Meanwhile, Elsewhere in Tokyo...

Soccer fans in Shimokitazawa, Tokyo.

Practically all of Japan's young population must have been watching the Asian Cup soccer final between Japan and China tonight, as I listened to Hartfield and others at the Club 251 in Shimokitazawa. No matter what, a lot of people would have watched the game. It's the final match after all. But the Chinese probably encouraged even more Japanese to watch the game by being absolute hooligans.

The Asian Cup games were held in China, and in matches leading up to the finals, whenever the Japanese played they were booed, jeered and cursed by the Chinese spectators. The Chinese even booed Japan's national anthem. I know there are historical issues between China and Japan, but that's no excuse for booing a country's national anthem at an international sporting event that your own country is hosting. That's utterly lacking in class.

The Chinese fans' boorish behavior even became a political issue between the two countries' governments. So, the Japanese fans were pumped up going into this match. And the Japanese stuck it to the Chinese -- a 3 to 1 victory.

At the same time as the soccer match was going on, somewhere else there was a big rock festival happening. In other words, people like me who had gone to Club 251 to see Hartfield and others were true rock geeks. We couldn't even be bothered to know the results of a soccer match with important implications for Japan's sense of national pride. And we couldn't join thousands of rock fans to see big-name musicians play at the festival. Instead we geeks had to catch yet another indies rock show.

10 Japan Pop Album Recommendations

For the past few weeks, I've written mainly about live rock shows in Tokyo. Tonight I look at a different subject -- good CDs by Japanese bands.

I think I run against the grain as a fan in the Tokyo music scene. Someone who likes a punk band like Moga the 5 Yen doesn't typically also listen to piano pop quartet Orange Plankton, as I do.

On the assumption that you also don't necessarily like every genre of rock/pop that I enjoy, I've arranged these CDs in order, the highest on the list (Orange Plankton) being the most mellow and pop, while the lowest (Moga) is the loudest and hardest rock. It's pretty arbitrary, but just to give you an idea.

I've chosen ten CDs by ten favorite bands. When I could, I picked shorter-length CDs such as EPs so you can get a feel for the music without getting a full album. I give links to Amazon Japan listings for these CDs . I think Amazon's the cheapest way to buy them outside of Japan, though I could be wrong. In Japan, most of these should be available in big record stores.

By the way, the only reason that the album cover photos are of different sizes is that I haven't figured out yet how to unify the sizes. It doesn't mean I like the Clicks the most because their album cover is published the biggest -- though I do like the Clicks.



MELLOW/POP



Mizu no Niwa (Fanciful Garden)

Orange Plankton's "Mizu no Niwa (Fanciful Garden)"
band home page
Japan Live

Piano pop music to relax and float (mentally) to. Listen to it for Yumi's emotion-filled singing, her voice somewhere between that of a girl and a grown woman, the elegant piano soloing by Yuki, and the swinging ensemble work.



Tiger Lily

Cecil's "Tiger Lily"

band home page
amazon

Cecil is a mystery musical unit that hardly ever performs live and counts as one of its members an illustrator. Their sentimental pop sound is as stylish as their art. Yukichi's singing is distinct -- a preciously cute and somewhat nasal sounding voice.


Advantage Lucy

Lucy van Pelt's "Advantage Lucy"
band home page
amazon
Japan Live

Everything advantage Lucy has recorded shines; every album, EP and single this guitar band has created is indispensable, to me. But just to get a sense of their sound, this early EP of theirs (when they were called Lucy van Pelt) is excellent.

It has perfect structure: an upbeat, engaging opening song, two mellow tunes with interesting instruments (a recorder and an accordion) on tracks two and four, another upbeat number in the middle, and to close the album, a song called 'Red Bicycle', one of the band's early classics.

I don't know how many times I've listened to Red Bicycle (many times). And I don't know how many times I've listened to just the intro of the song, one of the most dramatic and beautiful intros I've ever heard, starting with a scintillating guitar arpeggio.

Breathe

Vasallo Crab 75's "Breathe"

band home page
amazon
Japan Live

The sound of pop music's future. Guitars and an electric violin weave catchy melodies that explore fresh sonic territories.

Prom Night

Plectrum's "Prom Night"
band home page
amazon
Japan Live

Passionate, great rock 'n' roll that reminds you of the records that first made you crazy about rock. Everything from scorching rockers like the tunes Buffalo and Sundae Champion to pretty ballads such as Star Light.

Jiko-anji no hi

Burger Nuds' "Jiko Anji no Hi"
band home page
amazon
Japan Live

This maxi-single might soon be out of stock after the band's recent split-up; if you can't find it, try their greatest hits album instead. Tight rock with imagination. The songs seem to stretch much longer than their few minutes' duration, as the band uncovers interesting rock sound possibilities.

Come to Vivid Girl's Room

The Clicks' "Come to Vivid Girl's Room!"
band home page
amazon
Japan Live

A rock fun ride with three beauties as companions. This is simple rock 'n' roll in all of its amp-powered glory. Using rock as a backdrop, the girls have a kick singing about love and guys.

Fuzz Hill

Noodles' "Fuzz Hill"
band home page
amazon
Japan Live

Ingredients: A cup of Pop, a few tablespoons of grunge, a teaspoon of punk, four girls.

The result: the Noodles.

Evil EP

Art-School's "Evil"
band home page
amazon
Japan Live

What Nirvana might have been like if Kurt Cobain was born in Kyoto and went on to form a Japanese rock band. Heavy rock with nice melody hooks.

Moga's 'Faces' album

Moga The 5 Yen's "(the faces album)"
band home page
amazon

A lot of new punk rock bores me, maybe it's aging. Not Osaka's Moga, though. (If their music can be called punk at all.) Moga's songs seem to go down the familiar tracks of hard rock, but somewhere along the way they derail and take you to a place with an unexpected sound vista. (I'm not sure how to read the title of this album ((the characters are difficult)) so for now I'm calling it 'the faces album', sort of like the White album.)

LOUD/ROCK

Art-School Song Samples

If you go to Japanese rock band Art-School's home page now, a pop-up ad appears that shows a blue-gray photo of a recumbent babe with her eyes closed. On the ad are links to samples of Art-School songs from their upcoming EP, released by Toshiba EMI.

So, who is Art-School?

Who is Art-School?

Art-School is one of Japan's more fascinating rock bands. They're interesting in large part because of their singer, Riki Kinoshita.

Kinoshita, who writes all the band's songs, is artsy-fartsiness personified. He's got an artiste look: starving-musician skinny, with a bowl hair cut. (He's the guy on the very left on their home page.) In the lyrics sheets that come with Art-School's early CDs, in the space that other bands would devote to thanking their managers and friends and friends' bands, Kinoshita gives a shout-out to: Kurt Cobain. The French poet Rimbaud. The Japanese poet Chuya Nakahara. Martin Scorsese. Et cetera.

Kinoshita also keeps an irregular Internet diary, as do other Japanese rock musicians. But his diary is utterly, undeniably and clearly different from the others' diaries.

July 16th's diary entry, for example, is titled 'On Mozart's life, and addiction'. Kinoshita talks about how he bought a used book about Mozart and how he felt that Mozart's hopeless life situation led to his creation of beautiful music. This discussion then somehow changes direction, and Kinoshita writes about substance abuse and concludes that everyone has some sort of addiction or another.

July 20th's entry says that he wrote several short stories on his Mac during the day and now was writing his diary as he drank his 20th bottle of beer.

Indeed, in other parts of his diaries we learn that Kinoshita often drinks until he gets sick, in the grand tradition of alcoholic Japanese artists. Also that between the ages of 18 and 23, he lived alone in Tokyo without working or going to school, surviving on money his mother sent him, and avoiding boredom by watching one video movie a day.

Of course, this being a rock musician I'm talking about, maybe it's not that unusual that he's a drunk and was a slacker who lived off his parent's money. But you don't usually read about that in the diary section of a band's home page. (And if truth be known, the Japanese musicians I've come to know are generally serious people who don't drink to an excess and make a living by doing part-time jobs.)

Kinoshita in his diaries is also very open about revealing what sort of musicians he listens to. The list of his current favorite musicians was impressive -- I hadn't been paying attention to contemporary American and European music for a while when I saw it, so the names on his list were at best vaguely familiar, and many I hadn't heard of at all. I made a copy of the list and put it in my wallet to look for the CDs later at record stores. (The list mentions Death Cab for Cutie, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, Cat Power, the Fire Theft, Fountains of Wayne, among other names)

All of this wouldn't matter if Art-School's music was no good. But in fact, their music soars. The heavy rock melodies are always catchy, and Kinoshita sings with a gasping, naked passion that is pure and gripping. They share something with Nirvana, one of Kinoshita's idols. I just hope that Kinoshita, playing the part of the suffering artist to its conclusion, doesn't pull a Cobain on us.

Advantage Lucy Video on the Net

Here is a video of the great pop group advantage Lucy, performing live in the southern Japanese city of Fukuoka.

I haven't been able to connect to it at home because of inadequate bandwidth (? ... why did I get ADSL again?), but if you have no problem opening the home page, click on the icon at the bottom that says 'advantage Lucy'. The video should start.

The girl singer is Aiko, the guy playing acoustic guitar is Yoshiharu Ishizaka, and the guitarist with the Fender Jazz Master is Plectrum's Taisuke Takata (see post below), who has been playing at all of advantage Lucy's shows recently.

Fukuoka, if I may add, is a happening place. It's the biggest city in the island of Kyushu, and is famous for its street vendor food. Tonkotsu ramen (noodles in pig bone soup) and mentaiko (spicy cod roe) are famous local foods. You can also eat good basashi (horse sashimi) there. Yummm.

Plectrum, Live at the Que

Plectrum's singer, Taisuke Takata.

Plectrum is a Tokyo rock group consisting of four thirty-something guys. They've been around since the mid 90's. Scotland's Teenage Fan Club gave them their name ('plectrum' means guitar pick, in case you were wondering).

They write both hard rock and guitar pop tunes, most of which talk about youth (their latest album, for instance, is called 'Prom Night'). At their shows, playing these songs, they remind me of how raw, powerful and passionate rock music can be.


Plectrum

Tonight's show at the Shimokitazawa Que was like all of their gigs: filled with energy, humor, raw rock 'n roll and beautiful melodies. They opened with their song '30 Boy' from their latest album. It's about the band members reaching the third decade of their lives, and feeling that they are just getting started. A genuine rock anthem. When I was a teenager who listened mostly to punk rock, were there older bands I didn't know about that wrote great songs on what it's like to be over 30?


Akira Fujita, aka Acky, lead guitar.

Plectrum went to Seoul in March, and with their strong performances made believers out of an audience that had never heard of them before. In fact, 30 people in the Korean audience formed a fan club right afterwards. (They're going back to Seoul to play for a weekend in September. I'm tagging along.)

When Taisuke Takata sings, his mouth opening as big as a hippo's, the sound that comes out is sometimes the sweetest tenor. Meanwhile, Akira Fujita makes the sort of incredible noise you can make with an electric guitar (his trademark black Gibson Les Paul), if you only have an excess of talent like he does. They're a tight band, and you know they're having the greatest time on stage. If ever you have a chance to see them...

Honesty at the Que

Honesty

Honesty, a rock duo (they're looking for a drummer), played before Plectrum at the Que.

Their music was eclectic (rock, reggae and folk were some of the apparent influences), and their playing was accomplished. With just a guitar, bass and a sampler/drug machine, they made a lot of far-out noise.

Honesty was also on the eccentric side. They put on Billy Joel's song 'Honesty' before the show started, and hit the stage just as Joel crooned 'Ho---nestyeeee'. They set up a video on the stage that showed various random images like an animation of Pinocchio shedding tears. The big joke of the night was that the audience made the right choice to come to this show rather than Fuji Rock Festival to see Lou Reed, the Pixies and others.

Vasallo Crab 75 Song Samples

Vasallo Crab 75 is a Tokyo rock band that is starting to attract a following with its color-filled, funky, pop-rock musical creations. I wrote about their most recent, heat-inducing show here.

And you can listen a few songs from their latest album, Breathe, at this page. (Click on the link in Japanese under the words 'Rainbow Entertainment' toward the top of the page.) The first two, Vicious Circle and Yellow Bird, are especially nice and worth a listen.    

Orange Plankton Song Samples

Orange Plankton is an up-and-coming pop quartet originally from Osaka. Their music is soothing, and I often listen to them in the morning on the way to work as I attempt to face a new day. Orange Plankton's fourth album is due out on August 22. I'm buying it that day.

It's hard to tell what a song or band is like listening to a 30-second snippet of a song, but it's better than nothing, so here is a link to some song samples. If you can't read Japanese, find the lines above the three pictures that say 'ram', and click on them. You may need to download Real Player first -- click on the icon is on the same page to do that.

From the top, the first song, with the pink and green illustration, is 'sangatsu no koto (About March)' , the second is 'yoru no owari (End of Night), and the one at the bottom with a picture of the band members is 'Ai no Youna (Like Love)' [all translations mine], their latest single. 

    

Ricarope At Shimokitazawa Basement Bar

Ricarope with special guest. 

I've come back to see keyboardist Ricarope after having been to her show only a week ago. Her performance that night had deeply impressed me. I wish people that don't know anything about Japanese pop or have only heard worthless popular acts such as Morning Musume could see a musician like Ricarope play live. It will change their view of Japan's music, I think.

The show tonight was at the Basement Bar in Shimokitazawa in western Tokyo. 


Ricarope at the Basement Bar. 

Toy pianos are a big thing for Ricarope, and she propped one up in front of her on the stage, maybe as a talisman to help bring her a good performance.  If that's what the toy piano was for, it worked.

She started the performance playing a few passages on the toy piano, then did a couple of solo tunes, including one she claimed she made up on the spot. Ricarope is a fantastic pianist.  She shines on solo pieces and group numbers, both quiet ballads and the more rocking songs.

Maybe Ricarope's parents made her take piano lessons as a child, hoping she might become a classical pianist. But then she decided to do her own thing, and became a Keyboardist for a Rock Band. It seems to happen a lot in Japan, a cause of happiness for me. (Ricarope is her nickname, by the way. I don't know her real name.) 


Special guest -- Asako Toki, formerly of the Cymbals. 

Before Ricarope's show, which was the last of the night, there was a buzz in the air. Two people told me separately they'd heard that Asako Toki would be performing as a special guest for Ricarope. This was an exciting development.

Toki was the singer for a Japanese pop band called the Cymbals, which split up last year. They were once one of my favorite bands, and I still enjoy their work, especially the early stuff before they joined a major label. (Not that I have anything against major record labels. Just that in their case their major label albums seem more uneven and contain fluff like spoken-word parts, compared with their indies-era records.)

Anyway, Toki is one of the Beautiful People of the Japanese indies pop world, and having her show up unexpectedly at a small club is comparable to, say, going to your local jazz club and Norah Jones popping in for a surprise appearance. That may be stretching things, but it was certainly exciting to see Toki up close and to hear her soft, sweet singing.

The Aprils at the Basement Bar

The Aprils' keyboardist. 

In the audience at tonight's Basement Bar show was Edgar Franz, a German resident of Japan who leads a band in Tokyo called Miniskirt. If you think I sound too heavily involved in the Japanese music scene, you ought to talk to Edgar sometime. He's a font of Japanese music knowledge. If he wrote a book describing what it's like to be a foreigner in a band that performs in genuine Tokyo rock clubs, I'd certainly buy and read it.

Edgar had come to see the Aprils, one of the band playing before Ricarope tonight.  (Please open that Aprils link to their home page, by the way. It's very cool.) He said their music was the music of the future, of the 21st Century. They weren't like a lot of other Tokyo bands, whose music was still basically stuck in the 1980's.

And indeed, seeing their show I felt that this band was a new thing. On either side of the stage were two monitors showing computer graphics videos of the songs that played at the same time as they were being performed live. They had a percussionist in addition to a drummer, and a guy who spent most of his time dancing. They were colorful: Edgar said that a stylist had come in this morning to spruce them up, though I didn't independently verify this. They were definitely born in the 80's.

I like this band and would like to see them again. The only thing that got to me about the Aprils was that despite the pleasantness of their music and look, they seemed light-weight. I wasn't sure whether any of their songs would stick in my mind. Being able to create songs that do might be something that comes only with time.



The Aprils' percussionist. 

PolyABC at the Basement Bar

PolyABC. 

I went to the Basement Bar show not only because I wanted to see Ricarope again, but also because I was interested in catching polyABC's show there that night.  I'd been to one of their shows before, and I liked a song they contributed to a Various Artists album called Killermont Street 2001. (If I can digress here, that album is a special one for me, because it's where I first heard advantage Lucy, my favorite Japanese band. My J-pop craze really got started when I heard in that album a version of their song "Chikyu-" ((in English, "Earth")) that starts with a recording of children playing in a park, followed by a beautiful acoustic guitar part. Years after I first heard it, it's still one of the songs I like most in the world.)

PolyABC includes Umu, who is also the bassist for House Plan and the Bank$. He's a busy guy.

In the end, my conclusion was that this band plays with abundant energy and has its moments but not much of their music leaves a strong impression. That was what I felt last time I saw them too.    

House Lights/Plan at Shinjuku Loft

House Lights at the Shinjuku Loft. 

The HOUSE LIGHTS and HOUSE PLAN are in the house tonight at the Shinjuku Loft.

I went to this legendary Tokyo rock club to see the Japanese rock band House Plan. As I've written before, they are a Japanese rock band I liked a lot in the late 90's, but the band disappeared from sight for a few years, only to re-emerge last year with a different member line-up.

By coincidence, appearing the same evening at the club was the House Lights of the U.S., playing the third of their fourth show on their Tokyo tour. I'd seen them at their first show at the Red Cloth, when I also had gone to see a different band (Orang). They were good that night, and they rocked tonight too. 


House Lights. 

House Lights/Plan at Shinjuku Loft 2

Afterpilot at the Shinjuku Loft.  

House Plan (of Japan) played around the mid-point of the event, and the House Lights were up last. Some of the other groups that played were mediocre. Listening to them felt like walking through a desert. Or a trail with thorny bushes.

For example, there was an all-girl noise rock trio, who weren't bad, but had zero stage presence. Throughout the show, two foreigner girls danced like crazy to the tunes. I thought the two must either have a few screws loose or be on drugs, because it wasn't that type of music that pushed people to shake their body.  They must have been pals with the band. I ended up being more amused by the dancers than the trio on stage.

I suppose you always judge your favorite bands much more favorably than some band you never heard of before, but even given that, tonight's show made me feel that House Plan is a superior band live. Their music mixes together hard rock and grunge with a tea spoon of punk and a pinch of heavy metal, but for all that, there's a lot of clarity to their sound. I remember being struck with their aggressive but clean sound when I saw them in the 90's.

The singer, Gender, is fun to watch on stage. As he finishes one singing part with his high-pitched voice, and as the music becomes more frenzied and loud, Gender gets a look on his face like you'd see on a teen-ager as he skateboards down a slope and hits top speed.

I didn't get any good photos of House Plan. Next time. They are releasing a new album in September, which is something for me to be excited about.

If some of the standing through mediocre bands' sets was no fun, it ended up being worth it because I found a local band that plays enjoyably straightforward hard rock: afterpilot. Their drummer plays drums for the Bank$, while House Plan's bassist is the bass for Bank$. So, two out of the Bank$'s three support musicians were at the Loft tonight.

Speaking of which, the Bank$ just released their first album. It's a nice one. More on it some other time.

China Rock 'n' Roll Photos

Taking a breather from my usual reporting on JAPAN's rock scene to point out to you some cool rock photos from CHINA, in the photoblog 22catcher.com. The pictures of the scuffle between the stage-divers and the black t-shirted staffers are especially amusing.

Check out the rest of the site too. It has excellent photos of everyday life in China, in all its incredible variety.

The House Lights in Tokyo

The House Lights at the Red Cloth. 
 
A couple of bands that I liked were playing last night at the Shinjuku Red Cloth to welcome the House Lights, a U.S. band I hadn't heard of before from Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, at the start of a one-week Tokyo tour. It was an exciting evening, and the show made me think about the difference between American and Japanese rock 'n' roll.


The House Lights. 
 
I thought about this because the House Lights took command of the stage from their first note, in a way I don't see many Japanese bands do, at least not in that way. These guy were basically nerds from Small Town, U.S.A., but they personified what Iggy Pop must have meant when he sang Raw Power.
 
It felt like the difference between Major League baseball and its Japanese counterpart. Or, to pile on the analogies, a steak dinner versus sushi.
 
Why was there this difference?
 
First, I thought, the Americans are simply bigger. They take up more space on the stage, and there's more movement when they strut around on it. That also makes their guitars look smaller, like toys tossed around by giants. (I mean, take a look at the bassist below...)
 
Second, I assume that their being a U.S. band means that they tour around a lot in the U.S., playing in hick bars where no one's ever heard of them. They need to perform in a way that makes the audience boogie rather than boo (or throw bottles). A lot of Japanese bands, on the other hand, can get by ok in Tokyo alone, the city having such an amazing concentration of clubs.
 
Third, rock music was invented in the U.S.
 
So what?, you might say. There are, it is true, many, many great bands from outside of the U.S. But I think when Americans form a band, they get a big head-start because of the reservior of rock 'n' roll knowledge all around them, and they grow from there.
 
All of which isn't to say that, god forbid, Japanese rock is somehow lacking. No. Fireworks go off every night on stage in Tokyo clubs. But there was something confident, powerful and electric in the way this American band played, which was good to see. 


The House Lights' bassist.