Where
Visual Kiddies
Become Visual Adults
now
playing: Nao Saejima's The World is Wanting Her (1999)
On
Saturday night, I went to my first Goth show in Tokyo; Rob (Secret
Secret) had a gig, and intro'd me to some of the organizers and other
bands, which was cool. Goth, i always pictured, was slow and boring;
not so, actually!
The
show was at Deseo, in Shibuya (you can see it from the Yamanote line
as you pull into the station). Cool club, oblong, with a nice stage,
and a standing area followed by a smaller table area, followed by
the bar, followed by thick double-doors that land you in the lobby.
There are some lockers available for stashing jackets (as there are
at Area, I don't think I ever mentioned that before), but I dumped
my gear in the band dressing room on the fourth floor because I had
a "staff" pass and top-level clearance, baybee! Interesting
place, that room, btw...
So
the bands were heavy, generally, which is good. Lots of makeup, lots
of black, but the focus, rather than on looking good, was on raging,
or being overly dramatic, or both. In the audience, lots of Bo-Peeps
and vinyl girls, just like a typical visual kei show at Area or Narciss:
but everyone was in their twenties instead of their teens. For me
(age: 900!) I felt much more at ease, and it was much easier to meet
people at random because that "Hello, I'm not a schoolgirl-chasing
perv (at least not an active one!)" thing was non-existent. I
could just say hi, smile (thanks mom for the braces!) and bang, a
brand new friend. Yeehaw!
For
this reason, I actually didn't watch a whole lot of the bands; but
i did get to watch their soundcheck before the show, and that was
cool -- the soundboard guy would go, "Okay, guitarist, level
check!" and the guitarist would play a few bars of a song, stop
on the soundguy's command, bow and say thank you and then they'd move
on to the next band member. After everyone'd been checked, they'd
run though a song together, and poof, done. So the whole check was
quick, painless, attitude-free, and resulted in a nicely balanced
sound, not like American clubs at all ("soundcheck? what's that?
we'll worry about it during the show!")
The
show started at midnight: my train left at 11:30. So I was ready to
be there all night. My first planned all-nighter...
The
show ran from 12am to 5am or so. Then everyone headed to the adjoining
dance club downstairs (at additional cost, unless you had a staff
badge as I had) for a couple hours of dancing. But then everyone 30
minutes, some smaller act would take the stage and do their thing;
the best of these acts was a rap duo (I know, visual kei rap, ugh!)
that stopped in between songs and did this S&M thing to this little
Bo-Peep girl! It was horrible but quite captivating; first nudity,
then whipping, that red candle wax thing that seems to fascinate the
japanese so much, and ...other stuff. The chick was hot too! And thank
god, she wasn't one of the rappers; the other half of the duo would
come out on the stage at the appropriate time, and start acting all
malfunctioning-robot style.
But
i was kinda uncomfortable during that particular performance; later
on I figured out while the stuff looked painful, the same principle
that applies to Las Vegas magicians probably applied (for example,
the wax was held up high above her, so it probably had time to cool
before hitting her... um, body. So I don't feel so ill now, but at
the time,a ooh-look-a-car-accident-type of sick fascination certainly
overcame me. A dude, the chick was adorable! But then the rap songs
kinda deflated the coolness.
Around
7am they annonced the place was closing for the night; around 8am
Rob, me, and a handful of leftovers (all clad in black and only black)
headed for Mosburger (Rob's a vegetarian; Mosburger has veggieburgers)
and looked at all the photos taken over the course of the night. Wow...
A
little after 9am, we headed for Ikebukuro, which is where the Japan
Music Fair was being held. Rob had free tickets, from a friend at
Digidesign. It's kinda like the Japanese NAMM, if that makes sense,
only smaller. But still cool. Rob was asked to sign a few autographs
there some of the girl ticket-takers who took our tickets! That was
pretty cool. I've only ever signed two autographs myself, back when
I worked at my college radio station as the Heavy Metal Music Director;
it was at a charity volleyball game between my station and an actual
real Top-40 Philly station. They asked, i was shocked (who'd want
-my- autograph), and then elated for the rest of the month. And I'm
grinning right now just thinking about it. So Rob, based in San Francisco,
must've been really chuffed at having Tokyo girls ask. I mean, that's
just too cool.
Then
I had practice, and I sucked of course.
The
next day, I met up with another band, a visual kei band. That went
much better. And the singer likes Sabbath and looks like Anchang from
Sex Machine Guns, only goatee'd... and the bassist is Ai, the ex-Missalina
Rei dude. And a few of us went drinking afterwards, at a cool Shimo
Kitazawa bar called Mother, which has a very Gaudi (as in Anton Gaudi)
influence going on. I think i lost $60 there, but I'm not sure (ugh,
beeeeer... -and- Moscow Mules, dammit), and when i went back the next
day they said there hadn't been any extra money in the till or on
the floor, so maybe I did and maybe I didn't... probably I can trust
them, probably. Or maybe my subconscious is punishing me for the sins
of the day before...
