After surviving three weeks back in the States feasting on Mexican, Italian, and cheap Chinese food, I found myself back in the Tokyo Metropolitan area after yet another rough eighteen hours on a number of airplanes. Immediately after touching down, I sent off an e-mail to my fellow Japanese rock loving friend, Antony (blog; gig report), who’s been spending a couple of months in Japan studying the language and attending as many live shows as he can. He mentioned that there would be a show the following day down in Koenji. I’d never heard of any of the bands playing that night, but since he and I share the same taste in music I thought I’d head down there and give it a try.

Club UFO is near Higashi Koenji Station on the Marunouchi Subway Line. My first impression of the club was good: dark lighting before the show begins with a deep red light that permeates the small floor. The club is often run as a DJ bar, and a booth is setup on the left side of the room, this night spewing forth the sounds of Madonna and other 80’s pop.

Antony wasn’t there yet, so I settled down with a beer to wait, but I was soon approached by one of the girls swaying to the pre-show tunes. Turns out that she is one of the DJs at the club and it was her 20th birthday (a pretty important year, since it’s the year you’re now considered an adult in Japan, and can legally drink and smoke), and that this show was, in effect, her birthday party. She introduced herself, but due to the loud music and the beer I have no idea what it was…

First up was Chitose Hirotaka, whose stage act consisted of him, a guitar, and a harmonica (which he later switched out for a kazoo), singing songs about growing up and his dog. He was a pretty personable guy, though you’d really have to understand Japanese decently to fully appreciate his show. Between songs he told some pretty funny stories about the amateur baseball team he plays on, which actually won a few games in a tournament recently and would be playing at Tokyo Dome in the final rounds. He said anyone could show up at the game and get in for free, and even go out onto the field and sit in the dugout with the team, though you’d have to be there at 6 a.m. on a Saturday for the first game.

Next was Rodeo Cats, playing their style of Tokyo rockabilly. I don’t really know anything about this style of music, but it was a welcome change of pace after all of the punk shows I’ve been going to recently. Two things about them stuck in my head: one being the fact that the drummer never sat down, and the other that the bassist had a good enough sense of balance to actually climb up onto his large slap bass and play while perched up there. Like I said, I don’t really know much about this type of thing, so maybe that’s a pretty easy feat to accomplish. 

Third was the band Antony and I had come to see, The A.V.A. (Adult Video Animals). How best to describe them? Before they came on stage, I asked the singer what their sound was like and even he didn’t know! His reply was something along the lines of “melodic punk,” though that doesn’t really describe it aptly. Besides the standard bass, guitar, and drums, they also had a sax player with a Mohawk and a shy-looking accordion player, who got all genkied up at the end of the show and started wrapping himself in duct tape. Midway through the set, the bassist and accordion guy became living birthday candles for the birthday girl when the singer stabbed them in the forehead with toothpicks and then lit them on fire. She quickly game up on stage and blew them out, luckily saving us from the smell of burnt hair. This was my first time to see The A.V.A., but they were genki and fun, with some wacky antics. If I get a chance, I’ll definitely check them out again.

Lastly, the “headliners” Jet Jive Cats came on. Well, you can’t really call them headliners since they only played three or four songs and then left. They were another rockabilly/swing band, with the birthday girl singing and playing brief guitar pieces and the three members of Rodeo Cats backing her up. At the start of the third song the singer girl said something to the effect of, “I know it’s over soon, but this will be our last song” to which everyone in the crowd said “Ehhhh?” in unison. At first I thought that they just didn’t know many songs, but then she chimed in with, “This is our last song because I know that everyone wants to hurry up and go drink at the after-party!” It was good to see that her priorities were straight and that she wanted to celebrate her birthday right!  Unfortunately, I couldn’t make it to the party since my first day of work for the 2nd semester was the next day, and thus I needed to catch the last train home. Antony went, however, and his comment about the party was, “Thank god it was short!” He’d been in Osaka the previous day checking out Red Bacteria Vacuum, and had plans to go to Sendai the following day to see another band, and he wasn’t really up for another all-night drinking adventure with the bands.

Make sure to check out the image gallery for some pictures of the night, including men with flaming toothpicks stuck into their heads. (Coming Soon!)