankton at Shibuya Plug.

Tuesday night's Orange Plankton show at the Shibuya Plug wasn't the most dazzling performance I'd seen of the Japanese piano pop quartet, compared with past shows. There were some sound problems, and maybe the band wasn't completely fired up because they were up first, there weren't that many people in the audience, and the women sitting at the tables in front of the stage looked bored.

But Orange Plankton on a not-best night is still very, very good. A friend I took to see them for the first time was excited enough about the show that he bought two albums by the band on the spot.

***

The Plug is a relatively new and comfy club underneath the McDonald's in Shibuya on the way to Tower Records. The staff is very friendly. They had created a cocktail called Orange Plankton just for the night, mixing orange juice with several different liquers. It wasn't bad.

Art-School Plus Three Sold Out at the Loft

I knew that Monday night’s show at the Shinjuku Loft wouldn’t be a comfortable one as soon as I saw the number on my ticket. Number 381. I thought about my previous visits to the Loft, and had a hard time imagining more than 200 people in the hall. But the number 381 meant there were at least 380 more people planning to be there. It was going to be like the rush hour train.

The sold-out show featured four popular bands: Art-School, Bloodthirsty Butchers, Fuji Fabric and Meringue.

When I arrived at the Loft, it was even worse than I expected. The crowd filled the hall all the way to the back door. And because of the (stupid) layout of the club, with a big pillar between the stage and the back door, people standing near the door couldn’t see the stage at all. We instead watched the action on two small TV’s on the pillar. I could also see shadows of the musicians on the left wall of the stage.

It reminded me of Plato’s cave. I hear loud music and see a band playing on two small TV’s, but is there really a band playing behind the pillar? Is that shadow on the wall actually that of a member of the band shown on the TV? Or is it, in reality, the shadow of a ballerina maybe, or a mime, or Butoh dancers, and the music and TV images recorded? There was no way to know for sure.

After the first band, Meringue, finished their set, however, I was able to creep up closer so I could see half of Fuji Fabric. By the third act, Art-School, who I had come to see, I had a complete view of the singer Riki Kinoshita.

***

Kinoshita, who looks a bit like a praying mantis, shuffled wearily onto stage. Why do I like Art-Shool? Kinoshita is a Rimbaud-reading, Kobain-copying, fragilely-sensitive rock star stereotype come-to-life, whose pronouncements in his Internet diaries are sometimes laughably pretentious. His fans mostly look much younger than me – in their late-teens to early 20's. I liked Art-School’s latest single, but I haven’t listened to it much. I wondered, before the show got underway, whether I had outgrown this band.

That thought vanished as soon as Kinoshita began singing. He has a stellar voice. The voice is an adolescent-sounding one, but one that grabs you and fills the hall with its presence. I feel, listening to his voice, that this moment, when he’s singing, is all that concerns him.

I like Kinoshita. He is funny, without maybe intending it always. He can’t speak very well on stage. There are silent moments between songs as the band tunes up. Tonight when he does decide to say something to the audience, his words are: "Ehhh... It’s hard to live. So... a song should be about what doesn’t matter... Please have fun tonight." OK, Riki. Yet, the lyrics he writes are heart-felt and full of vivid images.

He wrote in his Internet diary that his sound guy told him that there are always cute girls and model types at the back of the audience at Art-School shows, which, as someone who was standing in that location, I can say isn’t an entirely inaccurate picture. But Kinoshita went on to write that he wasn’t sure whether this was true, because he always sang with his eyes closed.

Sloppy Joe at the Shibuya O-Nest

Sloppy Joe.

Sunday was guitar pop night at the Shibuya rock club O-Nest. Playing were the Japanese bands Swinging Popsicle, Sloppy Joe, Bowlie Weekender, and the headlining band, the Starlets from England.

Guitar pop is a not very well defined sub-genre of rock that is popular among some bands in Tokyo, especially those in Shimokitazawa. As the name suggests, it’s pop where the guitars get the spotlight. Bright, twangy-sounding guitars like Fender Telecasters are favored, and the musicians tend to be down-to-earth types who don’t stand out in crowds. This isn’t teen angst music. It’s more like young adult happy music lovers’ music.

Bands that are called guitar pop groups don’t always agree that’s what they are. There’s the, ‘We’re just playing music, we don’t want what we do constrained by convenient labels’-mentality at work. But it’s clear these bands are approaching music and life differently than, say, a hardcore punk band or a visual-kei group.


Sloppy Joe at the O-Nest.

Take Sloppy Joe. I’d seen this quintet once before a few ago, but had forgotten how good they are. They play driving rock with hints of rockabilly, though the singer says he was influenced by the Smiths. Between songs, the lead guitarist walks back to pick up his mobile phone that’s lying on an amp. The singer asks him what’s up. He says he got an e-mail from his mom on his mobile phone. What’s it say?, the singer asks. "It says, ‘relax, have fun and show a nice smile on stage’," the guitarist says.

I love guitar pop shows!!!