Salt Water Taffy & Vasallo Crab 75 At Zher The Zoo

Sometimes after a long day at work I debate with myself about whether I really want to go to a rock show somewhere in Tokyo. Is it worth spending the whole evening in some smoke-filled basement where the music might not even be that good? Often the 'go home' arguments wins out, and I slither back to the comfortable cocoon of my apartment. But other times I decide to go to the club in spite of being tired, and become glad I did because I feel regenerated at the end of evening. That was the case on Thursday night.

The chief draws of the show at the Yoyogi Zher The Zhoo were the bands Vasallo Crab 75 and Salt Water Taffy. The drummer of the latter moved to the former, but the two remain friendly with each other, and funnily enough, I found out later I wrote about a show featuring the two at almost the very beginning of this journal.

Salt Water Taffy is a quartet that consists of a female vocalist/guitarist and drummer, and a guy guitarist and bassist, and play shoegazer-influenced indie rock. The girl singer, dressed in a puffy red skirt with black dots that made her look like a ladybug or a strawberry, sang softly as if her voice was just another instrument in the ensemble rather than the focus of the performance, and it created a good contrast to the heavy sounds of the lead guitar and bass. Many Japanese kids seem to have a gift for coming up with attractive melodies and hooks (the same way they are often master cartoon illustrators), and this was certainly the case with Salt Water Taffy.

Of Vasallo Crab 75 I've written a lot over the years, but to repeat, they are one of the best live bands I've seen in Tokyo. It had been several months since I last saw them and they seemed to have gotten even better.

They combine rock with disco and funk, and the violinist Kawabe even breaks out Bach solos once in a while. Vasallo Crab 75 is a gathering of amazing musicians who seem to genuinely get along, and that comes through to the audience during their gigs. They are due to release a new album around May.

***

At the start of the evening my body felt stiff, like I was fossilized, but as the night progressed I felt the hardness melt, so that by the end I was light and exuberant, ready to dive into the limitless possibilities of music and art. That feeling is what makes me keep going to shows.


Vasallo Crab 75

Rightround Column: Moga The Y5

J-punk has been my thing recently: I've been listening to a lot of Ging Nang Boyz, Gauze (after reading this in Tokyo Damage Report), a J-Psychobilly compilation album called Far East Evils, punker-turned-novelist Machida Machizou's old work, etc. Another album whose play count has been shooting up in my iTunes library is So no Gunjyou, the new work by poetic, Japanese-language-only, quasi-emo quartet Moga The Y5, a longtime favorite group of mine. My latest rightround column is about Moga The Y5, their label Pizza of Death Records, and about the fact that punkers get older too.

Yuyake Lamp At Heaven's Door

The Heaven's Door in Sangenjyaya is known as a hardcore club, its bathroom walls coated with layers of graffiti, and its employees covered with tattoos. So it was a surprise that it was where mellow piano pop group Yuyake Lamp did their first gig of the year.

Yuyake Lamp, which is Orange Plankton minus pianist Yuki, is due to release their first single in March, and several video cameras filmed their show, maybe for a promotion video. Neither Orange Plankton nor Yuyake Lamp ever exploded in popularity, but things may be looking up for them in 2007: several of their songs have been used in TV commercials, and one tune is being played as background music at ski slopes across Japan. A movie director is producing Yuyake Lamp's single--no doubt he's one of those of us who became smitten by the group's sublime melodies and vocalist Yumi's singing, which is soft, but as intensely emotional as any hardcore singer that headlines the Heaven's Door.

Foreign Legion Of Italian Music Reviewers

For reasons I'm not sure of, I've been asked to review independent Italian music, a genre I know nothing about. But when I admitted my total ignorance to my contact person, a guy named Renzo, he replied, it doesn't matter, we want your feelings as a non-Italian listener, it's fine if you give us slashing criticism or enthusiastic praise, just "say the truth, ever and ever".

OK. I could handle that. I told Renzo I'll try it.

A few days later I received the album Odi Profanum Vulgus Et Arceo by the female artist Miss Violetta Beauregarde. The description that came with the album said Miss Violetta got into electronic punk because she was tired of all the pretentious techno-music maestros and wanted to show the world she could make equally good stuff by twisting knobs and punching buttons, without any training. It also said she throws lamb heads at her live show audiences. Interesting...

My 100-word review is here. To sum it up, this wasn't an album I would pay for, but it did grow on me and I came to like many parts of it. My attitude is, you might as well try listening to all sorts of music, dive into any sea of sound. What could go wrong? It's music, not a mined harbor.

Renzo kindly translated the review into elegant-sounding Italian on the website Rockit: "Ma poi ho capito che la signorina Urlatrice crea un interessante mondo sonoro – tetro, arido, inumano, grigio ..." etc. (You can read the original review in English if you scroll downa bit.) And the name of the series of reviews by me and the other foreign writers will be Legionestraniera, meaning we're the Foreign Legion of Music Reviewers. Bravo!

Pizzicato Five Rediscovered--Visually

I've long been a lukewarm fan of Pizzicato Five, in that I like a lot of their songs but not with a boiling passion. But then the other day while surfing YouTube I found several P5 music videos, and after watching them I suddenly understood why the group appeals to so many people. While their neo-60's hipster pop music is lovely in itself, what sets P5 apart is the whole package: fashion, visuals & art, attitude, in addition to the invariably catchy melodies. This became clear the instant I clicked play on the first YouTube P5 video I found.

It shouldn't have surprised me that Pizzicato Five's videos are sparkling gems, since one of the joys I've gotten out of buying their CDs is looking at the quality artwork and photos that came with discs, portraying Maki Nomiya and Yasuharu Konishi as stylish 1960's jet-setters, and if their CD pictures are so artsy and imaginative then you'd expect good music videos too. But I've never been a big music video fan, so never thought to check out P5's videos.

What happy results a few minutes of aimless wandering on YouTube can bring! I first found a video of the upbeat song "Twiggy Twiggy", and loved it. Such cute dance moves! They're a mix of vogue and the Twist. What lovely art, with the faded black and white picture and the random appearance of slogans on the screen saying things like "pizzicato five; in action"... And what's the deal with the blank-faced guy in the back taking it all in?

I also liked this video of "Playboy Playgirl" with a bleached blond Nomiya and a boyfriend drinking champagne and dancing at some super-ritzy party in what looks like the inside of a castle...

But my favorite was the video of "Such A Beautiful Girl Like You". The song is one of the P5 tunes I like the most to start with--it has a great melody, and the lyrics with its main line, "Why is such a beautiful girl like you crying?/There isn't a girl as beautiful as you anywhere", are simple but evoke something like a scene out of a movie. The video doesn't take anything away from the song, and adds delightful art.

The total impact of the art exceeds the sum of its parts: for example, Nomiya's blond hair, red sweater, white mini-skirt, and the white room with a white bed and white chair are each fairly ordinary, but all together they are striking.

And then there's that random street corner and curving road that Nomiya walks across. The whole feel of the scene fits perfectly with the image of the video: the bright white building in the corner, the overcast sky, the European feel of the street... It's brimming with classiness.

If you watched P5 videos in real-time when they came on TV none of what I've been writing about above might seem like anything new, but for me, who saw these videos for the first time, they're a grand discovery. For the benefit of people who've never seen the videos, here's "Such A Beautiful Girl Like You" (at least, until YouTube takes it down):

More Fliers, More Flyers...

Nothing extraordinary, no Toulouse-Lautrec posters, but here are a few event fliers that caught my eye at a recent show, beginning with this rather un-P.C. illustration above (do those stairs lead to the Basement Bar? Hmm, don't remember that entrance, maybe it's a side door...).



Fuzzy, pastel Tokyo Tower...

Flying oreo cookies, dancing licorice twists, and a path leading up to a gingerbread house...



Weird tree against a blue-gray sky...

And is that the Chinese animal that eats your dreams?

Texas Pandaa, Contrary Parade At Basement Bar

Are there pandas in Texas?

If so, do they wear ten-gallon hats and prospect for oil?

Or, is a 'pandaa' something different from a panda?

Those are some of the questions that might come up when pondering the name of a brilliant Tokyo band named texas pandaa, who I saw Friday night at the Shimokitazawa Basement Bar.

Sometimes it's good to have a weird band name, which many many bands in Japan do, because it stays in your mind. That was the case when I last saw texas panda three years ago: their name was imprinted in my brain, though that was also because these performing pandas were wonderful live.

I seemed to remember them being hyper and sorta punk, but Friday night they were clearly more in the shoegazer camp, a bit like My Bloody Valentine, except instead of Kevin and Bilinda there were two Japanese girls on vocals. The guitar girl is the main singer while the bass gal mostly does harmonies, and between on stage is the lead guitar guy (they're a two-girl, two-guy band). Most of the songs started quiet, and built up in intensity to final feedback-packed explosions. They were understated between songs, in the classic tradition of the shoe-gazing movement, but their music was in-my-face in a dazzling way: this was one of the better shows I've seen in a while.

What I need to do next is listen to a CD by these Lone Star State b&w bears. I see a trip to Tower Records Shibuya in the near future...


Contrary Parade

I found out about this event because I got an e-mail from Satoshi Iwai, drummer for Contrary Parade of Osaka, saying they are coming to Tokyo to do a show, do I want to go? Yes!, I replied immediately--I loved this piano pop quartet's last gig in Tokyo (my report here).

They were great again at this show; they did a couple of new songs that I hope they will release on CD soon. They also said they are on a compilation album with a bunch of other Osaka bands, with all the other groups besides Contrary Parade being hard-core, and a book-CD featuring their music is coming out in March. As a compilation nut, both of these sounded like things I should check out. You can sample Contrary Parade's songs on JapanFiles.com.

One thing, though, I need to at some point ask Contrary Parade's Iwai-san: how did he end up in a band with three female members?

Hazel Nuts Chocolate At The Que

Hazel Nuts Chocolate wasn't quite what I expected.

The same way that, say, a historical site looks different in real life from what you'd imagined, favorite musicians I see for the first time often bely my expectations. This was the case with Hazel Nuts Chocolate, the electronic pop unit of a girl nick-named Yuppa. I've been a fan of hers for a while but had never seen her play live, and Friday night's show at the Que was her first in a year.

From the photos I'd seen of her and the often kid-TV-show-like sound of her music, I expected Yuppa to be some sort of bubbly, petite nymph. But the actual Yuppa, coming on the stage wearing a silky, orange-gold gown and jeans, was fairly tall and slender. Her two albums , stuffed full of bright, picture book illustrations (her bio says she studied children's literature in school) and songs about topics like witches, her hat collection and cooking vegetable soup for a boyfriend, give her the persona of a visitor from a parallel, Peter Rabbit universe. In reality, she talks like an ordinary Japanese girl, using the currently popular expressions, about things like the Nintendo Wii.

She played the Wii with her family over New Year's, and exclaimed that anyone, including her parents, can have fun playing it, and showed the audience how her family moved their arms wildly playing the bowling game. Swinging her own arm, she then went into one of her best songs, "Swing Life".

Rightround Column: Anime Visual Unit Fice

My first rightround column of the year is on Fice, the "Anime Visual Performance Unit" comprising Fire and Ice, a charming duo of perfectly human-like androids. Fice's otaku fans do dances with names like O.A.D. (short for 'over-action dolphin') for five to six hours a night.

Compilation Albums (LOVE Them) 2

A while back I wrote about my big love for indie compilation albums--one of the joys of being a music fan is finding a great song by a band I've never heard of in a compilation CD, tracking them down on the Web, and, a few weeks or months later, seeing them play live. This is how I discovered a lot of favorite groups (off the top of my head: The Kitchen Gorilla, Jimmy Pops, Contrary Parade, Mix Market, etc. etc.).

Here are a few other multi-artist albums I've enjoyed recently:



Galaxie 500 #Sugar; #Plum; #Fairy

This three-part compilation CD series is extraordinary: in a market where full-length albums usually sell for more than 2000 yen (US$20+), each of these CDs only cost 500 yen (that is, under five bucks). But, in spite of that low price tag, the music featured in this series uniformly sound brilliant and innovative. 'You Get What You Pay For' doesn't apply in this case.

Included are several indie artists I know, including Shugo Tokumaru, Apartment and 4 Bonjour's Parties, but lots of shoegazer, indie pop, psychedelia, electronica and other genre groups that are new to me; of those, I especially liked the bands Hot Fudge Sundae, Muffin (the Japanese food infatuation continues...) and Early Bird.

The compilation series is released by Finderpop Label, who also produce CDs by Apartment. I don't know how they can afford to make the CDs only 500 yen each--are they trying to subvert capitalism in the music industry? They've only released 500 copies of each installation, so if you are interested, get them at Amazon Japan before they run out.

* One of the CDs available here (maybe).


Easy Living vol. 1

This compilation, released by a label called Philia Records, features mellow-out guitar pop, neo-acoustic, soft rock-type songs. It's probably not for everyone: there's nothing even remotely heavy or hardcore about this collection. If you are the sort of person who spends days off sipping tea at home and glancing through coffee table art books, this CD might be for you--it will make good background music. I like the contributions by margarets hope, roly poly rag bear, Kobayashi Shino and frenesi. Easy Living also contains the only recorded track I know of by the now-defunct duo Harum (formerly Snow Ball), a nice tune called "Answer Song" I listened to so much for a time that it became sort of a personal soundtrack of the 2006 autumn season.

* CD available here.

GOOD GIRLS DON'T! XXXTRA

K.O.G.A. Records, which is behind this compilation, might be my favorite indie label in the world. It's known most of all for its fab girl-rock/punk groups, though it also has great guy bands (including label owner Mr. Koga's own band Rocket K), and its extensive catalogue contains many treasures, including the debut albums of Luminous Orange and Macdonald Duck Eclair.

This collection, a follow-up to the also excellent GOOD GIRLS DON'T, contains new songs by polyABC, Mix Market, Macdonald Duck Eclair, a cute new tune by Jimmy Pops called "C-H-O-C-O-L-A-T-E" that I play all the time on Japan Live Radio ('Let's go to the supermarket/to buy a pound of chocolate/your favorite one/do you like bitter or sweet/less or more cacao/as you like it...C,H,O,C,O, Chocolate'), and many more gems, including the last The Clicks song I know of before they quit, called "Cast A Spell".

* CD available here.

Sensuous Days (Cornelius)

For at least a week, Cornelius' Sensuous was the best-selling Japanese music CD at the huge Tower Records Shibuya store. When he did a free gig at the Apple Store in Ginza, people started lining up in the morning for a 7PM event, and the line was closed at 4PM. His show at the Ebisu Liquid Room, one of Tokyo's biggest venues, is already sold out, even though it's in March. The new album was a constant topic of conversation among musicians here, before and after its release.

In short, the release of Cornelius' first album in five years has been a genuine Event in Tokyo's music scene, the likes of which haven't been seen for some time. It makes me proud to be a Tokyoite--even considering Cornelius' fame, musical track record (extending to Flipper's Guitar days) and his long sabbatical, it's remarkable that so many people have embraced an album like Sensuous, which isn't very commercially minded (none of its 12 tracks ever had a chance of landing on the Top 40 hit charts) and is instead innovative in a risk-taking way.

I've read a number of mixed to negative English reviews of Sensuous (for example, here, here and here), which, in summary, say that the album's songs are too repetitive, dry, self-absorbed; long for the Cornelius of Fantasma days; but conclude Sensuous is still worth listening to because Cornelius is Cornelius.

On this, I'm a contrarian--I think Sensuous is the best Japanese album of 2006. From the first listen, I've been struck by its gentle, emotional quality. There's a fatherly feel to some of its compositions--a judgment that is probably influenced by reports that Keigo Oyamada (a.k.a. Cornelius) is a devoted dad in real life. The bittersweet chord progressions of a guitar in the title track, for example, evoke for me the way time flows in a different way when you are bringing up a young child--moments are loaded with both hope and sadness about the passage of time. That might not be what was on Cornelius' mind as he composed this, or he might have been thinking purely in terms of how notes fit together--the point, I think, is that this is a composition that can make you visualize, which isn't all that common a thing. This song in itself makes Sensuous a good album.

Some songs in the album do develop slowly through repeated phrases, and that might not make this the perfect soundtrack to, say, a midnight drive (the songs 'Fit Song', 'Breezin'', and 'Wataridori', for instance). But, as a whole, Sensuous holds together well--the energetic rock of 'Gum' follows the hypnotic 'Wataridori', for example, and the final three song sequence, starting with the Eno-like synth sound and goofy bells of 'Like a Rolling Stone', followed by the catchy single 'Music', and brought to a close with a sweet cover of 'Sleep Warm', is a brilliant finale to the album. It also sounds spectacular--it's a true treat for the ears.

I sometimes question Japanese musical tastes when I listen to the most popular acts, but not this time--give us more like this!

***

By the way, Happy New Year!

Supersnazz's Sweat Box

Is the ‘cover album’ a Japanese thing?

That’s what I’ve been trying to figure out as I listen to Supersnazz’s Sweat Box, an album that consists entirely of Supersnazz playing other musicians’ songs. I’ve seen other Japanese bands do cover albums too—the Automatics’ Good Melodies is one—but I can’t think of an American or European act that tries it. Maybe there are copyright issues.

When Japanese musicians make cover albums, their aim is to celebrate and pay homage to their beloved and be-influenced music. But there are also two hidden agenda items: one is to show off their good, eclectic taste via their selection of tunes. The other is to display their musical creativity by arranging familiar songs in new and engaging ways.

On the first agenda, Sweat Box does the trick. Half of the songs the rock quartet plays are by what might be called the Punk Rock Canon of bands: Supersnazz covers X’s “Year 1”, the Replacements’ “Goddamn Job”, X-Ray Spex’s “I Live Off You” and the Dictators’ “Stay With Me” (and the Rolling Stones’ “Brown Sugar” and “Happy”, which were recorded before the punk era, but the Stones influenced a lot of punkers, so they count). The other half of the tunes, however, is a surprise: they cover very un-punk numbers like Captain & Tennille’s “Love Will Keep Us Together”, Mickey & Silvia’s “No Good Lover”, and even the Shirelles’ “Will You Love Me Tomorrow”! The selections are a fun glimpse into the unexpected favorite music of a band that writes almost exclusively hard rock of grunge-type tunes themselves.

As for arranging the songs in their own, unique way—yes, Supersnazz does that (they make “Love Will Keep Us Together” sound much more dark and heavy than the original, for example), but the really remarkable thing is, whether they are covering X or CCR or Captain & Tennille, they take it at a grab-you-by-the-collar intensity that old Supersnazz fans are familiar with from great albums like Diode City. (It cracked me up the first time I listened to the album that they even did a heavy rock treatment of the Shirelles.) Supersnazz doesn’t always get their tongue and teeth completely around the English lyrics of their cover tunes, but they more than make up for that with their consistent, energetic delivery. One of my favorite moments in Sweat Box is in “No Good Lover”, where guitarist Marky sings Mickey’s part and vocalist Spike takes Silvia. Marky starts the duet with a hyper and aggressive rendition of Mickey’s lines, in a tolerable cover, but then Spike comes on, and though also singing in a rocking way, she make it more playful, shooting up and down octaves, in a delightful performance that’s as if she’s saying, step aside, I’m Supersnazz’s singer.

Sweat Box is like Supersnazz inviting you into their house to take a peek at their record collection and pulling out a few favorite LPs, but rather than putting them on their stereo, they strum out their own versions. Nothing beats listening to a great, original song, but this isn’t bad at all either.

Rightround Column: Fishermen Rockers Gyoko

This month's rightround.com column is on Run-D.M.C.-loving fishermen rockers Gyoko. I still haven't had a chance to see them live, but when I do I'm going to stand at the front with chopsticks and a bowl of soy sauce at the ready for the finale...

Budou Grape & Extraterrestrial Friends In Yoyogi

I went to the Yoyogi Zher The Zoo on Saturday night to see Budou Grape, a quintet from Nagoya that came highly recommended by Steve of JapanFiles, and discovered the evening to be a pageant of weird, fun groups that I didn't know about.



Up first was Souchi Megane, which consisted of a skinny guy surrounded by keyboards pumping out 80's-sounding synth disco music, and his fleshier, bowl-cut-hair partner, who hopped around stage doing dance routines while singing. In one of those only-in-Japanese-live-show things, about a dozen mainly-girl fans in the first two rows did the same dance moves as the singer (for example, making a circle with the thumb and forefinger to represent glasses, like in the picture above). I wasn't sure whether the gay feel that permeated the show was real or accidental, and whether the gal fans were into that or just liked the music and the cuteness.

Band #2 was Kasei Soda (meaning 'Mars Soda'), and they went for the SF-anime-look, with the singer wearing high-tech military goggles and the girl lead guitarist receiving galactic transmissions via her big white headphones with a protruding antenna. The singer said they were from the planet of Neo-Nagoya and were here to teach all the country bumpkins about rock 'n' roll. For all that, their music was straightforward rock, though with lots of (cosmic?) energy.



Budou Grap, the band I came to see, came on next, wearing matching yellow-orange shirts and polka dot ties. Budou Grape ('budou' means grape too--don't ask me what their name means, because I don't know) is made of five people all stage-named Budou, sort of like the Ramones. They have a good sound: the three guy Budous, Nagai, Matsui and Taichi, pound out heavy, rocking bass-drum-guitar parts, while the two Budou girls, keyboardist Midori and singer Quminco, add a cute sweetness to the music. Quminco is said to work as a model when not singing grape rock, and seemed to have several die-hard fans, one of whom took flash photos of her throughout the gig. Budou Grape said they're also from Neo-Nagoya.

I'd seen the fourth band Hi-5 a couple of years ago, and they were as good as I remembered them--they're like a more punk New Order with a teaspoon of funk mixed in. The trio said they were from, not Neo-Nagoya, but Neo-Kita-Kyushu, which must be a gritty, industrial city, going by its name. I felt Hi-5 would make it much bigger if they were anywhere in the world but hyper-competitive Tokyo--I really feel they would attract fans in big cities in the U.S., say.

I should have, but didn't, see the last band Cosmic Airplane, who organized the event, because I was musically stuffed full by the fourth group of the night. They passed out a DVD of one of their music videos, though, so I can watch it and regret not seeing them if they are good.

***

Most of the crazy, costume-wearing, flashy bands seem to come from Osaka or Nagoya (...excuse me, Neo-Nagoya) rather than Tokyo, where musicians for the most part seem plainly dressed in T-shirts and jeans. Maybe it's that Tokyoites have grown complacent when it comes to stage presentation since they're at the center of Japan's music universe and no one else is dressing crazily, whereas those in the regional cities feel a psychological need to stand out, or, they're afraid, they would slip back into the comfortable dullness of their provincial origins. Well, in any event, that's my hypothesis.

Why Aren't Waffles Selling Like Hot Cakes?

Here is the story of my life as a music fan: I become ecstatic about a band after seeing their show; time passes, and I begin to wonder whether they were quite as good as I remembered; I see the band again and feel redeemed—they exceed my estimations of them in my shifty memory; repeat this cycle endlessly, without learning.

This was the case when I went to see waffles at the O-West in Shibuya a couple of weeks back: though a fan of theirs, I hadn’t been to their shows in a while, and had forgotten how wonderful they can be live. But seeing them, I was reminded: there aren’t many bands that play as joyfully as this pop quartet, the members all wearing genuine-looking smiles when playing the first few songs, and their singer Kyoko Ono is a talent, an owner of a beautiful voice who uses it to pour out emotion.

I wondered why they’ve never made it really big. Japanese hit charts are littered with songs that are less original and gorgeous than theirs. Are they too conventionally good, without scandalous elements, new fashions, or something exceptional (like, say, a lead guitar genius)? Who knows. One thing I did notice though was that the band played a couple of great old songs, “Tsugi no Hikari” and “Tokyo” (because this was the first stop of a multi-city tour), and going back and listening to those songs later they seemed just as good as the material from their latest album, Kimi no Mahou (‘Your Magic’), as if time has stood still. Does this show they are intent on keeping a certain sound, or are they being too averse to exploring new musical territories? I’m not sure, and in any case I do like Kimi no Mahou.

***

The event was called Lady, and featured two other female vocalist units, Quinka, with a Yawn and Furukawa Momoko, with whom waffles are touring, and also guest-starred advantage Lucy (who played a couple of new, good tunes). All were great, it was a satisfying evening, but I was particularly interested in the eccentrically named Quinka, with a Yawn, a one-woman unit of a keyboardist/vocalist who creates trippy, imagistic music by recording bells and other sounds on stage, looping them, and adding more sounds until they become a multi-layered backing track for her keyboard and voice (there must be a word for this that I don’t know…).

***

If you read Japanese, there's a report of this event here.

Rightround Column: Pico Pico Pop

My latest monthly column on rightround.com is paean to pico pico pop, a mini-mini-essay on the music of bands I've recently become enamored of, like Macdonald Duck Eclair and YMCK.

Supersnazz, Solo Live At The Shelter

Sixteen years.

That's a long time, and that's the number of years Supersnazz has been playing.

At their solo show at the Shimokitazawa Shelter, vocalist Spike said some of you must have been little babies when Supersnazz started (after which she joked she too was only two years old at the beginning).

And, looking at the chain-smoking, biker-jacket-and-side-striped-T-shirt- wearing crowd that packed the Shelter, it didn't seem likely that many of these fans were there at the start a decade and a half ago.

Over the years as old fans departed new ones must have boarded the Supersnazz train: I too only found out about this great quartet this year. But the crowd seemed to know all the old songs, punching their fists in the air at the intros (like in the photo above) and toasting with their cups of beer.

I don't know how many years more they can keep it up, but, I hope, it's many.

Fliers, Yucca, Lodge

Back by popular (?) demand, here are cool fliers from a recent show featuring Yucca and Lodge. The event was organized by a fanzine called Supernova!, whose latest issue's cover features a bikini lady carrying a red lightning bestriding a yellow Lamborghini Countach...



If I knew this event is anything like the illustration, I'd definitely go see it.


Kicking it among the ginkgo leaves....



Kicking it under the aurora...

Pink-skinned Bad Boys...



Nice, colorful illustration.

This is a good, simple design.



Nice, yellow-tinted photo. Wonder what that structure is though?


Good, stylized green live shot.



And a stylized purple-red live shot (I think?).


I liked the design of this 'Home Sweet' 69 flier.

***

tight --adj 1 closely held, drawn, fastened, fitting, etc. ...

The dictionary gives several definitions for the word 'tight', but it doesn't have one for when people say this or that group is TIGHT. Yet it's not too rare a thing; a tight band is something that people know when they see it, a combination of experience, skills, confidence, and certain unexplainable factors. A tight band is thrilling to discover, and makes all the trips to rock clubs and all the times putting up with mediocre bands seem worth it.

Lodge was a tight band. I don't really even remember much about their show, except that it played funky alternative rock, and one of the members banged on a tiny, kid's drum set. But next time I see their name on a flier or a club schedule I'd be disposed to check out that show, because I know they are TIGHT.


Lodge

Yucca, who I saw for the third time or so, is also tight, though in a different way from Lodge, playing their artful pop with a light touch, especially the female drummer, who often only taps on the drums. I caught their members outside the Zher The Zoo after their show, buying beer from a convenience store next door and celebrating under a sprinkling sky. They were nice guys.

A Macdonald Duck Eclair Convert

As recently as February I was so indifferent to the music of a band called Macdonald Duck Eclair that I walked out of their show after listening to only a few songs. Now I find this incredible; it’s hard to understand why I didn’t understand their stuff back then. You don’t always know what you're seeing in front of you is Revolution.

Macdonald Duck Eclair is a dialectical band, creating by juxtaposing contrasts: the female singer’s voice floats over the repetitive, mechanical and sometimes harsh techno, a voice that is soft as a feather brushing a foxtail. Sometimes they wade in pop music shallows, but they are best when diving into this sea of hard techno-gentle vocal contrasts. In their first album short short those include the tunes “mac teenage riot”, “texas”, “butterfly in the stomach” and “perpetuel”. Their second album The Genesis Songbook is even better because it has almost nothing but those songs of contrast, as if they’ve realized that’s their sound.

The Genesis Songbook is a wonderfully weird album—Genesis, the first book of the Bible, appears to have given them the inspiration for some of the songs, but clearly not in a religious way. Rather, it seems they used bible-sounding song titles (like “Paradise Song”, “Shepard” and “Le Diable”) as free-association springboards to explore ideas (some of which are pretty far from religion—“Shepard”, at one point, describes an SM master-slave relationship, in that gentle voice of the singer).

One day I’m going to have to accost this trio, demanding that they reveal their source of inspiration and ideas. And, alas, they play live only rarely, so next time they do a show, I’m going to stay put and focus my eyes and ears perfectly, as if I’m reporting on the Apocalypse.

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You can listen to some of Macdonald Duck Eclair's songs at their MySpace page. I also play their tunes all the time on Japan Live Radio.

Good Bye, Kitchen Gorilla Drummer

I'd missed the last couple of Kitchen Gorilla shows but when I read on their website their drummer U-co was leaving the band and playing one last show, I felt I had to be there. It wasn't so much a devoted fan thing but more of a desire to see a spectacle, the teary-eyed farewells, the final bow, etc. Unexpectedly though, the departing drummer U-co made it through the evening with her eyes dry, and instead the singer Kayo was the one who came prepared with big goggle-like glasses to hide any tears, tossing them aside during the set, but then losing it during the encore, moving her face away from the mike, unable to sing for a few bars.

No one ever seems to take my word for this, and even I forget sometimes, but The Kitchen Gorilla is a great band, one that play beautiful rock melodies with an intensity I've hardly ever seen anywhere else, and listening them that night I became glad they will continue performing.

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The biggest gorilla in the kitchen thing these days in Tokyo is that our neighboring tyrant could rain down nuclear armageddon on us one day, a year from now or a decade later, who can tell, so that the city feels like someone who isn't quite sure if he has cancer. Looking at Tokyo's elegant, contented people (who mostly appear to be apathetic or in denial), and the great metropolis they've built up, I feel a sadness thinking all this might be lost one day, though that's also a rehash of the dread my generation grew up with.