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Toyko, Rock'N'Roll Capital Of The World!

12:31 PM GMT 04/11/2009

IN 1996, A STRANGE-looking 2-CD collection entitled Tokyo Invasion Volume One: Cosmic Kurushi Monsters landed on my desk. Britpop was still hot, though its reheated Carnaby Street melodies and Quo rockaboogie left me decidedly cold. But these 22 tracks, combed from the Japanese underground, seemed to derive from a sonic otherworld where The Beatles and The Clash were invisible and Captain Beefheart, Big Black, even This Heat were the key sources of inspiration. I wanted to pack my Guild guitar, get over there and join in the fun. Instead, at 37, I felt I was already too old and stayed. It was, I now believe, a terrible mistake.

Since then, I've had my ears torn off regularly by the blistering psychedelia of the visiting Acid Mothers Temple and manic Melt-Banana, the awesome virtuosity of guitar hero Keiji Haino and the avant-pop theatrics of eX-Girl. But was this the cream of Japan's maverick music culture - or merely the tip of an iceberg? Noting that Melt-Banana had lined up three mid-September shows in Tokyo, I decided it was finally time to make that much-delayed 12,000-mile round trip and undertake my own, one-man Tokyo invasion...

"MOJO?" enquires 2 Much Crew singer Nancy, as I sit around a large table in an izakaya (a typical Japanese pub'n'grub hostelry) in the buzzily bohemian Shimokitazawa district just beyond the neon metropolis of Shinjuku. "Does that mean you write for a sex magazine?" The rest of the band joins in, invoking Muddy Waters and Jim Morrison in attempts to explain the true meaning of 'mojo'. I just wanted to tell them their performance earlier that day, at the Tokyo Boredom festival, was the most fucked up and thrilling thing I'd seen on a stage in years. Several days later, when I met again with 2 Much Crew for my final night in the country, I had become more effusive still. This had been the most exhilarating two weeks in my music-mad life. Aside from a four-day breakout to Kyoto, where I gave my ringing ears a rest in the old capital's many shrines and temples - and took in an extraordinary three-hour performance of Noh theatre - I had seen some 50, mostly extraordinary bands. The experience had me convinced me that Tokyo is the rock music capital of the world.

Whether it be 2 Much Crew's "scum hip-hop", Mustang Jerx' Johnny Winter-infused bottleneck rock or Miu Mau's twisted girl garage-pop, seemingly everything on the Tokyo 'Live House' scene runs on sonic attack. These are in many ways the scions of Beefheart's Magic Band and Steve Albini, with a free-thinking and playful attitude towards genre-bending that makes much else seem hideously one-dimensional.

This self-enclosed scene, which is as joy-filled as it is inventive, transposes the obsessive passion and commitment of Japan's infamous otaku (anime and manga nerds) to music. I even met two musicians who owned an impossibly obscure early '80s album by Unrest, Work & Play, a duo that had formed from the ashes of the Bournemouth-based Animal Haircuts. I was the Haircuts' bassist. One of them scanned the cover artwork just to prove it. Now that's what I call otaku.

The Tokyo Boredom weekend ripped my head off. It was as if I was back at school, during glam rock's heyday, discovering Hendrix and Jefferson Airplane and The Velvet Underground again for the first time. Not only was it the overriding "beat that!" attitude, intensified by the two-stage set-up at the Tokyo University venue which meant that as the feedback finale stage left was still howling, a mad-eyed screamer would leap into action stage right and howl even louder, usually to a ferocious, expertly fragmented rhythm. No bouncers policed this or any other event. The moshing was fast, furious and overwhelmingly good-natured. Unlike back home, where rock music has arguably become humdrum and safely incorporated into the system, here it retains a secret society vibe, rather like London's jazz and R&B scene of the late '50s and early '60s. And like back then, it's the music that matters, not the pose. No one here is chasing fame, or faking it.

At The Loft, Tokyo's most famous Live House, my hosts Melt-Banana played a set that did their UK champion, the late John Peel, proud. Like everyone out here, they combine superfast musical chaos with a technical dexterity that Mahavishnu Orchestra would have been hard pushed to match. Speaking of which, one of a string of spine-tingling highlights at Tokyo Boredom were Fukuro, an instrumental five-piece whose fabulously intricate riffing made what we know as math rock sound like kindergarten kids fiddling with an abacus.

Halfway through The Loft show, Steve, a Canadian who visits Toyko six times a year to feed his insatiable appetite for Japanese underground music, whispered that we should steal away to the nearby Basement Bar. There, I ran into Mia Mau, an impossibly energetic anarcho-garage girl duo who could give The Wire magazine cover stars Afrirampo a run for their money, and Usotski Barbie, magnificently intense avant-funkers whose dashing and inventive guitarist sparked out Magic Band lead lines while the bassist stripped naked and played with a bucket on his head. This wasn't to garner a few column inches, but simply an expression of unadulterated and boundless joy at being able to defy the notoriously restrained parent culture together with his peers.

Scratch below the surface and you'll find not a hint of fatigue or boredom among the habitués of Tokyo's rock underground. Like San Francisco in 1967, or London a decade later, Tokyo 2009 is NOW. The city's citizens have been expecting the next great earthquake for years. Whisper it, but those subterranean seismic shifts are happening already...

By Mark Paytress

2 Much Crew photo courtesy of Yasuhiro Ohara

Festival photo courtesy of Mark Paytress

Posted by Ross_Bennett at 12:31 PM GMT 04/11/2009

Related MOJO content:

2 Much Crew , Acid Mothers Temple , Beatles , Melt Bananas

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  • I trust Paytress implicitly. I shall book my ticket to Tokyo now!

    Posted by Anonymous at 4:31 PM GMT 04/11/2009 Report Abuse

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  • Really great article. Thanx Mark and for also mentioning the Tokyo Invasion LP. I remember trying to get hold of this album back in the day, but no one had ever heard of it despite it being a Virgin release. Anyway I now have a copy on order from Amazon. Looking forward to that!!!
    I like to think that Japanese musicians take all strands of Western rock, tear in into little pieces, throw it all up in the air ,and then re-assemble it in the order it comes down to create something that is totally new and quite unique
    I hope that this strand will lead to a major feature in a future Mojo magazine (love the idea that it could be a sex mag!), perhaps with a free CD featuring the very best of Jap rock. Here's hopeing....

    Posted by Alexander Meerkat at 1:42 PM GMT 05/11/2009 Report Abuse

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  • Just saw a great band from Tokyo called Marble Sheep here in Chicago at the Whistler. One of the greatest live shows I've seen in awhile. They reminded me of MC5/early B.O.C. Very heavy, but tuneful!
    -Joe Patt

    Posted by Anonymous at 8:08 PM GMT 06/11/2009 Report Abuse

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  • Hi Mark, this is Steve... the bloke from Canada.
    Excellent article!! It reads with as much freshness and ebullient energy as the underground Tokyo music scene itself.
    Echoing Meerkat's sentiments that this blog entry becomes the impetus for a broader exposé of Tokyo's independent music scene in the form of a feature in the magazine itself.
    It would be a great excuse for you to revisit Japan.

    I just wanted to point out that the sublime anarcho-garage female duo from Fukuoka we saw at Basement Bar wasn't Miu Mau but a band called 雅だよ雅 (masadayomasa.)
    Miwako does drum for both bands however.

    Hope you get a chance to see Japan again.
    If you do, odds are I'll be there too at show in Shinjuku, Koenji or Shimokitazawa.

    Posted by Steven Tanaka at 6:28 AM GMT 09/11/2009 Report Abuse

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  • Hi Mark, this is Steve... the bloke from Canada.
    Excellent article!! It reads with as much freshness and ebullient energy as the underground Tokyo music scene itself.
    Echoing Meerkat's sentiments that this blog entry becomes the impetus for a broader exposé of Tokyo's independent music scene in the form of a feature in the magazine itself.
    It would be a great excuse for you to revisit Japan.

    I just wanted to point out that the sublime anarcho-garage female duo from Fukuoka we saw at Basement Bar wasn't Miu Mau but a band called 雅だよ雅 (masadayomasa.)
    Miwako does drum for both bands however.

    Posted by Steven Tanaka at 6:30 AM GMT 09/11/2009 Report Abuse

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  • RE: Steven Tanaka

    Aw, shit, Steve! My hearing had been blasted after two weeks in those amazing Tokyo basements. I thought Miu Mau didn't ring true when I checked em out on youtube.

    I still have your details somewhere, so will contact soon!

    Cheers, Mark

    Posted by Anonymous at 11:36 PM GMT 13/11/2009 Report Abuse

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  • I just got back from Tokyo and I wish I would have known about this before I left! J rock is huge there but you'd never know it if you didnt know where to look. This article is pretty cool for anyone who is into the subject. /www.life123.com/arts-culture/musical-genres/rock-music/j-rock-in-the-united-states.shtml

    Posted by james at 3:32 PM GMT 18/11/2009 Report Abuse

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  • I just got back from Tokyo and I wish I would have known about this before I left! J rock is huge there but you'd never know it if you didnt know where to look. This article is pretty cool for anyone who is into the subject. /www.life123.com/arts-culture/musical-genres/rock-music/j-rock-in-the-united-states.shtml

    Posted by James at 3:34 PM GMT 18/11/2009 Report Abuse

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  • Hey Mark,

    We met at the Masadayomasa/Usotsuki Barbie show (along with Steve). Great piece - the West is slowly waking up to the amazing music coming out of Japan, and I hope your story raises its profile ever further!

    It Came From Japan takes shit-hot JP bands to tour in Britain and also has a free podcast on iTunes. Check it out, and please go write about our bands in England next time! Drop me an email if you still have my card, too. Ta!

    Posted by Daniel Robson at 12:20 PM GMT 25/11/2009 Report Abuse

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