Japan Live

Ricarope at Club 251.  Deja vu? No, I've seen this band somewhere before. I remember the female singer with her hair going all over ...

Here are songs by the Japanese indies pop group Sloppy Joe (click on 'songs' on the left-hand column). I saw them once at the club...

Orang is a good Japanese guitar pop band, and here are MP3 files with two of their songs. One tune is mostly in Japanese, the other is in ...

I'm back in Tokyo after a two-week break in France. It was a great trip, but because I was away I missed a couple of rock shows here tha...

Orange Plankton (minus drummer Tamarou) at their home studio. I'm playing a minor role in the recording of Japanese piano pop quar...

Further to last post, in my quest to find out how Japanese bands come up with their names, I've made another discovery: why 'Vasallo...

As I was writing the last post on the Burger Nuds, I found in the Web a site that answered one of my minor Japanese rock questions: What in ...

Tonight is the sold-out final show of Burger Nuds , at the Shinjuku Loft. I made several half-hearted attempts to get tickets to the show...

Bassist Chiharu of the Clicks.  (Sorry about the bad quality of this photo - I didn't use a flash. But I wanted to post it anyway be...

Noodles singer Yoko in her watermelon outfit.  Wow. Vasallo Crab 75 . They made the rock club tonight as hot as a basement on a Tokyo su...

Orange Plankton  Tonight's show is piano pop quartet Orange Plankton , back in Tokyo after touring a number of Japanese cities. Th...

Shibuya Duo, where Cloudberry Jam played.  On Friday night in Tower Records Shibuya before heading to a club, I found the new album ...

Walking back home from Shibuya after the aborted club experience I talked about in the last post, I listened to Mission of Burma's song ...

Tonight I was planning to go to a DJ event featuring Yoshiharu Konishi, the creator of Pizzicato Five's music. Konishi is a big collecto...

I first became a fan of House Plan! around 1999, when they played from time to time in Shimokitazawa, a Tokyo neighborhood filled with music...

From left: Ishizaka of advantage Lucy, Acky Fujita of Plectrum, Aiko of Lucy and Taisuke Takata of Plectrum, in Seoul. Advantage Lucy...

The Red Cloth is a relatively new rock live house, located near the entertainment/red light district of Kabukichou in Shinjuku. To get there...

This is a journal about Tokyo's rock music scene. It begins on a good night as any to embark on this project: the evening before a show ...