Hi From LA; Giant Robot 50

I’m in LA—and reading the 50th issue of Giant Robot magazine here, I made a realization—

Which is this: When I was growing up in LA, Japan, and Asia, weren’t that cool. The Walkman was cool, Bruce Lee was cool, Space Invaders and Pac-Man were cool…but the rest of it, not so much, and you grew up wanting to hide your Asian-ness.

Now, a few decades later, it’s a different world—Japan/Asia is cool, and it’s everywhere. One of the biggest surprises I had in recent years was when I went with Swinging Popsicle to the Fanime convention in San Jose and saw hundreds of kids, including whites, dressed up as their favorite Japanese anime characters. How did that happen?

Giant Robot helped explain, in a great article looking at all the Asian-American pop culture trends since the 1950’s, how we went from Asia as uncool to, well, non-Asian kids cosplaying as anime heroes and heroines.

Reading their history line, you see that the Asian pop conquest of the U.S. was a multi-pronged, multi-national effort. Japan contributes with anime, games, horror movies, China/Hong Kong with kung fu flicks and other movies, India with Bollywood, etc. At a certain point, there was a critical mass of good Asian pop culture in the U.S. so that the scale tipped, and Asia was cool. Food is an important ingredient too—in these last few decades Americans really discovered Asian food, and that process went hand in hand with the elevation of America’s view of Asia. One of the commenters in the article, Jonathan Gold, makes this observation about sushi:

When the sushi boom started in Los Angeles, it was extremely important. This was the first time Americans had ever taken to any Asian food, tried to understand the ritual and the context of the food, and engaged the chef in his own language even if the only Japanese they knew were the names of six kinds of sushi. The fact that they would try to learn those six kinds of fish was really important. Once people mastered sushi and mastered the ritual, they mastered the fact that you had to have a relationship with the chef and have personal communication in order to eat in the way you wanted to eat. This opened them up to other experiences from other Asian cuisines and, frankly, also non-Asian cuisines.

So, Akira, Kikaider, Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan, Kyu Sakamoto, Pizzicato Five, Street Fighter II, Hideo Nomo, Aishwarya Rai, Akihabara, sushi, top ramen, pho, and all the rest of it combined to make Asia so cool in the U.S. that, ironically, Americans no longer thought things were radical just because they were Asian:

Articles touting Asian culture being the hot new thing are obsolete because the culture has been absorbed into the mainstream.

Living in Tokyo, or anywhere else in Asia, there’s always the risk of becoming snobbish about local things that make a splash in the U.S., saying this or that is already old news, or the Americans are interpreting it all wrong, and so on, but in being a snob that way, you lose sight of a key point, which reading the Giant Robot article brought out for me: becoming big in the U.S. is a cool thing in itself. The U.S. has an unparalleled ability to suck foreign things into the mainstream, and it’s a huge, influential market. Whereas, in Japan for example, there are fans of Bollywood, Korean cinema, pho, etc., and sometimes one of those shoots into the nation’s awareness, but it’s usually just a fad and is therefore fleeting. The local culture stays the way it is, changing at its own pace—and I think that’s the situation in most countries. The U.S. is different; probably it’s the young-nation, multi-ethnic, immigrant-based, entrepreneurial thing. And Giant Robot is one great gauge for what from Asia is hot or not in the U.S.

***

The GR folks are also holding a 50th Issue exhibit at the Japanese American National Museum in downtown LA, right next door to the packed Takashi Murakami exhibit at the MOCA (as I was saying on Asian cool…). One happy discovery at the Giant Robot exhibit was the brilliant cartoons of Adrian Tomine, which were on display. His stories are funny and really ring true—I’m ordering his books on Amazon as soon as I get home…

On Teeny Frahoop

A few years ago I wrote a post that asked what ever happened to Teeny Frahoop, a brilliant girl rock band that disappeared after releasing only two albums.

Now I know part of the answer...and the knowledge crushes.

I found their new website, and in a section titled 'biography' was this note about Noriko, their original guitarist and vocalist:

She died of stomach cancer on January 24, 3 years ago.
Though she had splendid talent, she died young, only 27 years old.
The time that we spent with her was not long, but she gave us many things.
She lives in our heart all the time and Rides the Rockin Rocket in Teeny Frahoop!

27...so young. I had no idea.

Did they already know something was wrong when they made their second and last album, 2nd Hospital?

It's a classic that represents a stark departure from their first album, Wee Wee Pop, which is whimsical, happy, but rocking. 2nd Hospital is darker and more serious—were pain and depression what gave it its feel?

I hadn't listened to Teeny Frahoop much recently, but after reading about Noriko I began to spend all my time playing their second album on my iPod.

Now the intro of the first song felt even more sad: “I get up early morning, and/ I regret I was born, so that/ I go to bed late night/ I fear a nightmare everynight”.

And the second song is called "Where is cancer?" and ends with the words "Hello, the darkness of night/ Hello, you know my rainy day/ However hard I try,/ I can’t reach it/ I can’t shine."

What did it feel like, being a Japanese girl, in her 20's, in a rock band, but faced with such gloom? The lyrics give you a sense.

Or...maybe not. I might reading too much into the album. It came out in 1999, and under circumstances that I'm not completely aware of, the band disbanded in 2000. I'd like to find out more.

2nd Hospital, in any case, is a great album that you owe yourself a listen if you like Japanese rock. It contains two of the best rock tunes I've listened to in Japan, or anywhere—“Inside Of Theater” and “Ride The Rockin' Rocket”, the song by which the remaining TeenyFras remember Noriko.

Of my many little regrets in life, one is that I was in Japan during the years when Teeny Frahoop were active, but I never found out about them then. The guys at Badbee knew them and saw them live—I wish I could have too.

Happily, they are back now, with a new guitarist named 'Tacco'. That's why I found their website, and the note on Noriko.

They were playing at a show at the Shimokitazawa Shelter on November 4 that featured a bunch of other girl bands from the K.O.G.A. Records compilation Good Girls Don't! Neo. I couldn't wait for the show—the compilation opened my eyes to a lot of bands I'd never heard of before and are great, but most of all, I wanted to see Teeny Frahoop, a group whose music I've loved for years. (They contributed a touching new song called 'Tiny Filled Hope' to the K.O.G.A. omnibus album.)

But then, life intervened.

Something serious came up that made me, heart full of regrets, unable to go to the Shelter show at all.

At least I've heard that Teeny Frahoop will play again sometime in the middle of the year, and I have my heart set on going to that show.

In the meantime, I have two great albums of theirs plus a new song to keep me happy. How sad it is that Noriko passed away so young... but what she left behind is precious, it adds color to life, and I want to thank her, so much, for what she was and what she did.

Indie Event "Closer Vol. 2" In Shinjuku

A tearful Tokyo evening: at Shibuya station a high school girl was consoling her weeping friend; further down a bawling tot was tugging at her mom's hand; at the platform was a poster of a TV drama featuring two girls and a guy, all moist-eyed; flashing on the Yamanote line's in-train TV was a commercial showing a woman shedding tears at a bar, and a chivalrous man sliding a chocolate across the bar to her, to help lift her spirits.

In the background to all this was an unending, chilly autumn drizzle: was that getting everyone down?

But in spite of the miserable weather, or maybe to escape it, indie music fans flocked to Shinjuku Marz and Motion to an event called Closer Vol. 2 that featured eleven bands. The performances were split up between the two live houses, and you could go back and forth between them, stopping off outside to get a bite to eat or buy cheaper drinks at nearby convenience stores if you desired. That's an improvement on the Tokyo live house convention whereby you can't re-enter the club once you leave, meaning you are stuck there until you see the act you came to see.

I ended up watching the uhnellys and henrytennis at the Marz, and Yucca at Motion.

Unnellys was a girl on drums and a long curly-haired guy on bass and mini-trumpet, both of which he looped with a pedal to create dense dub phrases, over which he rapped in rapid-fired Japanese. He had a lot of stage presence, and the two really got the crowd going with their funky jazz-rock-hip hop—a wool-capped girl in front of me began swinging her head up and down like a charmed cobra at one point.


henrytennis

Henrytennis, after them, kept up the momentum. The septet call themselves a tribal, new wave prog ensemble, and to me a lot of their music sounds like free jazz, except composed and with pre-planned structure (is that paradoxical...?). Once they started they didn't stop until the end, going from quiet to over-the-top, and in one climactic fermata the female keyboardist sustained a jarring, dissonant chord for a long moment that never seemed to end, as the others jammed like the world was coming to a close, and the crazed audience members all got naked and spun around a bonfire lit up in the middle of the live house...

Well, not quite, but that's what it felt like.


Yucca

Yucca played at the Motion, and between songs explained what the event Closer was all about: there's a lot of great indie music in Tokyo, but too few events where all these groups are showcased, in an atmosphere of freedom; they therefore got together and organized this event, and hoped more like this would follow. Remarkably, considering the usual quietness of Tokyo audiences, the fans cheered and yelled out encouragements as Yucca spoke. It was moving to be at an event where everyone was indie, and proud to be so.

A congrats to Shinada-san, Yucca's drummer, who played for the first time in eleven months after fracturing her back and going through rehabilitation. She led the band (who call themselves children of Sonic Youth and Stereolab) in a rocking performance, and the packed house loved them. During one song break, she told everyone that this was her comeback gig after her injury and thanked everyone for watching, but on this tearful Tokyo evening, she was dry-eyed, with dignity, as she said this.

Music From The Martian Tornado

If band names were accurate, Japan's Music From The Mars would be called something like Music From New York Circa 1974 because they are basically a prog/fusion outfit and aren't all that extra-planetary. Which isn't to say that Music From The Mars are boring: they mix together rock, pop, funk, soul, jazz, Latin music etc. and concoct a fresh sound. Seeing them at the O-Nest I also found out the quartet are all fabulous musicians, ripping through solos easily like someone frying eggs for breakfast. In front of the stage was a college kid from Hosei University who had invited MFTM to perform at his school's festival and he was totally getting down—hooray for students with good musical taste.



***

Music From The Mars are a hard act to follow, the unfortunate position that Tornado Tatsumaki were in, and their act did appear understated at first. But after a while, the double-tornado flavor came through. I'm not sure why Tornado Tatsumaki ('tatsumaki' means 'tornado') aren't that well known outside of Japan: they are a delightful female vocal pop group with a twist, playing easy-to-swallow melodies that contain secret musical ingredients from exotic style locales; fans of advantage Lucy, Spangle call Lilli line and Luminous Orange should enjoy them. I liked them even more because after the show, even though they are now sorta-Big-shots with a major label, they came up to the bar floor of the O-Nest and mixed freely with their friends and fans.

Favorite Of 2007 - 4 Bonjour's Parties

My favorite J-music album so far this year is 4 Bonjour's Parties' debut effort, pigments drift down to the brook, a work that's so different from anything I've heard before that it made me want to go and listen to the group's favorite musicians and influences, to get a sense of their origins. I listened to Yo La Tengo, Broken Social Scene, Architecture in Helsinki, Belle & Sebastian and others that they list as favorites, but that didn't help me much in figuring them out, and there were only trace signs of influence. 4 Bonjour's Parties are original.

They are like a pop chamber orchestra, but one in which almost everyone plays more than one instrument, with the female vocalist Tomomi Shikano handling, for example, the flute, accordion, piano, cello and glocken. (It's fun to see them at shows, changing places during songs to play new instruments, looking like a sliding-block puzzle being solved on the cramped stage.) All the musical colors they produce with their panoply of instruments such as vibraphone, trombone and accordion mix together and drift like streams of sound in their mellow, long songs, the melodies often taking surprising turns, but never in a jarring way—'pigments drift down to the brook', the album's title, is an apt description of their sound.

One of the songs I like most on the album, “Ruins”, starts out dreamily with a keyboard and repeated guitar note, is soon joined by a vibraphone and then flute and trumpet, and it isn't until the minute-and-a-half mark that a female voice is introduced. The remarkable thing about the song is that while it's long, lasting 6 minutes and 43 seconds, there isn't much variation in dynamics and emotion—the feel of the first minute of the song is maintained throughout—yet even so it hooks you. That must be due to the way that the various sounds, including the voices, appear, fade out and intermix without rest—it's 'pop chamber music'. And all 10 songs on pigments are of this nature. (You can listen to the intro of “Ruins” on their MySpace page.)

Frankly, I'm not quite sure how 4 Bonjour's Parties pulled this album off. From what I understand, their song-making is a collaborative effort between the seven members, and the songs are ever-evolving, so the tunes could very well have turned out mediocre and chaotic. Instead, they are beautiful, and the album as a whole has a unified feel. Is one of their members a visionary that was able to lead and shape this musical venture? Or are they just a group that works very well together, so that multiple opinions actually improve, rather than worsen, the final product? I'm not certain, but I get the sense that this band is a rare example of the latter.

It will be interesting to see how 4 Bonjour's Parties follows up on this album. They could keep the sound and feel of the first album, and come up with another collection of laid-back, color-filled, gorgeous songs like pigments. I'm hoping, though, that they will try new things, go on new adventures. They should be able to succeed at that, and give us more fresh music that surprises and delights.

Call And Response Event At Koenji 20000V

“You've come at exactly the wrong time!” Ian said to me as I stepped in late to the event he'd organized.

“Right before this was a girl indie pop band...and right after this is digital hardcore!”

Call and Response's Ian apparently felt bad that I missed the evening's only Japanese girl indie pop group, a genre that he seemed to think I'm obsessed with. Hmm, wonder what made him think THAT!

In any case, though I was disappointed to miss the girl group, I actually ended up thoroughly enjoying the digital hardcore guy, Non-poli Radical. Over loud sampled sounds and music, he screamed repeated slogans, as hyperactive video images of cops, Bush, warplanes, bombs, etc., flashed on a screen behind him. The cartoon and collage images reminded me a bit of the animation in Yellow Submarine, though this was about a thousand times more manic and disorienting. I especially liked a song (?) called “Art School Asshole”. Multi-media music shows are good—everyone should do them.


tacobonds

Next up was tacobonds, a time-signature-change-abusing, “hard psychedelic”, neo-prog quartet who are regulars in Tokyo's underground music scene. They aren't exactly super-showmen on stage, but the music is fast, tight and unpredictable enough to keep the audience's attention, plus the drummer should be declared a Living National Treasure for awesome technical prowess.


MIR

Band #4 was MIR, a girl bassist in a bunny rabbit cap, and guitarist and drummer guys both in white overalls. They alternated between sentimental, kayoukyoku-like ballads and hardcore explosions. At one point, the bunny rabbit girl screamed that, “Of all the religions, Capitalism is the most barbarous!”, to which I thought, yes, but it's also the 'religion' that bought you that nice headless bass...


Hyacca

The band I most wanted to see was the last act, Hyacca, 'A Hundred Mosquitos' from Fukuoka, because of the positive reviews I'd read of them, and they WERE good, but I don't exactly remember in what way, because by that time I was tipsy from the cheap wine that was on offer for 100 yen a paper cup. (Not to criticize, but when I sipped the wine at first I thought it was sour and maybe had been left out in the sun too long, until I realized that's just the way it normally tastes...Still, I got used to it after a while, and it did the trick on the inebriation front.)

“Have you all drunk the cheap wine?” asked the girl vocalist Mosquito, in a rust-red dress, and we answered Y-E-E-E-S. From that point, the wine seemed to gradually go to her own head, so that in a few minutes she tipped over an amp tower, and at the end she was crawling around on stage, ripping out the strings of her guitar and creating spontaneous found-object artwork with the effect pedals. Ian said they were overcompensating tonight because their show the night before didn't go well for some reason I didn't quite hear and wouldn't have remembered anyway at that point, but that 'overcompensation' sure made for fine entertainment!

The event was at a Koenji punk live house wallpapered with band stickers called the 20000V, and part of the reason I was late was because I got lost on the way over there, but it was pleasant wandering Koenji's streets, with ramen stores galore and one-counter bars and old izakaya's all over the place.

Can't Wait For Micro Mach Machine's 1st Album

A demonic anime trio (one of them holding a bloody ax, and wearing a guilty, zigzagged smile). A Satanic conjurer, unholy light flashing from an outstretched arm, a funeral photo of a dead bunny in the other. An irresistible, mach-speed pop punk tune, one minute and 51 seconds in length, featuring twin J-girl vocals...

This video by Micro Mach Machine is radical!

And squeaky-voiced J-girl pop punk will take over the world, one day.

Tokyo Incidents, Sold Out

That was fast.

Tickets for the latest live tour of Tokyo Incidents (a.k.a. Tokyo Jihen), Shiina Ringo's band, went on sale on the 29th, and everything sold out in a matter of minutes. In Tokyo, tickets for all four nights at the Zepp, which holds 2,700 people, are gone. Reading some of the fan sites, it sounds like buying the tickets on the official first day of sales was a last resort--before that there were various escape routes, like applying for the tickets through the official fan club or taking part in contests, in order for fans to get their hands on that coveted prize, tickets to an actual Tokyo Incidents gig.

Ho hum. I'm a fan of Tokyo Incidents and Shiina Ringo, but I still find the way that big major-label artists like Shiina do shows disappointing and un-musician-like. They basically only perform live when they release albums (this latest tour comes after the band's 3rd album, Variety, or Goraku, hit the stores), and, by playing only once in a while, raise the scarcity value of their appearances. Buying tickets becomes tough, thus elevating the mystique of the performer.

But it's so contrived. What's the true worth of a musician that doesn't perform often? Not much, in my opinion. Which is why I'm an indie fan. I'd like to see Tokyo Incidents one day, but what silliness to come up with a detailed battle plan to get tickets, when you can see great shows every night of the week at the Que or O-Nest or Shelter, etc. And besides, the security staff at the Zepp are going to be little Blue Meanies anyway, hovering over you to spoil your fun...

The Enigma Of J-Hip Hop & Lantern Parade

Japanese hip hop is an enigma.

The first mystery is why it became big in the first place. When listening to U.S. hip hop records, most Japanese listeners probably understand little of the rapid, slang-filled, rapped English words. They are missing out on a lot of the poetry of rap. Yet, in spite of this, the music inspired some guys enough to rap themselves, and to create a scene. Why was that? Was it just the sound, beat, attitude, fashion, etc.?

Then there's the question of what they want to achieve with the music. They need to rap in Japanese, because you can't handle rap's verbal, poetic acrobatics in any language other than your own. But that means most people abroad won't know what the Japanese words are about, and they won't listen, because, again, understanding the poetry is key. So, Japanese rappers won't ever really be able to go back to the U.S. artists that inspired them and pay homage by saying, listen, this rap was inspired by you.

Japanese hip hop artists are internationalists, in that they absorb music and fashion from all over the world. But they are domestically-oriented in that they can only hope to have Japanese audiences for their music (assuming there's rap involved, and it's not just DJ music).

Probably someone out there can explain these issues, though I assume the answers to what motivates these guys will be murky and complicated, as questions of motivations often are in Japan.

In any case, hip hop is big in Japan, as you see when walking through the streets of Shibuya and witness the unending stream of kids in over-sized, primary-colored tanktops, baseball caps, and sagging jeans. I've been wanting to check it out more, but haven't had much chance to, partly because the hip hop scene occupies a different part of Tokyo life than the rock and pop scene that I frequent. Hip hop events are at dance clubs and are all-night affairs, whereas the rock shows I go to are are live houses and end by around 10PM. (One time, however, I did go to an event that was billed as a female rap battle and was called Kokudo No Onnatachi—a pun on the movie series, Gokudo No Onnatachi, about the wives, Onnatachi, of the yakuza, a.k.a. Gokudo. 'Kokudo' was rendered as 'the way of the Black'. It didn't quite live up to my expectations, and I left after a couple of hours, because there was little rapping, and mostly DJing.)

I haven't been that into the J-hip-hop tunes I've listened to, but then, on a recent visit to Tower Record Shibuya, I ran into an album that excited me: it's by a one-guy unit called Lantern Parade, and is named Zessan Zessennchyu (translated to something like 'The Praiseworthy Battle of Tongues').

Lantern Parade isn't in the Japanese hip hop mainstream, and the music has an independent feel (and indeed, the album is released by Rose Records, Shimokitazawa luminary Keiichi Sokabe's label, rather than a hip hop label). The sound is different from 'normal' J-hip-hop's sampled R&B, reggae, etc.: there's some of that in Zessan, but the sound sources seem more eclectic (using acoustic guitar and strings, for example), and dark. And whereas the typical Japanese rapper imitates the delivery of his American counterparts, Lantern Parade's rapper doesn't so much rap as chant poetry without an excess of emotion. But what's really striking about Zessan are the lyrics—vivid, disturbing, nihilistic and, yet, at the same time, life-affirming (or, at least, life-exploring).

Here, for example, are some of the words to the song “Hana” ('Flower') [translated by me]:

People who come up to you at train stations and offer to tell your fortunes
People who get friends into network marketing schemes
People who cut off their arms and legs for fashion
People who drink golden 'holy water' with delight
School principals who give girls enemas
Ambulances that run over people

Yes, each of us is a single flower in the world

That last line is a reference to a saccharine but hugely popular pop song by the unavoidable SMAP. In Lantern Parade's case, however, the individuals who are extolled as flowers are involved in cults (the part about train stations is talking about the obsessed-eyed cultists who come up to you outside of big stations and offer to read your hand-fortunes) or have sociopathic fetishes.

In that first part of the song, Lantern Parade sounds cynical about optimists who paint the world in colors of goodness; but then in the second part, the lyrics turn more introspective, and the rapper sounds unsure about who he is and what he wants to do.

Not many can say, “I have nothing to lose”
I know I can't

He concludes this part of the song again with the declaration that each person is a flower, but this time the meaning changes: he seems to be saying there's beauty in the fact that we're uncertain beings, who might very well become degenerates rather than respected citizens.

And so go all 15 songs in Zessan, combining dark, dreamy, adventurous music tracks with the rapper's word-play, rhyme and vivid poetry that explores unlit corners of the psyche and society. It's an exhilarating ride, but, to return to the original topic, the words are in Japanese, so I'm not sure how much a non-speaker will get out of it. Another sad consequence of the destruction of the Tower of Babel...

Yuyake Lamp, At The Bank And On The Train

One wish I have about the Tokyo music scene: I'd like more events to be organized at unusual venues, rather than at the same old live houses and clubs, and in that regard, this weekend was ideal—I saw shows at an old bank in Kyoto and aboard the Arakawa-sen streetcar in Tokyo. Both were events featuring piano pop trio Yuyake Lamp.



The first was Friday night at the Museum of Kyoto's performance hall, which used to be the Bank of Japan's Kyoto branch. In creating this hall, the museum moved the entire Bank of Japan structure from wherever it was before to a space next to the main museum building. The ceiling was high, causing natural reverb during the performances, and there were tall pillars and a 2nd story balcony; it was a majestic hall, named an Important Cultural Asset, where bankers and businessmen of old must have met to mull important affairs of the day. Now, a few decades later, this sanctum of Finance had been taken over by a couple of dozen amplified-music playing young adults.

In the audience, though, were a good number of the middle-aged and seniors, maybe relatives and family friends of Quesa, the Kyoto-based female singer/pianist who organized the event. I wasn't sure what the older folks thought of the evening—they were mostly motionless and expressionless. This wasn't their music. To their credit, Yuyake Lamp were able to rouse even the elders through their music and interaction with the audience. A lady in front of me turned to her partner and said what a pretty voice the singer has. Which is true, but vocalist Yunn also has a way of filling every phrase and word and syllable of her songs with meaning and emotion, and I'd like to think the crowd responded to that. The last act of the night, Quesa, was a vocalist with a strong, beautiful voice too, who sang vivid, imagistic pop tunes. (I thought 'quesa' was Spanish for 'cheese', but it's actually 'queso', and the unit name doesn't actually mean anything. So much for five years of Spanish in school...)

***


On Sunday was Yuyake Lamp's Arakawa-sen live. Arakawa-sen is Tokyo's only surviving public streetcar line, traveling from the college-town of Waseda on the west to Minowa in northeastern Tokyo, a neighborhood that is like a time-warp to pre-1980's Japan. Yuyake Lamp set up a couple of small amps in the one-car train, connected those to a keyboard on one end of the train and to an acoustic guitar, while the drummer tapped on a cajon, and a flutist joined them. They played and talked during the whole fifty-five minute trip.

There were lots of smiles on board: smiles in response to the music, to the friendly, intimate atmosphere of the train, and the strange sensation of listening to wonderful live music on a commuter train that traveled through everyday scenes of a Tokyo Sunday afternoon. I saw outside the car window a crowd of revelers carrying a mikoshi; a guy riding a bicycle heading for kendo practice with a bamboo sword and a bag filled with armor; and lots of people of all ages on the streets and on train platforms doing a double-take after realizing that live music is coming from a streetcar.



This was the opposite of the live house experience, where, walking the stairs to a dark hall, you remove yourself from everyday life to focus on the music. The street car live WAS everyday life, but with live music in the background blending with the everyday scenes, and lending them an artistic feel (like something in a movie). Although by the end of the trip I was a bit dizzy due to the motion, I found I enjoyed the streetcar live much more and in a much different way than I expected.

Yuyake Lamp said they want to continue doing unusual events, and one idea they've floated is to do a show on board a hot-air balloon. If it happens, I may have to overcome my fear of heights just to be able to say I once saw a rock show in a balloon...

No Mo' Mono

Went to the Mono and Envy show at the Ebisu Liquid Room last night to try to expand my musical horizons a bit... but my effort flopped. Both bands are popular with the alternative Japan music crowd, Mono playing instrumental post-rock and Envy, an artistic hard-core. Unfortunately, I just couldn't make it through Mono's set and left before Envy started.

I know Mono has lots of foreign fans, especially in the U.S., where they tour constantly (Rock of Japan has several years' worth of praising gig reviews, for example), and I could see at the show that they have their brilliant instrumental moments, but, heaven help me, their songs are SO predictable. Start quietly and slow. Gradually build up in intensity and speed. Climax! Return to quiet and slow. Repeat this 10-minute cycle 5 or 6 times. By the 2nd or 3rd cycle, I was nodding off. If, just once, they varied things a little by, say, doing a straightforward 5-minute tune, it might have broken my monotony, encouraging me to stay. But that didn't happen.

It also didn't help that Mono was one of those bands that say NOTHING on stage, not even their band name. They didn't even have a mike on stage! Call me old-fashioned, but I want to at least hear a few words from the band I came to see. I'm not expecting rakugo here: just a brief greeting is all I ask for. Otherwise, without any interaction between the band and the audience, what's the point of a live show? Why not just stay home and listen to your i-Pod?

Having watched so many shows over the past few years, I think my supply of patience is running low. There is one upside to leaving a show early, though, and that is the feeling of freedom you get when you step out of the live house into the streets of a Tokyo night that is still young. But I do wonder what the Envy show was like...

Humming Parlour Event At Cyclone

At an event organized by my friends, the guitar pop group humming parlour, I met Patrick of chipple.net, who's since written a nice review of the show here. He was at the event to see the first performers, solange et delphine (pictured above), whereas I was there to see humming parlour and Caraway (guitarist Shimada pictured below), so it was a happy coincidence that we ended up in the same live house (Shibuya Cyclone) on a Saturday night.

I enjoyed Patrick's favorites, solange et delphine, a stylish sampled-music unit who, I was surprised to find out, usually plays as a jazz ensemble (which I'd be very interested in seeing).

It was fun to see guitar pop groups like humming parlour and Caraway and mellow, well-behaved guitar pop audiences in a hard rock hell-hole like the Cyclone, with graffiti everywhere, artfully sticker-covered toilets and snarling, attitude-overflowing staffers (the Cyclone's relatively low rental fee was a main reason it was chosen as the event's venue). When I bitched about the staffers' attitude to my friend Dr. I, who was in the audience, he said, "Oh, well, this is a live house for furyou (juvenile delinquents). What did you expect?"

Upcoming Shows That Will Rock My World

A few upcoming Tokyo shows that excite, surprise, interest, tempt, fascinate, blow my mind, etc.:


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.

GREAT SONGS: Qypthone's "Chez Nice"

Whatever happened to Qypthone? It looks like the lounge/electronica/pop unit still exists in the sense that their website remains up and they haven’t announced they’re quitting, but they haven’t done any shows or released any new songs in quite a while.

Maybe their disappearance is merely the latest episode in their interesting career. When I first saw Qypthone (pronounced Kip-thone) in the late-90’s they did gigs at regular live houses like the 251 in Shimokitazawa, but stood out due to their vivid stage presence and eccentricities. I recall seeing them wearing Mao jackets and fezzes in matching dark colors; as she sang, the tall, model-like vocalist Izumi Okawara did this dance where she swung her elbows up and down, as if they were being pulled by a puppeteer. Then, one day, their live house gigs ended; they became a club band, and eventually their performances became limited to a monthly appearance at the Organ Bar, a small club in an alley in Udagawa-cho, Shibuya. Recently, even that has stopped. (However, band leader Takeshi Nakatsuka has become a well-known solo musician, and is apparently very popular in the club scene. He does a lot of DJ gigs.)

As their venues changed, so did their musical style. Their first album was straightforward, if a bit whacky, pop; later albums like Modernica in the House and Montuno No. 5 added styles like lounge, Latin music, jazz and electronica to their sound palette.

I went to one of their Organ Bar shows a few years ago, and came away from it with a sense of why they made the transition from live house to club. At a Japanese live house you play on a stage to audiences that you don't know; often the crowds are quiet and not very responsive, due partly to shyness and self-consciousness. An event at a small club like the Organ Bar, on the other hand, is more like a party—people know each other, they interact, and they actually dance along to the songs. I could see how a club event might be more enjoyable for performers. For an audience member, though, if you don't know anyone at the club you are liable to feel like someone at a cocktail party who has no one to talk to (which is how I felt at the Organ Bar event). The anonymity of live house audiences sometimes has its advantages.

I like the Qypthone of the early live house/weird pop era better than their later club period. Their later albums sound good too, but you can tell they are drawing heavily from trendy club music styles—Qypthone in the beginning sounded like no one else.

One of my favorite tracks of theirs is from the first, eponymous album, and is called “Chez Nice”. I like to think of it as a 'Shibuya-kei blues' song because it combines the casual stylishness of Shibuya-kei music with what might be an unconscious borrowing from blues—lines in the lyrics repeated several times to make an emotional point.

The song is about a relationship that has ended, but not without regrets. After a whimsical musical intro containing much whirring sounds, Okawara sings the repeated line, “I don't know why I came to see you today, I'm wondering can I leave”. Once that line sinks in through repetition, she goes on, “See, I might still love you/Even [if] I don't find my favorite bread in the fridge/Can you explain to me?/Don't you care for me any more sweet heart?”, after which she suggests they go together to Restaurant Nice, a favorite spot for the lovers, one assumes, in former days.

And that's it. Simplicity. Yet I think it's a great tune because just with those few words, you can visualize it completely: a Tokyo girl goes to her ex's place, but she doesn't know why she's there, or what she wants. The theme is a general one that anyone can relate to: a relationship that is ending but you aren't sure if you want it to. But the setting of the song is specific—the Japanese girl is modern and westernized, judging by how she talks about her “favorite bread in the fridge”, and she is a Tokyoite who dines at a French place called Restaurant Nice. Yes, I knew people like that, whose lifestyles were like the girl's, and who went through things like she did. The song brings back memories of Tokyo in the late-1990's, like few others do. (You can listen to it on Qypthone's MySpace page, here.)

***

“Chez Nice” is an actual restaurant in Nakano, Tokyo, and the Qypthone album included a map to get there. I wanted to check it out, so one day a few years ago I took a trip to Nakano in search for it. But when I went to the neighborhood where Chez Nice was supposed to be there was no sign of it, and after wandering a bit I gave up and went home. Later, I found out that the restaurant had gone out of business.

However, nearby in Nakano is a pasta joint called Orient Spaghetti, where advantage Lucy once filmed their video for “Sunday Pasta” (I think it's available on YouTube). Orient Spaghetti is a cozy, tasty pasta diner, with a staff that has superb taste in music. If you are in the area and are in the mood for Italian, be sure to stop by.

GREAT SONGS: capsule's "do do pi do"

The duo capsule gets undeservedly negative reviews from some foreign commentators, who call them Pizzicato Five clones and so on. I couldn't disagree more—in my view capsule is one of the country's best bands, a unit that creates some of the most catchy, attractive and inventive songs out of Japan these days. Toshiko Koshijima's soft, lovely vocals are a key ingredient: her voice gives me synesthetic visions of faded pastel colors. There's a reason so many fans showed up to their gigs once that the fire department had to be called, to deal with the appallingly overcrowded hall—all those fans can't be wrong (though the fact that capsule doesn't do that many shows, and that they chose a smaller-than-appropriate venue didn't help matters).

Over the past few years capsule's music has been evolving from Shibuya-kei lounge pop into Daft Punk-like electronica. My favorite album of theirs at the moment, L.D.K. Lounge Designers Killer, released in 2005, finds them at about a mid-point in this evolution, and they take the best of both genres: the attractive melodies of pop and the crazy beats of electronica. The album includes great tunes like “twinkle twinkle poppp”, “tiC taC” and “Glider”. But one stands out for me, and it is called “do do pi do”.

In brief, the subject of this tune is: to diet or not to diet. A banal topic? I don't think so. In prosperous Japan, a country in peace, this is one of most important issues for the young.

The lyrics succinctly describe the conflicting desires:

Kawaiku natte, oshare shitaishi
(I want to become cute, and dress up)

demo chocolate toka, a- tabetai
(but I want to eat chocolate and other things)

One chorus simply describes what the protagonist wants to eat:

Pumpkin pie, pancake, ice cream soda,
Pumpkin pie, ice cream candy, French toast

And she goes on to say that all those tasty treats have a “magic” that makes you want to consume them. But she has to ignore these desires, so she can become “cute, and dress up”.

In the intro of the song, the protagonist explains what led to this meditation on dieting to begin with:

“Mo-sukoshi yasetara kawaiinoni” to
Kimi ni iwaretakara, Komatta...

(You said “You'd be cute if you were a little thinner”
And now I'm troubled*)

*'Komatta' is a hard word to translate.

(Seemingly not the most sensitive boyfriend in the world...)

What makes this song so great, in my opinion, is that this is such a fundamental dilemma—whether to give up on all those tempting, beautifully-crafted, heavenly-tasting delicacies out there in the interest of losing weight, or to yield to the desire, ignoring the calories—yet there aren't many songs dealing with this topic, especially not with such detailed lyrics, gorgeous melody, or imaginative beats .

Indeed, even though it's a song about, in a sense, hunger, there isn't anything dark or depressing about the tune, and instead, it's upbeat and sweet. It could be that the song wasn't meant to be a serious examination or whether to diet or not, and was instead created as a fun song, sort of a joke, or maybe just as a filler. The lyrics, after all, were written (as with all the other songs on the album) by Yasutaka Nakata, the male half of the capsule duo. And if you've ever seen a photo of vocalist Koshijima, you'd know she is a doe-like slender girl for whom losing weight should be the last thing on her mind.

But still, in spite of all that and despite the fun feel of the song, when I hear the way that Koshijima wails “Tabe, ta-i (I want to eat)” in a repeated chorus part, I do get the feeling that she, an envy-inspiring fat-free Japanese girl, really identifies with the girl in the lyrics, and in the end that makes this tune compelling.

***

YouTube is running several music videos by capsule, if you are interested in their sound.

Bluebadge's Eclectic Musical Extravaganza

Bluebadge Label is a nerve center of Japan’s guitar pop scene, so when I heard about their annual music event at the Shibuya O-Nest I was expecting an evening dominated by crisp, vernal melodies of the Prefab Sprout variety. That didn’t turn out to be the case--'guitar pop crazy summer vol. 2' was quite an eclectic extravaganza.

The closest to guitar pop purity was the Caraway, Swinging Popsicle guitarist Osamu Shimada’s band, which went first, playing as a trio without a drummer, and where Shimada showed he's just as mind-blowing a guitarist on acoustic as on electric.

On the other end of the spectrum was the third act of the night, Eel, a girl from Osaka who combines soft girl pop vocals with raucous techno/electronica. For much of the show she stood motionlessly at the center of the stage, while a trio of male dancers hopped around her, wrapping themselves up in an American flag, tying each other up with plastic cords, and in general making up for the main performer’s statuesque stillness with hyperactive stage antics. But during the last song she sprang to life and pulled audience members on to the O-Nest stage for a mass dance session. (Somewhere in the picture below is my friend Dr. I, who boasted later that he always wanted to stand on the O-Nest stage, and tonight he finally got the chance.)

***


Hazel Nuts Chocolate

Between acts, two girls in yukata, marino and Hazel Nuts Chocolate, did ‘DJ Live’s, which were simply their singing over recorded output like at a karaoke. Still, one doesn’t see comely Japanese lasses in kimono singing in DJ booths every night... I liked the way that marino put two plastic, watering-can-shaped handbags on the turntables, so they spun around and around while a toy bear (or monkey? can't remember which) in front of her pounded on a drum. Hazel Nuts Chocolate's Yuppa played a new song that will be released in a K.O.G.A. Records compilation in early-September. A new K.O.G.A. compilation with a new Henachoco tune....that's two pieces of good news.


marino

***


Spaghetti Vabune

The other two bands, Spaghetti Vabune and Clean Distortion, both seemed to be more on the rock side than pop in their shows (even though Vabune's last album was called Guitar Pop Grand Prix).

It had been a while since I'd seen either, and while the final act of the evening, Spaghetti Vabune, did a fantastic, fun set (at one point they passed around a huge, pink bunny mask that they wore while they played), what stayed in my mind was the gig by the quartet Clean Distortion.

It was a ridiculously rocking set for a guitar pop event, and, in fact, vocalist Jun Inoue apologized between songs: "This is a Bluebadge event, and here we're playing like this." But...wow. Inoue's lips twitched during the songs, like some sort of explosion warning. The band was as tight as your standing space in a rush-hour Odakyu train. The lead guitar blitzed through solos effortlessly, like he was making toast for breakfast.

It's as hard to describe how great a show like Clean Distortion's at the Bluebadge event was as it is to put in words what an explosion sounds like or the feeling of the heat of fire. Still, it does inspire a fool like me to keep trying.

Congrats, Swinging Popsicle, On 10 Years

A congrats to Swinging Popsicle for ten years of playing together, certainly not a short period of time, considering that the average lifespan of bands is usually as brief as a small mammal's. The trio played a sold-out show at the Shimokitazawa 440 to celebrate the decade mark.

What's the secret to keeping a band together so long? There's probably no one formula. A funny thing about Swinging Popsicle is they don't seem like a band that ever slept together in a stinky tour van somewhere—even if, in fact, they actually did at some point. They are some of the friendliest musicians you will ever meet, but at the same time there's a refreshing dryness about the three. It's hard to imagine them getting misty-eyed about the sweat and tears of the early years. They are three great musicians who come together for the music, but the rest of the time each leads his/her own life (guitarist Osamu Shimada has his own great band, for example, called The Caraway). They seem very Tokyo that way.

On stage at the 440 show, though, they talked about how it wasn't always smooth sailing, and vocalist Mineko Fujishima said how one time she told the others that she wanted to quit. She said that bassist Hironobu Hirata had replied, in an angered voice, 'Fujishima, that's unfair (zurui)!' Mineko said she couldn't see at the time what was 'unfair' about her decision, but, weeping, she'd thought it over, and eventually Swinging Popsicle overcame that crisis. Good thing too, because otherwise the world wouldn't have had their latest, outstanding album, Go On, or maybe their earlier albums either. Hirata said he didn't really know what he meant by 'unfair' in that case, it was just what popped in his head, but he's glad he said it because it did the trick.

Their show featured all their big hits, and a cheer went up every time a crowd favorite began. Steve of JapanFiles.com guest-played the keyboard for them, adding richness to their live sound. Toward the end two female dancers joined Mineko for a choreographed rendition of “Chocolate Soul Music” from their latest album. They also showed a short musical film featuring Mineko traveling in the U.S., and narrated in English by... yours truly.

Sotte Bosse; Kayoukyoku

I never thought I'd say this, but I'm starting to think that SMAP songs are actually not too bad.

To clarify—that doesn't mean I would go out and buy a SMAP CD. Nothing will ever convince me that those guys are anything but a mediocre boy band. But what I'm talking about instead is the songs themselves. I'm beginning to feel that at least some of them are catchy, well-crafted and eminently listenable.

What got me thinking this way is buying an album by the group Sotte Bosse called innocent view. It's an interesting album: it consists of covers of chart-topping Japanese pop songs, but perfomed in mellow-out, acoustic, jazz-influenced ways. The thing that makes this album work is the great vocal performance by Cana, who sounds like she's singing to some pals at some sunny, weekend garden party. (I looked up who she was, and it turns out that she sings for the house/fusion band i-dep. I actually saw i-dep once in a club, but only for a few moments, because the club was an unplesant meat market jam-packed with people, and I wanted to get out of there as soon as I could. I think I should check them out again...) She covers songs like “Hanamizuki” by Yo Hitoto and Yumi Matsutoya's “Yasashisa Ni Tsutsumaretanara”, and often sounds better than the originals. And...one of the tunes she does is a SMAP song, “Yozora No Mukou”.



Living in Japan it's hard to avoid the better-selling SMAP singles, and I recall that NTT bombarded TV viewers with “Yozora No Mukou” for a while in one of their commercials (featuring the SMAPs singing on top of a rooftop at nighttime—none of them ever fell off...). Listening to its Sotte Bosse rendition, though, I was struck by how a different, better vocalist, backed by a skilled band, could make the song shine. This got me thinking, and in the end conclude that it isn't that surprising that a SMAP song minus SMAP would sound good.

The thing is, SMAP doesn't (can't) write good songs themselves, and their management instead hires composers and lyricists to put together the songs for them. These composers and lyricists are the best that money can buy, you'd assume. They are true craftmen of good songs. They create songs that sound decent even when SMAP performs them—small wonder, then, that when real musicians cover SMAP songs, they sound great.

In the West these days, I think there's a general assumption that, for the most part, serious pop musicians write their own songs. After all, songs aren't just about the music, but also about self-expression. You listen to songs not only for the sound, but also for what the musicians can communicate to you through music they wrote themselves. This is an assumption that's shared by the Japanese for the most part. But Sotte Bosse's SMAP cover reminded me that songs written by someone other than the singer can be great too, if craftmen of good sound are behind them.

***

You never know what will become popular, a 'boom' , in Japan, but it seems that kayoukyoku is enjoying a resurgence in popularity. Specifically, kayoukyoku singles from the 60's and 70's are big these days. I think there was a Japanese movie recently that highlighted the pop music genre. And on a recent visit to a Shibuya book store, I found several guidebooks on kayoukyoku singles, including this pictured one that I bought.

Wikipedia gives two definitions for kayoukyoku: the wider definition, which is any popular Japanese music with vocals, and a narrower meaning, which places it someplace between regular pop music and enka in a map of vocal-centered music.

What got me interested in kayoukyoku was a display of old single record covers at Mona Records that I saw recently. I loved all the colors: solid blocks of primary colors, meant to attract attention. The covers also inevitably featured the singer, wearing a stage smile. There was a nostalgic appeal to these record covers: something you might have found as a child in a dusty corner of a import goods store, and the record looked ancient even then. But at the same time, looking at these records now, the cover art was exciting in a pop art way. I could see myself becoming a collector of these singles.

There's some sort of cultural force that makes people suddenly consider past eras as fresh and trendy: we've seen that happen in recent years with the 50's, 60's, 70's and the 80's. Maybe that's at work with the resurgent popularity of kayoukyoku: some people started playing the old songs, or showing old record covers and photos, and suddenly it snow-balled into a major trend. I mean, check out at the outfit in the photo at the top: how fantastic the look is, even though it's like something that's buried somewhere deep in Mom's closet!

But I also wonder whether kayoukyoku's popularity is a reaction to the current music scene. Like everywhere else, Japan's music scene is fragmented: people have very specific preferences in musical genres and listen to little else, and there aren't many national superstar musicians whose songs everyone knows. That's a by-product of the internet era and the explosion of media from which you can get music. But perhaps there's nostalgia for the days when everybody listened to the same songs on the radio or television, when the singers behind the kayoukyoku singles were true stars whose songs everyone from grannie to your kindergartener brother knew by heart. Is there some unconcious longing to get back to those days when society felt more unified?

And I wonder whether Sotte Bosse's popularity can be explained, at least partly, by this longing. Their album's songs aren't quite as universally known as the best-selling kayoukyoku singles were in their time, but they come close. Are those songs the final gasp of a unified Japanese popular culture? Maybe there's a desire on Japanese listeners' part to keep those tunes alive, even in a different guise.

Advantage Lucy In The Aquarium

Well I didn't actually see advantage Lucy at an aquarium and was at the Club Que as usual, but that's what I felt.

In spite of the amplified sound and the crowd, there was the peace of staring into the water, watching creatures going around.

Maybe it was all the old, familar songs played, like “Citrus” and “Metro” and “We Go”, as well as the mellow vibe of the audience.

Vocalist Aiko's eyes looked moist for much of the show, for reasons I didn't know. Was she moved there were so many people to see them, at one of their first gigs in a while? Or because there were Korean and Chinese names on the guest list, come all the way to Tokyo to see the show? Or was it just the music?

I felt a part of something, but at the same time felt separated from the stage, a charmed space, like the marine world behind the glass.

Japan Live In Taiwan (Grass Festival)

For the second year in a row I went to Taiwan to attend a music festival, this time Grass Festival, featuring dozens of of indie Taiwanese bands. My aim was to see as many of those bands as I could—while I enjoyed last year's Formoz festival tremendously, one of the things I regretted was I didn't check out more of the local groups (I spent a lot of time hanging out with Three Berry Icecream from Japan, and seeing the city). This year I was determined to focus on the local musicians.

Grass Festival is the brain-child of a guy named Yichin, who runs the indie Taiwanese label Silent Agreement. It took place about an hour and a half train ride south of Taipei, in the grounds of an elementary school that must qualify as having one of the world's most beautiful natural surroundings for a grammar school—between jungled hills and a blue-green sea.

Yichin set up the main stage next to the school's soccer field (thus, 'Grass' Festival), and placed other stages on the beach and the school auditorium (the one in the photo above with the portrait of Sun Yat-sen) and made classrooms into movie screening areas and a 'DJ class'. He also invited artists and craftsmen to set up stalls around the grass field to sell their goods. And he got something like 40 bands and solo musicians to play, all in one afternoon and evening (including my friends Yuyake Lamp and a group called Marikov from Japan).

I've been writing recently about wanting to see more events that aren't the usual, commonplace live house gigs, and by that standard, Grass Festival was ideal. I mean, this event took place at an elementary school in the Taiwanese country-side, brought together several dozen bands hand-picked by the owner of a super-cool Taipei indie label, and also allowed you to look at and buy arts and crafts made by locals. There wasn't much more I could ask for in terms of experiencing something new and different.



The festival wasn't perfect, however, and one of those imperfections for me was: nature. Taiwan is a sauna in the summer, and the sunlight is much stronger than in Tokyo. I attended Yuyake Lamp's rehearsal on the beach stage at 9:30 in the morning, and already, the sun's rays were piercing. The humidity caused sweat to pour out of me and wash away the suntan lotion, exposing my skin directly to the sun and turning me into a true Red-neck by noon. By 12:30, when the festival started, the combination of the sun and the heat was almost unbearable. The locals were smart though: many of them had brought big umbrellas to sit under during the hottest hours. Every inch of the shaded space around the stage was taken over by people escaping the sunlight. The beach stage was especially bad around noon: it was like watching a rock show in the Sahara. (Ironically, the band playing there at 2PM was called STAYCOOL...)

So, my concert-viewing activity in the early afternoon hours consisted of me standing in the sunlight as long as I could bear it so I could see the acts from the front, then scurrying for cover behind the stage, looking for someplace to sit in the shade. I did like what I heard though—a lot. One group I enjoyed was called Zhe Wei Taitai (這位太太), which I think means 'this wife'. They consisted of two female singers, who moved back and forth between melody and harmony parts, which were sweet and soothing, over an indie pop sound.


Zhe Wei Taitai

Almost every Taiwanese act I saw at the festival either played sitting down, or if standing, the performers didn't move around that much. I wasn't sure whether the lack of stage action was because the musicians invited to the festival were like that, laid-back, or whether performers in Taiwan generally have a low-key stage presence. My impression was that the musicians and audience valued most the vocal music parts, maybe more than the instrumental music or stage presentation, and that meant that moving around on the stage wasn't key. Taiwan seemed to be singing culture: every taxi I rode played popular Taiwanese songs (often old ones) on the radio, and the local Eslite record store had a big selection of enka CDs.

One unusual thing about Grass Festival was its, so to speak, Peter Pan quality. The theme of the festival was 'elementary school', and because this was its second year, it was officially called something like 'Grass Festival 2nd Grade'. They stamped on your arm a cherry blossom sign, the sort that a Taiwanese teacher might stamp on a well-written essay or error-free math quiz. And, I didn't see this myself, but between sets on the grass field, the organizers apparently had the audience do calisthenics or other types of school yard activities. Part of the reason for all this was because, well, the festival took place at a grammar school, but I wondered whether there was also nostalgia about childhood at work there, and if so, whether that was a big thing in Taiwan, or at least among the generations that went to this festival.

About 4PM it started to cool down, so that the umbrellas to avoid the sun could be put away, and the beach stage became comfortable, and then pleasant. Around then Marikov, a guitar group from Japan, played their 'urban folk'. Yuyake Lamp performed at 7PM, just as it was turning dark. By coincidence, fireworks went off above the stage just as they started, and because vocalist Yunn hopped around so much, almost losing her breath and becoming drenched in sweat, someone brought up to the stage tropical juice drinks for her and the two other players. It was a great show, one that I hoped created a few new fans of the band in Taiwan. Yunn said it was one of the best shows she'd done, and that she would remind herself of it to feel better if she ever became dejected about something.


Yuyake Lamp

Nylas, an interesting electronica trio consisting of a western guy and a Taiwanese guy and girl, played after Yuyake Lamp. I could only watch them part time because I was also involved in Yuyake's post-gig festivities, but I liked what I saw of Nylas. (Though, and this isn't Nylas' fault, I always feel that computer-based or DJ-based music performances are limited by the fact that the performers have to stay at a table, looking down at their equipment rather than the fans. Maybe someone should invent a movable desk that hangs from your shoulders that lets you walk around on stage...)

We left at 9:30 to take the second-to-last train back to Taipei, but because the train came by only every hour or two and practically everyone lived in Taipei, the train going back was as crowded as a rush-hour commuter express. Even worse, there happened to be another festival taking place that night on the same train line but closer to Taipei, and the revelers from that festival got on, making the train jam-packed with sweaty, sunburned humanity. The railroad personnel had to stop many people from getting on to our train because it was already filled to capacity. Incredibly, though, those people left on the platform, now having to wait another hour or more in the humid evening heat for the next train (and was there any guarantee that they could get on that train either?), rather than rioting or even complaining, started waving at those already on the train, waving 'bye bye, bye bye', and those inside the train waved back too. It was a strangely moving closing scene of a long day.


(Thanks a lot, E.J., Powei, Jelly and Cathy and Jubow of Dolly's Pillbox, for your great hospitality in Taipei!)