No
one ever told me that Shibuya was only 20 minutes away from my house!
I thought it was more like forty minutes. But Kayo told me to take
the Inokashima(?) Line from Shimo Kitazawa (which, I learned recently,
is actually an up-and-coming cool-kid hang-out in its own right),
and lo and behold, before I had even finished the chapter of Our
Game I was reading, the conductor was announcing "Shibuya.
Shibuya desu," and the train eased into the rather polished and
new-lookin' station with nary a squeak o' the brakes.
From
there it was just a matter of following the girls in their black-and-white
Little Bo Beep dresses to On Air West, the famous-ish venue just across
the street from On Air East.
On Air East, the larger of the two places, had Wyse playing that night,
so there was quite a crowd (but don't they suck? I couldn't
help thinking). On Air West, which is club-sized (but very nice, with
a balcony, high ceiling, good acoustics, gobs of lights, and a small
bar that mostly served orange juice to the kiddies on the night of
this show) is smaller. I'd read that one of the venues has big-ass
pillars blocking certain views -- I guess that's in East, because
West offered perfect views no matter where you stood. The place was
great.
The
only problem: no pics allowed. Hence the lack of live shots (I managed
to snap a couple, but stopped to avoid any trouble -- the last thing
i wanna do is start an unofficial no-foreigners-allowed policy --
unlikely but not beyond the realm of possibility).
So,
okay, right, there's an AM/PM convenience store right under the venue,
right by the entrance, and it was was stuffed to capacity with vinyl
clad 17-year-olds with purple hair. Just crammed, beyond all semblance
of decency. Did I take any pictures? No. I didn't wanna label myself
as a tourist! But the place is buzzing with life.
Cameron
arrives not long after I do, then we bumble around confusedly trying
to figure out where to buy the tickets. The ticket booth has a sign
in the window (in Japanese, natch) and neither of us can decipher
its meaning but it looks calamitous in a Sold Out, Jerks! kinda way.
We hit up the nearby merch table girls for information.
"Where
can we, um, get tickets?!" They point to the ticket booth. We
walk over, and some ticket girl (who wasn't there before!) is now
waiting for us.
"Man,
did we look like a couple of idiots," points out Cameron. I helpfully
nod as I hand over Y3500. Plus Y500 for a drink ticket. They have
beer, I will later discover, which is good.
The
ticket says: Loop of Heaven Episode 5 (ooh, the one wear Anakin
and Amidala hook up!): Aioria / As'REAL / Blast / Sinkro / D'espairs
Ray / GARDEN / Mist of Rouge. It's a promising night: D'espairs
Ray I've been wanting to see for a while (mainly because I am able
to pronounce their name), and Garden might be named after the Dir
en grey song, or maybe not but that's my hope.
We
get there, we go up the steps, we dump our bags in the bag-dumping
section by the door (the New Yorker in me still gets scary-dizzy doing
something so obviously asking-for-trouble-ish -- I mean, do we have
to stash them RIGHT by the DOOR? In the dark?! Unguarded and everything?
-- but it's Japan, it's all good, they're safe).
Out
comes the first band, Sinkro. Not horrible, but the band name is too
Eastern European for my taste. (I have no idea what I'm talking about
either). But I did get a few pix, because they were first, and I didn't
know photographing was illegal yet.
Next
band, um, I already forgot. But during the intermission I went to
get my beer, and two girls were staring at me in a "is it okay
if we say hello to you in english?" kind of way, so I smile,
say hello, get a couple big happy smiles and hellos back, and that
brightens my day, and theirs too, and then the next band comes on
so it's back to Cameron who's positioned near the door and "Who
is this?" "Who knows! I heard Garden cancelled, so, ugh,
it's Mebius."
And
Mebius is average... i think they're too old (i.e., my age) to be
truly cool... there's that whole fleeting-ness of youth vibe in j-rock,
yanno... but Cam has moved up again, while I have hung back again,
and finally Mebius (who play well, and have above average songs, but
inexplicably are still just "eh") leave the stage. Cam returns.
"There's a foreign guy taking pictures, he's gonna get so thrown
out!"
So
I slide my camera back into my pocket, and moments later return it
to my bag. Next band up: Mist of Rouge! Soon
they start to really kick ass in the same way Dir en grey probably
have when they played here years ago. I really need to start bringing
an audio recording device to these shows.
They're
a four-piece, dress cool (pretty much all the bands did though --
I think they're all on Loop Records, or Matina? Or is it Fatima? Some
money-losing indies enterprise, no doubt...) and put on a good show.
Cam wiggles his way closer to the stage again but I, again, hang back:
I'd rather not block everyone behind me, especially in the middle
of a set when it's a pain in the ass for everyone to reposition themselves.
After
Mist's three songs are done (including the requisite 10-minute throw-yourself-at-the-stage/wave-your-arms-in-the-air-while-we-play-the-same-four-bars-100-times
section), Cam comes back again, mentions the foreign guy again (who
i can only see the longish blond hair of, from behind) and i decide
to go say hi.
His
name is Even (that's how it's pronounced anyway!) and he's from Switzerland,
was studying in Australia, and popped into Tokyo again. His French
is very good, his English is okay, and he's a pretty cool guy. And
a drummer, and he mentions blast-beats, and right away we're dropping
band names like Emperor back and forth. And we join Cam, who pulls
out the new issue of his colorful English indies visual magazine (available
at Tower Records everywhere, including NYC, yo), and we're flipping
through that, talking bands, adn the next band comes on, and it's
Az'Real or whichever, and I guess they're okay (if it really was them).
I
pop into the loo, which is up a flight of stairs on the -outside-
of the building. Hence the stairs are flooded with girls getting their
ciggy fix and doing makeup, but I manage to wind my way past without
kneeing any of them in the eye or crunching upon any stray fingers
with my boots (did I mention I'm wearing my black pleather pants,
avec chains, and a black dress-ish shirt with my skull necklace? Very
Scandinavian Metally style.) The bathrooms are pretty clean, but the
toilets are literally child-height. I nearly peed on the flush button,
bloody hell.
Restored,
I return to the fray inside, and D'espairs Ray takes the stage. The
guitar player has this kinda ugly Judy-and-Mary bassist-with-shorter-hair
look that's a bit off-putting, but the puffy, floppy bandages around
the forearms and calves of the singer, along with the funky contact
lens and leather neck-brace-bondage-horse-saddle-lookin' thing round
'is neck make up for the guitarist's visual failings.
The
songs kick: they're heavy, fast, weird without being fucked up too
much, and the ballad they do is top-notch pro-level quality-type stuff;
but they only released it as a single to fans, months ago. If they
put it out for real, I could see it charting somewhere or other. It
was as good as Taiyou no Ao or Akuro no Oka or anything
else sappy that Dir en grey has put out. (Sorry I keep referencing
Deg; they're just the only extremely visual band of merit that I can
cite!)
To
be continued...
