Noodles, Zeppet Store, Auto Pilot

Auto Pilot at the Que.

The Noodles, the Japanese all-girl band that's now a trio after the recent departure of its lead guitarist, played tonight at the Que one day after their return from a U.S. tour. They said they were jet-lagged. Drummer Ayumi said she was almost left behind in Denver when her plane flying from New York made a stopover there on the way to Seattle. She thought Denver was Seattle.

"I didn't know if I would be able to come home," she told the audience. "If not, I would have had to find work there."

Anyone reading this see them in the U.S.?

It was my first time to see the Noodles as a trio, and I have to say, I miss Junko the lead guitarist. The Noodles said in their interview with keikaku.net that they aren't looking for a new lead guitar, but with only one guitarist the band's sound isn't as full as I remember it.

One observation: I noticed that singer Yoko's speaking voice is higher than her singing voice. Usually with Japanese female singers it's the other way around.


Zeppet Store at the Que, watched by bopping female fans.

A loud, straightforwardly rocking quartet, Zeppet Store, the second act of the night, reminded me a bit of proto-grunge bands like Soundgarden and Mudhoney. Maybe it was partly their late 80's hippie hair, though theirs was carefully sculpted with gel and hair dryers to look unwashed and unkempt, rather than actually being those things. They were popular with the girls, who bopped around next to the stage and pumped their arms in the air.

***

The third and final band of the night, Auto Pilot, I had confused with another band I saw once and I liked, Afterpilot. In fact when I entered Que and the ticket seller asked me which band I'd come to see (they ask that to divide up the ticket revenue between bands), I answered 'Afterpilot'. A confused look on the ticket seller's face for a second or two, then she asked, "Do you mean Auto Pilot? Are you sure this is the show that you want to see?" I said yes, yes, silly me, I meant Auto Pilot (though actually I thought I was going to see Afterpilot...).

But I'm glad I made that mistake and voted for Auto Pilot, because they were an excellent band, the best of the night. The quintet plays shoegazing type music (the singer's guitarist has a sticker of the band Ride on it) with bits of punk and trance influence mixed in, and lots of feedback and repeated driving bass lines. I have a major weakness for that sort of sound.

Though the band rocked, the audience seemed to consider them something of an intellectual band to be watched from a safe distance, and reverently left space open in the front of the stage so that the back half of the Que was packed but there were few people in the front. Auto Pilot was selling their CDs after the show, and I bought their album White Light Ride. It's discoveries like these that keep me addicted to Japanese music.

INTERVIEW: Orange Plankton

Orange Plankton: from the left, bassist Tsuji-, singer Yumi, drummer Tamarou, and pianist Yuki.

I interviewed members of Tokyo piano pop band Orange Plankton more than a year ago for a project, but so far the project hasn't seen the light of day. In the meantime I've decided to share some of what I talked about with the group in Japan Live. The interview took place right after their third album Fanciful Garden came out, but before the release of their latest album, Wakusei Note (which is my favorite album of 2004). It was a long conversation, so I've trimmed it down to just the parts talking about music-making and the origins of Orange Plankton.

***

JAPAN LIVE: I've heard that the 'orange' in Orange Plankton refers to the Japanese orange from Ehime prefecture [in western Japan, where Yumi is from]. Is that true?

YUMI: Yes. And also, it's the color of the sun. And with that sunlight, we make the plankton multiply. That's the image.

JAPAN LIVE: How was the band Orange Plankton formed?

TSUJI-: Originally when we were in Osaka we had one other member who played the guitar, and the guitarist and I were in a (rock music) club in college, and we decided to form a new band. So we put up flyers seeking other band members at various musical instrument stores and practice studios, and the people that responded to the flyer became the band.

JAPAN LIVE: What was your first impression of each other?

YUMI: It was my first time in a band, and I had this image of band people having bleached blond hair and wearing lots of pierced jewelry and I was expecting those sorts of people in the band, but then Tsuji- showed up, and I thought, 'How simple!'.

YUKI: I also thought (looking at the other band members), 'simple'. Yumi looked very child-like. But when I met the other four band members they subjected me to a barrage of questions, and I got the feeling that these are pure, serious people.

JAPAN LIVE: What made you decide to be in Orange Plankton?

YUKI: I quite simply wanted to play the piano in a band. [Yuki is a classically-trained pianist.] I had a strong desire to play in a band, but only recently I've started to realize what I really want to do. At first, I thought we might be doing more intense music. What we ended up doing isn't exactly quiet music, but it is a band centered on the piano as I wanted.

TSUJI-: When I decided around high school that I want to be in a band, I liked hard rock and would copy bands like Queen, but when we formed this band, I thought we should do music with originality, like Radiohead. Now we don't aim to be like any particular artist. We try to create our own sound.

TAMAROU: I started playing the drums when I was in college, and I was covering well-known songs in a college club, and I was also in another band before I joined Orange Plankton but they weren't that interesting. And then I met Orange Plankton and they had this atmosphere that I'd never seen anywhere else, and that came out in their music too, and I thought 'this is interesting' and I decided to join them.

***

JAPAN LIVE: What do you find is most difficult about being in a band?

YUMI: I sometimes feel that I want to sing a little more this way or that but I'm not able to, or I want to make the sound a little different but I'm not able to express that to the others. When it's like that, sometimes practice does the trick, but other times I need to try to figure out what exactly it is I want to do. That's a difficult thing.

JAPAN LIVE: How do you overcome the difficulties?

YUMI: First, so I know what I want to say, I try things like drawing a picture, and once I know what it is I'm looking for, I communicate that to the other members, again, doing various things such as writing it out or drawing pictures.

JAPAN LIVE: Do you understand what Yumi is trying to express with her pictures?

YUKI: Yes, gradually I've come to understand them. Though at first I didn't at all.

TSUJI-: One song we are working on now ['Iwa Kaesu Kaze No Oto' in their Wakusei Note album], Yumi's image of it was of the Mongolian steppe, but I didn't really understand what she was trying to express just looking at the lyrics alone, but then she drew a picture of her image and showed it to me. It was a picture of a girl standing alone in a great field, with a big tree next to her, and when I saw that drawing I was able to get a better sense of what sort of music to play.

***

JAPAN LIVE: How do you create your lyrics?

YUMI: When I write the music to songs myself, I come up with the lyrics at the same time that I create the music. Also, after I read a book or watch a movie or meet someone, I get an impression and I write lyrics to express that impression.

Besides me, Tsuji- and Yuki also write the music to songs, and when I do the lyrics for their songs I attach a lot of importance to the impression I got when I listened to the music for the first time. That lets me write words that aren't inside me.

JAPAN LIVE: When do you write lyrics?

YUMI: Mostly I write at night. I write when it's late at night and it's very quiet.

JAPAN LIVE: Many of your songs use colors as imagery, for example 'Akai Aka' ['A Crimson Red'] and 'Midori No Kotori' ['A Little Green Bird']. Do you consciously use colors as imagery in your songs?

YUMI: I've been told before that I use color a lot. It's not a conscious thing, but colors make it easier to create an image, and I end up using them a lot.

JAPAN LIVE: You also use 'garden' often, for example, in the title of your album [Mizu no Niwa literally means 'Garden of Water', though it's been translated into English by the band as 'Fanciful Garden'.]

YUMI: I try to use words that let people form different images. In the case of colors, people get different images from the color red, but they do get an image. A garden is the same sort of thing.

JAPAN LIVE: Does a garden have a special image for you?

YUMI: It has an image of a partitioned space where anything can be created. I always have an image of there being a garden in my mind.

JAPAN LIVE: What do you mean by 'Garden of Water' [the literal translation of Orange Plankton's third album]?

YUMI: 'Garden of Water' is, well, Orange Plankton's music is a partitioned thing, and when someone listens to Orange Plankton, it's like a garden that we want people to enter. Also, by naming it 'Garden of Water', it helps expand a person's image, though everyone will have a different image, with some maybe thinking of, say, an underwater metropolis.

Winnie, Spaghetti Vabune, $2000 Panda

The Aprils' panda.

Guitar pop was the theme tonight at the Shibuya O-Nest, where four good bands played: Lost in Found, winnie, Aprils and Spaghetti Vabune.

I was especially looking forward to seeing winnie, who only recently started perfoming live after a one-year hiatus. Their mini-album released 2003, first class speed of light, is one of my favorite recent Japanese pop-rock albums. I included it in my list of 5 Dreamy, Distortion-Heavy Japan Rock CDs, of Japanese groups that are musical descendants of My Bloody Valentine. Looking at winnie's website, it looks like the band members are more into pop and rock bands like Teenage Fanclub, Wannadies and Ivy than My Bloody Valentine, but I still do hear a little of MBV in winnie's music. Less sonic experimentation and heavy distortion, but the same focus on creating catchy melodies with overdriven guitars and girl-guy duo singing parts.

Tonight at the O-Nest they played some new songs in Japanese (all the songs in first class were in English), which were good. They are a nice looking band on stage -- the guy singer Okuji hunches forward toward the mike as he sings, as if about to leap into the audience, while Iori, the girl singer, stands straight, looking peacefully contented. Tall for a Japanese woman, with long henna-dyed hair, she wore jeans and high heels, and with those heels she stepped on her guitar effect pedals, which I thought was the coolest thing.


Winnie at the O-Nest.

I've been to Aprils and Lost in Found shows before, but this was my first time to see Spaghetti Vabune! , a guitar pop band from western Japan. The one song of theirs I knew and liked, 'Jetset star' in a compilation album by the Japanese guitar pop indie label bluebadge, they played as the final song of their set before the encore (they were the last band of the night). A group that plays bright and energetic pop, they were loved by the dozens of well-dressed guitar pop fans in the audience.

At one point between songs, the girl singer held up a hand puppet of a cow, which announced to the fans in a high-pitched bovine (?) voice that a new album was in the works. This impressive feat of ventriloquism was accomplished by having a drummer talk into the mike in a falsetto voice while the singer flapped the puppet cow's mouth. Cutely wacky, in a way that maybe shouldn't be surprising coming from a band that calls itself Spaghetti Vabune. ('Vabune' is like 'zoom' in English, the sound of a rocket flying in the air.)

***

The Aprils' future dance pop isn't quite my thing, but there's no doubt their shows are fun. In the middle of the set, an aqua and white stuffed panda hobbled onto stage and swung its arms around to the songs, as the guy singer Imai urged the crowd to look at him rather than the panda. The panda outfit is said to have cost around 200,000 yen (about $2,000), paid for by the band's record label.

Japan Live, Interviewed

I was interviewed by the cool folks over at Japan music website keikaku.net, and the article has just been published here. If you check it out, be sure to spend some time looking through the rest of their site too. It's a comprehensive, well-designed site with several people on the staff, and contains lots of great features and interviews, including a wonderfully minimalist interview of girl band Noodles (sample exchange: KEIKAKU.NET: Is being a noodle a full-time job, or do the band members have other occupations? NOODLES: No.).

Advantage Lucy; Nekobed

Nekobed at the Shibuya Cyclone.

It’s been getting clear recently that Tokyo rock band advantage Lucy’s very, very long-awaited new album is nearing completion and release .

You can tell by the way they’ve been scheduling their shows – rather than playing with other guitar pop bands of friends, as they usually do, they’ve jumped into events with unfamiliar groups in different genres, to make a wider audience of people that might buy their album interested in their music. Last Sunday it was the Que show with Kawakami Jiro and the Robots. Tonight they performed with a few rocking bands including Nekobed (literal translation: ‘cat bed’).

They also seem even more focused when playing live, to show their new audiences their best face.

Appearing tonight at a venue called Shibuya Cyclone, advantage Lucy were spectacular. No band is quite like Lucy at their best. They occupy a pleasant place in the middle of musical extremes: Lucy rocks harder than most pop bands, but they are classier than hard rock bands. They are like a rocking chamber orchestra, the sound of each instrument distinct (two guitars, a bass, drums, and recently, keyboard played by singer Aiko) but coming together to form a beautiful musical whole.

Aiko’s singing is superb. Shyly friendly in person, she seems to come fully to life only on stage, where, with her singing, she squeezes out all her emotions and intense love for her music.

The show – a feast. It was a six-course meal of their most well-crafted songs, including rousing renditions of ‘Citrus’, ‘Chikyu’, ‘Goodbye’ and a new, melancholic ballad called ‘To-Ii Hi (‘A Distant Day ‘, my translation)’. I still feel happily stuffed.

***

The last act of the night was Nekobed, a sextet that plays music that combines elements of 50's rock, rockabilly, ska, R&B, and Japanese popular music. It’s hard to dislike a band where the two sax players and singers are beauties and the three all stand at the front of the stage during the show, dancing and having fun.

***

UPDATE: I should have added that the members of advantage Lucy themselves said the new album is likely to come out in the summer.

Orange Plankton On Street; Robots

Orange Plankton in Shibuya, in front of NHK.

In front of the NHK television studio in Shibuya is a pathway where on weekends, garage rock groups, interpretative dancers, comedians and others come to perform for strollers, each group occupying a small patch of the sidewalk . It’s noisy and colorful, like an impromptu carnival. Tokyo pop band Orange Plankton has been playing here for free on recent Sunday afternoons, and I went to check them out.

The spontaneous weekend gathering of performers in Shibuya is a tradition going back at least two decades. When I first came to Japan I didn’t think much of these often exhibitionistic but incompetent performances, but then one night in the mid-90's I went to see Fugazi play at the Ebisu Guilty, and one of the members of Fugazi said something on stage that made me look at these street bands in a different light. At the time, authorities had prohibited the playing of amplified music in the area, and so the gatherings had disappeared. The Fugazi guy (memory fails on which one it was) asked on stage, what happened to all those bands that used to play on the street in Shibuya, it was so exhilarating to see so many bands playing in one place. That’s when I realized, yeah, many of these bands might be little more than noise pollution, but still it’s a great thing to form a band and create music, and try out your music with the public.


Another picture of Orange Plankton in Shibuya.

In the years since, the police have cracked down on the performances every once a while but recently have been turning a blind eye, or more accurately, a deaf ear to the street gigs as long as the amps aren’t turned up too loudly. So Orange Plankton along with other bands have been playing here.

Despite it being mid-March it was a cold Sunday afternoon and on the way to Shibuya, snow as big as ashes started to fall from the sky. Orange Plankton was there in front of NHK (they had done their first show of the day in the snow!), and soon began a set of about half an hour. The amps were turned down low to avoid getting in trouble with the cops. To one side of the band was a jazz group, and across from them was a wannabe girl-idol punk band, and because everyone was playing at once it was hard to hear the songs. But when I focused I could hear their familiar songs, like sifting for gold in a sandy river of noise.

I only listened to one set but they did several more later in the day, and I wished I could see those too. In Orange Plankton’s BBS, I read that one guy took the bullet train from Nagano prefecture just to see them play, then went to the airport to catch a flight to Fukuoka where he actually lives (!). If you are in Shibuya on a Sunday and see these musicians, stop and give them a listen. That will make their day.

***

AT NIGHT advantage Lucy played at the Que in Shimokitazawa at an event also featuring a solo artist named Kawakami Jiro (formerly of a band called Kusu Kusu) and a band called the Robots (led by the ex-guitarist of Judy & Mary, Takuya). Those are three popular musical units, and the Que was packed.

It was a strange night. Kawakami plays R&B-type songs, the Robots soft punk, advantage Lucy does guitar pop, and the fans of each artist didn’t mix at all with the other two’s fans. During the show of, say, Kawakami, the Robots and Lucy fans by and large seemed indifferent or bored.

Advantage Lucy did the show because they thought it would be a good chance to introduce themselves to music fans who aren’t familiar with their music, and they played a lot of their oldies like ‘Goodbye’, ‘Kaze ni Azukete’ and ‘Metro’. They played beautifully, though guitar pop just isn’t as flashy as R&B or hard rock, and I wondered whether they were able to convert many of the musically benighted to Lucy fandom. For my part I was knocked out by a new ballad of theirs called ‘Time After Time’, but being surrounded by weird Robots and Kawakami fans helped me keep my emotions in check.

***

The Robots played last, and I was much more excited about them and had much more fun than I thought it would. Part of it is that I used to be a huge Judy & Mary fan, buying all their CDs etc. (and I still like them), and here was Takuya the guitarist in a small club rather than the humongous halls he used to play in with JAM. Plus the Robots really rocked. Takuya performed with skill and total confidence in himself bordering on the cocky, like a rocking Che Guevara.

I’d heard that as a kid Takuya was a juvenile delinquent that was kicked out of the worst high school in town (don’t know this for a fact though), a true ‘yankee’, the bizarre term the Japanese give to bad kids (maybe because the kids often bleach their hair to make themselves blond?). And he had the attributes of a ‘yankee’: bleached blond hair; triangular eyes that stared with attitude; sunken cheeks; a Sid Vicious snarl. But he would also often flash a boyish smile, which along with his good looks and rough charm may have partly explained the large number of girl fans in the audience, despite his frequently saying very inappropriate things on stage (he was, for example, talking about the snow earlier in the day, and when some in the audience questioned whether it was true it snowed, he said yes it did in Tokyo, but maybe you wouldn’t know it if you trained in from the sticks to see the show. He also made a joke about, er, unwanted pregnancy...).

It was a raw, rocking show that reminded me that Judy & Mary, despite the cuteness of Yuki’s singing voice and the pop rock arrangement of many of their songs, was a band that had its roots in punk rock (though maybe a pop Japanese version of punk).


And another.

Waffles and Mirrorball-Rock Disco

Vasallo Crab 75 at the Que.

Shimokitazawa’s Club Que featured three fabulous bands on Friday night: Plectrum, Waffles, and Vasallo Crab 75. I’m a big fan of all three, but since I’ve already written so much about Plectrum and Vasallo, before the event I was planning to focus on the Waffles, a pop quartet led by the singer and keyboardist Kyoko Ono. However, Vasallo Crab 75, who was the last act, put on such a wonderful show, turning the floor into a mass dance zone with their funky pop music, that I need to talk about them first.

It was the first of four monthly shows at the Que organized by Vasallo called "Mirrorball-Rock Disco", and in line with the theme, before the live show the DJ played disco classics, and a mirror ball and strips of reflecting sheets on the wall behind the stage shone in rainbow colors. The members of Vasallo marched on stage dressed up like characters in a hip 70's TV show – singer Daisuke Kudo wore a jacket but was bare-chested except for a silky scarf.

As with the disco theme tonight, Vasallo’s shows are never boring because they are constantly trying out new things on stage, though some of their experiments are more successful than others (for a period, they played in near total darkness other than a lone lit mirror ball). Musically, their innovation is to mix in funk to guitar pop and add an electric violin for a classical music touch. Teenage Fanclub meets James Brown and Bach may sound like a recipe for dissonance, but it works for them.

Tonight, Vasallo’s non-stop funky bass lines worked up the normally shy audience of guitar pop fans into a dancing frenzy. In the middle of the show, an excited singer Kudo tossed the hat he was wearing into the audience. He later said that he was going to give the hat to whoever caught it, but at the same time he liked the hat and was a bit reluctant to let it go. Perhaps sensing Kudo’s latter sentiment, the fan who caught the hat immediately threw it back to Kudo. Not knowing what to do, Kudo then tossed it over to the violin and bass guys. They then lobbed the hat back into the audience, and this time it hit my poor friend Dr. I in the eye. It was a fun, absorbing show that left the crowd smiling and telling each other how great it was.

***

The event really was a satisfying one. Plectrum played with their usual exuberance (they started with their one song in Korean, Myongdong Calling). And there were the Waffles. Formed in college, they have been around for a few years, and their gentle, melodic pop sound has attracted a following. Singer Kyoko Ono, who writes all the songs, has a good distinct voice that sounds as though she is smiling as she sings. On stage, she often looks up at the ceiling as if chasing her voice as it soars heavenward.

For their second to last song they played a tune called "Tsugi no Hikari (‘The Next Light’, my translation)", which I think is a classic, one of the best Japanese pop songs I’ve ever listened to. It stands out in the Waffles repertoire too. It’s hard to do justice to the song with words. If you like Japanese bands like advantage Lucy or the Cymbals, or pop music in general, I highly recommend their album Pool, which contains the song.

I don’t really understand what ‘Tsugi no Hikari’ is about. It’s unclear whether the ‘I’ in the song is a boy or girl (both the masculine ‘boku’ and feminine ‘watashi’ are used), and in some parts it sounds like the song is talking about a couple that’s drifting apart, but elsewhere the song seems to be about ‘I’ trying to reassure his or her friend. But probably the storyline isn’t important, and what the band wants the listener to get out of the song is an image or an emotion. Ono helps the listener do that with her impassioned singing. Tonight she sang the tune on stage with the same deep emotion as on the album, and it was exhilarating to hear and see.

Telstar Live at Zher the Zoo

Telstar at Zher the Zoo.

The Unidentifiable Rocking Objects in the photo above are members of the Japanese rock band Telstar. They were playing tonight at a club that just opened this month called Zher the Zoo in Yoyogi (one station from Shinjuku), the first night of their Japan tour to promote their new album, Kokoro wo Furuwasetakoto (‘What Shook My Heart’, my translation). Because of late work I stumbled into the club in the middle of their set and had to see them almost directly from the side, but I’m glad I made the trip.

Telstar has been around for many years, and I’ve been an on-and-off fan. They are punk in a very pop, non-violent, boys-next-door, Japanese sort of way. If you locked a few suburban Japanese kids in a room and gave them electric guitars, amps and a copy of Never Mind the Bollocks, they might come up with music like Telstar’s. All of their song lyrics and titles are in Japanese. It’s hard, in fact, to imagine them singing in English. They’re probably not the type of sophisticated musicians that readers of, say, Marquee magazine would like. If a group like Pizzicato Five is champagne, Telstar is soy sauce. But sushi would be uneatable without soy sauce, and Japanese music would lack flavor without bands like Telstar.

The big crowd that comes to see Telstar is a good indication of how good this quartet is. They are about 95% female, mostly around college age, wear Telstar t-shirts in primary colors, and hop up and down madly to the group’s songs, a mosh pit made in heaven. It may be hard to tell in this photo above, but the Telstar boys would probably never find work as fashion models. But the girls love them, and this goes to show that looks aren’t everything. I think part of their appeal is that they are funny. They sometimes spend almost as much time wise-cracking on stage as they do playing their songs, and the Japanese love comedians. (Their website, even if you don’t read Japanese, is fun to explore.) They are also super-high energy.

When I first saw Telstar they were college kids but they are now working, and as a result I think they have less time to perform live than in the past. They said they won’t be playing in Tokyo again a while, which made me wish I’d gotten to the club on time and stood at a better place to see them. They played third out of five bands, and the final two bands, without naming names, were competent but bored me. I try to watch as many bands as I can, but very few dazzle me like Telstar does.

Japan Live Mentioned In Chinese Music Blog

I found a Chinese blog that mentions my post about Spangle call Lilli line's live album! It looks like it was written by commenter Makzhou -- thanks! The way the Internet connects the world is wondrous. (I'm happy to say I actually understand most of Makzhou's post.)

Guitar Pop In Koenji

Snowball at the Penguin House.

The town called Koenji, a few stops from the huge Shinjuku train station, has a reputation in Tokyo for being a rock ‘n’ roll neighborhood. Lots of musicians live there, and it has many rock clubs and bars. But it’s also a down-to-earth place filled with mom-and-pop stores around the train station -- as I walked to a club in Koenji called the Penguin House, I heard the shopkeeper of a vegetable store yelling out the bargains of the day, and saw a crowd of customers buying their ingredients for dinner. I was in Koenji to see a show featuring four ‘guitar pop’ bands – Lazy Spaniel, Snowball, Clean Distortion and Thurston – at the Penguin House, a live music bar.

Guitar pop is a genre of music I’ve come to enjoy while living in Japan. As a description of a type of music it isn’t precise in its boundaries, and in fact some bands that are called guitar pop bands don’t agree that that’s what they play, but it still is a useful way to classify bands. When you go to see a guitar pop band, you leave your angst at the door. It is bright and happy music, a music of celebration rather than catharsis. Great Japanese bands I think belong in the ‘guitar pop’ category include advantage Lucy, Vasallo Crab 75, Lost in Found and Miniskirt.


Lazy Spaniel at the Penguin House.

Tonight at the Penguin House were a few other guitar pop bands that are good, but are little known outside of Japan (and in some cases, even inside Japan). There was Clean Distortion, a band originally from Osaka, whose members play classy pop tunes but who have an Osaka locals’ love for comedy, as becomes clear between songs, when the band members try to outdo each other to say the best jokes. There was Snowball, a duo that plays early-Beatles-like numbers and consists of Obata, a male guitarist/singer with a tenor voice and, Rika, a petite female keyboardist. They have just released a 1st album called wild wild party, which I bought after the show. The other two bands, Lazy Spaniel and Thurston, also put on good performances.

There were a few standout songs played by each of the bands, but the overall mood of the evening was to relax and take in all the good pop music. The atmosphere of Penguin House helped – a bar with wood-paneled walls and an ancient-looking standup piano on the stage, it was an ideal place to listen, with a small group of fans, to upbeat pop songs.


Clean Distortion at the Penguin House.

On the way home from the show at Shinjuku station, I saw a guy running for a last train but his backpack was open and a mountain of documents dropped from it and covered the platform. Right away, five or six people bent down to help the embarrassed guy pick up his papers from the ground. Chivalry isn’t dead, even in the ‘urban desert’ of Tokyo!

Spangle call Lilli line, Live, On CD

Spangle call Lilli line's live album.

This is live albums week. In my last post, I wrote about Live 4 Live by Tokyo rock band Plectrum. Now I’ve discovered another fantastic new live album, this one by Japanese art pop band Spangle call Lilli line. The two albums have been my constant iPod companions of late.

The Spangle call live album, called 68scll, is pretty expensive, at Y3,800 (about US$35). But the price tag didn’t matter to me– a fevered owner of their three great albums, I wanted to listen to anything I hadn't heard of theirs before the new Spangle album comes out in the spring. The reason 68scll is so expensive is that it is an album and art booklet in one, the booklet containing photos, pictures and graphic design illustrations. Looking through it, I found an essay that said an amazing thing about Spangle call: each of the three members of the band have full-time non-music jobs. That is to say, Spangle call is a part-time project for them. I know many Japanese musicians who do part time jobs to support their musical lifestyle, but I don’t know of any that do music only part time and still succeed so brilliantly. I mean, how is it possible to create such gorgeous music on a part-time basis?

In any case, the 68scll booklet is Spangle’s own creation, with the illustrations done by the singer Kana Otsubo, the photos by Kiyoaki Sasahara, one of the guitarists, and the design by the other guitarist, Ken Fujieda.

The 68scll album itself is a must-listen for any Spangle fan, and highly recommended for any music lover. The quality of the performance that was recorded in the CD is simply astounding. 68scll begins with the sound of a string section tuning, like the start of a symphony concert, and when the music begins and the guest violinists play as part of the rock ensemble, the resulting sound is in itself a happy discovery. Unlike other rock bands for whom a string section is something extra, an embellishment to help make their songs sound arty, in Spangle’s case the violins feel like an integral part of the music, and fit perfectly. Otsubo’s singing voice, which I tried to describe along with Spangle's musical style in an earlier post, soars lazily like it does in Spangle albums but with more immediacy because it’s live. Consisting of nine long songs, with one song, Piano, lasting nearly ten minutes, 68scll nevertheless makes me forget time.

(By the way, in a funny mislabeling, iTunes lists this album’s genre as New Age. Impossible. Don’t worry, you won’t hear chirping birds or traveling astral objects in 68scll.)

Plectrum! Live! Recorded!!

Plectrum live at Mona Records.

One of the treasures in my music collection is a mini-disc that contains a recording I made of Japanese rock band Plectrum’s two shows in Seoul in March last year, during their first visit to Korea with three other Japanese bands. What a glorious time that was! I witnessed the creation of friendship between the musicians of Korea and Japan, two countries that are across the sea from each other but often seem much further apart.

Plectrum helped bring the Japanese and Koreans together by playing two of the best shows I’ve ever seen. I’ve written before that a small Plectrum fan club sprang up in Seoul right after those performances. In this MD of mine is a record of those shows.

In one part of the recording, during a ballad called "Book End", Plectrum singer Taisuke Takata calls out in Korean to the Korean audience: "Yorobun!", meaning ‘everyone’. "OOH!", the crowd responds, a happy gasp. Takata then yells, "Saranghaeyo!"– I love you!– and in my MD you can hear women’s screams and laughter, like the final scene of Full Monty. It still makes me a bit emotional when I hear that part of the recording.


Plectrum's new album, Live 4 Live.

Now everyone can get a feel for what Plectrum, one of Tokyo’s best live bands, is like on stage, because they have just released a live album called Live 4 Live. It includes performances in Tokyo and Osaka and their second Seoul tour in September. A recording could never substitute for actually seeing Plectrum live, but this CD is nevertheless a satisfying one, one that shows how the band plays with both the precision of experienced musical artisans but also an almost out-of-control passion. At the end of the album is a song whose significance you’d miss if you didn’t know what was happening at the show. It was the second show of the September Seoul tour, and in the middle of one of the songs the sound system went down. The band was about to stop, but the crowd began to sing as one big chorus Plectrum’s song, in Japanese, until the sound came back up. I wrote about this experience before here and here. It feels like a miracle that I can hear it again on a CD.


Plectrum live in Seoul, September 2004.

Plectrum held a concert this week at the Mona Records in Shimokitazawa to celebrate the launch of their new album. A café that also sells CDs and hosts nightly shows, Mona is a comfy venue, like listening to live music in the livingroom of a friend’s home. I took off my shoes to sit on the floor in the elevated area near the stage. It’s like a Japanese home – even the band members play shoeless, wearing socks!

The show was supposed to be "acoustic", but when Japanese bands say that it usually means they will still use amps, but maybe at a slightly lower volume. In fact, despite its being an "acoustic" show, Plectrum were pretty loud. Singer Takata said that the go (Chinese board-game) club upstair from Mona was closed tonight and all the elderly go players were out so that they’d received special permission to crank up the volume a bit. The extra volume was put to good use, fueling another amazing Plectrum performance.

Takata had asked people on the band’s website to request songs for the evening, and they played those requested numbers, mostly their old songs, but they also did some new stuff, like a jazzy song I especially like called "Stand By Me". I’d written on their BBS that I had that song running through my head but couldn’t figure out for a while what it was, and that I wanted to hear a recording of it soon, and Takata told me after the show that he counted that BBS message from me as a request and so played it. I’m not sure if he meant that, but it was a nice thing to say.

The standout song of the evening, I thought, was a tune called "3PM Lazy", which is the last song of their album Sorry and which I’ve never quite figured out what it’s about. But it’s a great, long tune. It starts with a lone, echoing guitar part played by Takata, and builds up in intensity, like a person gradually waking up on a day that turns out to be a dramatic one. Several times I’ve seen Plectrum play this song and I’ve been moved every time, and the Mona show was no exception.

Watermelon, Penguin and Orange Plankton

Orange Plankton... at press conference. (click to enlarge)

At a press conference crowded with reporters and TV cameras, Tokyo pop band Orange Plankton reveals to the world the name of their new single... Well, OK, not quite.

In reality the event in the photo above was held to announce that Ueno station, one of Tokyo’s biggest train stations, had become a Suica-friendly zone. Suica cards are IC cards issued by Japan Railway (JR) to pay for train trips, but now at the Ueno and Tokyo stations, with the card customers in the station can also buy drinks or cigarettes by touching a vending machine with it, or pay for meals, and spend money in other ways as well. "Suica", by the way, I think is an abbreviation of "sui sui", meaning "move quickly", and "card" (and it's also an IC card, thus SuICa -- clever, eh?). So, with a Suica, rather than wasting time lining up to buy tickets you can get on the jam-packed commuter trains right away. But the sound "suika" also means watermelon. And as everything must have mascots in Japan, JR’s Suica’s mascot is a penguin. Weird? Welcome to Japan.


The Suica penguin.

But back to the topic of the press conference – if you look carefully at the picture above, you can see a woman in a bright red coat. That’s singer Yumi of Orange Plankton, and around her are the other members of the band. I don’t know how they arranged this, but one of Orange Plankton’s songs was chosen by JR as a theme song for the Suica Station, to be played on TV monitors in the station. At the start of the ceremony (which featured the actress Hayami Yu and a couple of other celebrities I didn’t recognize), that song was played on a big screen above the stage, though unfortunately I missed the song because I got there a little late. And I forgot to ask which song of theirs was the Suica theme tune.

Colors in a sea of gray and navy.

Orange Plankton has been on a roll recently. A few of their songs were used in a TV commercial for a chain of pachinko pinball centers. Another tune was used to advertise apartments for students. And now this, Suica. If they keep this pace up and become famous nationwide, they might just become a band that does give news conferences...

Apple Crumble Record

Tokyo's most pathetic apartments.

In a hideous fake brown brick building in Shibuya is Apple Crumble Record, a record shop that is loved by Tokyo guitar pop fans despite its tiny size. Miniskirt singer Edgar Franz, for example, calls it his favorite record store in the city. I went there for the first time a couple of weeks ago.

It's a brightly-colored closet of a store, carrying CDs and records from pop musicians from Europe, Japan, and other parts of Asia. But I didn't realize how cool the store really is until I looked up their website, and found a column of theirs called Indie Pop Noodle.

Aimed at introducing indie pop bands from the rest of Asia -- Hong Kong, Indonesia, Thailand, the Philippines, Taiwan, Korea -- the column describes in detail interesting-sounding overseas bands I otherwise would know nothing about. The author had already written 19 installments of the column (unfortunately for non-Japanese speakers, they are all in Japanese).

The first column talked about the Pancakes, a pop band consisting of one member, a girl from Hong Kong. I'd actually heard about the Pancakes but had forgotten about the band until I read the review.

"It's toy pop where all the songs have music that sounds cheap like it was made on Casiotones, but the melody is simple yet pop and easy to remember and just so great, and it's like a proof that whether it's just three chords a good song is good," the author writes about Pancakes' music [my translation].

The column says the Pancakes has one song in which the girl plays the A chord over and over again but it's supposed to be a nice song, which I'll have to listen to believe. The review made me want to sample some of the Pancakes' musical treats -- I predict an Apple Crumble visit coming up soon in my schedule.

What's so wonderful about Apple Crumble and its Indie Noodle Pop column is that I get the sense the people at the store want the same thing that I do: good music by local artists, whether in Japan or elsewhere. That may sound simple, but it's not that easy to find -- there's music everywhere, but it's often not that great, or if it is good, it's the same thing people all over the place are listening to.

***

CHANGE OF SUBJECT: Just found out from advantage Lucy's Internet page that the band is doing two shows in two weeks in March! First one will be on Sunday, March 13 at the Que in Shimokitazawa, and the next show will be at the Shibuya Cyclone on Saturday, March 19. Lucy has been good about performing live throughout the year, but the pace was still only about once a month. The recent increased frequency probably means they are gearing up for the release of their very long-awaited new album. It's good news, and I'm waiting eagerly for these shows, and so should you if you are in the Tokyo metropolitan area or are planning a trip here - Lucy fans unite!

***

Lastly, about the photo above that has nothing to do with Apple Crumble Record, except that it shows a row of apartments that are on the way from my house to Shibuya, where the record store is: I called them the most pathetic apartments in Tokyo, because they are. These apartments are literally built directly below the train tracks (or maybe the train tracks were built over them?), and they are old buildings, meaning the apartments must shake all day whenever a train passes (the trains stop running around midnight). Many questions: Who lives in the apartments? Don't they go crazy? Why are the apartments there? Did the apartment owners just not want to move after the train track plans were made? Are the rents dirt-cheap? Boggles the mind.

Spangle call Lilli line

Spangle call Lilli line at Aoyama Cay.

In the solar system of my favorite Japanese rock bands, a group named Spangle call Lilli line is a planet that has been shining especially brightly recently. I’ve been spending an enormous amount of time listening to their CDs.

The best way I can think of to describe Spangle call is that they are an experimental rock band. They abandon traditional song structures in favor of a free-flowing style that takes listeners to unexpected places. Yet their songs are enchanting, despite their complex structures, because of the gorgeous melodies out of which they are woven.

Listening to their songs is like swimming in the ocean and finding unusual shapes below, then realizing that the shapes make up something bigger, such as the ruins of a ship. Singer Kana Otsubo’s voice floats like a jellyfish over the sea of melodies.

It’s only recently that I was turned on to Spangle call’s music, and because they haven’t played live for more than a year, so they could focus on recording an album (which is to be released in April), I haven’t had the chance to see them perform. Until tonight.

They played at a place in western Tokyo called Aoyama Cay, which during weekdays is a restaurant and bar, and becomes a performance space on weekends. Several hundred people had come to the Cay, and though there were three other bands playing tonight, I think most had come to see Spangle call Lilli line. The audience members were mainly people in their twenties, and many had the serious air of young intellectuals – I wouldn’t have been surprised if there were lots of grad students and art students in the crowd (there also was an unusually high proportion of bespectacled people).

Spangle call didn’t start their show until about four hours into the event, and some of what preceded their act was, to be candid, to me like sonic torture, the worst sort of experimental music, ugly, self-absorbed and seemingly interminable. So it was a relief when Spangle call’s set started.

They were good, but they didn’t blow me away. All the bands I write about often in these pages (advantage Lucy, Orange Plankton, Plectrum, etc.) have made great albums, but when those bands play live there’s something fresh and wonderful above and beyond the quality of their recorded work. With Spangle call, I didn’t get that feeling. While their playing was awe-inspiringly good at times, it didn’t sound that different to me from what they had done in their albums. Which, to be fair, is still probably an amazing thing, considering how intricate their musical compositions can be. And they had been away from the stage for a while, so they were probably out of practice (one of the guitarists admitted this during the show, and in truth, I think their playing got much more intense as the night progressed). Also, my friend Dr. I was thunderstruck and speechless after the show, so maybe I was just in an ungenerous mood because of all the experimental noise I endured earlier in the evening. In any event, I’ll certainly buy their new album in April, and I will see the band again – they are too attractive a group not to.

To close this post by returning to the metaphor with which I started – don’t the lights above the stage in the photo look a bit planetary?

Akky Night (Plectrum & Bank$)

Akira Fujita, a.k.a. Akky, of Plectrum.

Tokyo rock band Plectrum’s Akira Fujita, a.k.a. Akky, is a guitarist of deep talent. A leftie who plays a black Gibson Les Paul, he is highly respected in the local music scene. Akky’s played, after all, for high-profile artists like Chara and Syrup 16g. In person, he’s friendly and laid back, if at times having rock musician idiosyncracies. For example, I asked him once who his guitar influences were, and Akky said, well, I can’t think of anyone really, when I hear good guitar passages on the radio I just try to play like them. Spoken like a genius.

Tonight was, in my mind at least, Akky night. At a show at the Shimokitazawa Club Que also featuring the Burs from Nagoya and SGT, Akky played the guitar for the third act, the Bank$, and the final act, Plectrum. It was one of those nights where I watched a fabulous player like Akky up close in a small club and wondered, why doesn’t he and his band rule the Japanese airwaves (rather than all the mediocre musicians that actually do)?

It was also one of those shows that partly answered the question, where do girls in Tokyo go on weekend nights? I can say that about 150 of them came to Shimokitazawa to watch a rock show at the Que. The audience was, no exaggeration, about 95% female.


Akky in Bank$.

I think many of those girls had come to see the Bank$’s and its singer, keyboard and manic stage orator, Yuhi Komiyama. A tall guy who always wears sunglasses during shows, Komiyama is one of those musicians who people might pay just to listen to talk, which he does a lot of, seemingly about whatever subject enters his head. But he’s also a great live musician who always gets the crowd going (many of the girls in the audience were hopping during Bank$’s more upbeat songs). In truth, a night like tonight featuring the Bank$ and Plectrum is a rare treat, because those two are two of the best live bands in Tokyo.

As I listened electrified, I thought about what formula, if any, creates a live band that is exceptional like these two group. Being outstanding musicians is one requirement. And having good songs. Also, being passionate. And having lots of experience. But there’s some unexplainable extra quality that seems to make the difference between being just a good band and being a band that makes people want to see you over and over. Whatever it is, Plectrum and Bank$ have it. If you are reading this and you live in Japan, please do try to catch these two bands. You won’t be disappointed.

d(^o^)b E-mail From Yumi d(^o^)b

I always like getting e-mails from Yumi of Orange Plankton not only because it's a good feeling to receive correspondence from the singer of a band I think is one of the best in Japan, but also because I enjoy looking at all the happy typographical creatures that populate her e-mails.

For example, in her latest message, in the subject line saying 'It's Yumi', there is this guy, smiling and giving the thumbs' up:

d(^0^)b

After 'Dear Ken' in the text is a shy creature,

(*'-'*)

her (?) cheeks blushing as if she met someone unexpectedly.

Where Yumi says she is psyched about a future show in Okinawa sit these twins,

(^o^)\(^-^)

with musical eighth-notes on either side of them (I don't know how to generate that symbol). Do they represent Yumi and Orange Plankton's pianist, Yuki?

And the e-mail closes with a happy but bashful creature:

(*^-^*)

Every e-mail of hers is filled with these shift-key spirits.

But don't think she is one of those mindless people who type little happy faces all day: no, in reality, she's a poet. If you can read Japanese, take a look at her song lyrics, full of vivid images that stay in the mind.

Nelson Great and Kyushu Night

Monday night was Kyushu night.

I went to the Chelsea Hotel in Shibuya to a show featuring Nelson Great, a trio from Kumamoto prefecture in Kyushu, the southernmost of Japan's four big islands. Dr. I, a friend who appears from time to time in these pages and is himself originally from Oita in Kyushu, had introduced me to the music of Nelson Great, one of his favorite groups. Due to work I barely made it to their show just as the first song was getting underway, but it was worth rushing to get there.

Nelson Great consists of two girls, a vocal/keyboard and a drummer, and a guy bassist. The singer, Takashima-san, is one of those petite Japanese women who despite her small frame is blessed with a strong voice that fills up halls. She sang with passion to fine ensemble playing that made me almost forget there were only three musical instruments. "Avant garde pop" is the way they describe their sound in their home page. By coincidence, they've played in Osaka with Orange Plankton, one of my faves and a band that I've written about numerous times in Japan Live. I liked Nelson Great's music so much I bought one of the CDs they brought to the show, and I chatted briefly with the singer, who said little on stage but was friendly in person.

Listening to his beloved Kyushu-based band, Dr. I apparently became nostalgic for Kyushu and its food, so we headed to a Kyushu food izakaya (bistro) a few blocks down, eating basashi (horse meat sashimi), mentaiko (spicy cod roe ), karashi renkon (Japanese mustard-filled lotus roots), all washed down with shochu... Ate too much in fact.