Beyond Thunderdome

If you asked me to make a list of things that I miss most about America, seeing live music would probably be pretty close to the top of the list, along with decent cheeseburgers, central heating and the English language. During the glory days of Chicago’s Fireside Bowl (R.I.P), I probably averaged about two shows a week and always made time to see music, often at the expense of sleeping. Even growing up in small-town Wisconsin we always had some sort of homegrown scene, born almost certainly out of necessity. I fondly remember spending my middle-school Friday nights religiously attending battle of the bands at the local YMCA with Adam Kacala (with whom I jointly purchased a Sex Pistols record in the 7th grade, unbeknownst to our parents) where the only competition that really mattered was who could play the loudest. Later on, people somehow started convincing smaller touring acts to stop in Racine. In particular, I remember seeing Calvin Johnson, The Microphones and Mirah playing to a crowd of maybe a few dozen kids at most, almost none of who had even heard of Beat Happening. I remember thinking to myself at the time, “This is the guy that Kurt Cobain worshipped?”

So, as you might imagine, moving to Momoishi has required a change of pace with regards to seeing bands. While larger cities like Tokyo have a thriving music scene, more rural areas of Japan seem void of any discernable youth culture. This is probably due to the mass exodus of twenty-somethings to the likes of Tokyo, Osaka and Sapporo; there just isn’t an audience in a place like Aomori to support rock venues. I’ve heard it said that when independent Japanese bands want to play shows, they simply make the trek down to Tokyo, regardless of where in the country they’re from, because most of them can’t book shows anywhere in their area. While I’m not ruling out the possibility that I’m just not “in the know,” I’d like to think that if there was a place to see music regularly, I would have heard something about it by now.

Anyhow, a few months ago, a poster appeared in my office for an event called “Momo De Live”. It featured a bunch of thugged-out looking dudes talking on cell phones, superimposed on an image of Momoishi’s statue of liberty. I didn’t recognize the names of any of the DJs listed on the flyer but I was determined to go anyway, just to see what people were up to around here-at the very least, it promised to be funny. Well, I ended up completely forgetting about it until Matt told me recently that a high-profile DJ had made an appearance there, apparently playing one of his only gigs outside of Tokyo. Then, when I was at Jammin’ during Halloween, I found out that Momo De Live is regarded as being the premiere music event in Aomori. That’s right, the biggest event of the year was in my tiny town and I missed it.

So, when Matt called me up a few weeks ago to let me know that he had caught wind of an “Amateur Music Festival” in nearby Iwate prefecture, I knew that we couldn’t miss it. The flyer listed styles as diverse as rock, J-pop, folk, A cappella, fusion and dance so it seemed likely that there would be at least one act worth seeing. Thus, on Sunday afternoon, Myself, Matt and Ryan (who is so easily coerced into getting into a stranger’s car that it doesn’t even require the expenditure of candy) headed out for Ichinohe, located just past Aomori’s southeastern border with Iwate prefecture.

After what seemed like hours of driving behind characteristically slow Kei-trucks, we finally arrived in Ichinohe and immediately set to searching out sweet lady rock. Unfortunately for us, the local community center proved quite elusive, especially because the city map posted outside of the train station (which Matt characterized as looking like it was “drawn by the kids at the elementary school”) was less than helpful. We then decided to simply drive around the town, looking for something resembling a cultural center. While driving down the main drag, we spotted some substantial-looking buildings in the distance, so we decided to head down a side street in order to investigate. We soon found ourselves caught in a maze of snowy hills, trying in vain to head in the general direction of an imposing blue dome that loomed on the horizon but blocked at every turn by dead ends.

When, at long last, we appeared to be heading in the right direction, calamity struck and half of my car ended up careening into a ditch while we were headed up a snowy hill. Matt and Ryan took turns pushing and directing the vehicle while I operated the machinery from within the cabin. The car was eventually able to wrest itself free but not before a man, a small dog and a police officer had gathered at the foot of the hill to curiously observe the spectacle of three foreigners trying to figure out how to get a car out of a ditch.
By the time we finally arrived at the cultural center (which turned out to be the blue dome that we had been heading towards), we had missed more than half of the festival. Although we knew we were in the right place, it sure didn’t seem like it. There were only middle-aged people standing around near the entrance (none of who were smoking), we couldn’t hear any music and we had to change into slippers before entering the building. Still, having never been to a rock show in Japan, we didn’t really know what to expect, so we pressed on. We eventually reached the auditorium where we were greeted by the following:
Meet SuPi★Ka, a “J-Pop” band from Hachinohe. Characterizing them as J-Pop is a little misleading though, it was more like “Two guys playing horrendously out of tune guitars, fronted by a woman who was not a very good singer”. I’m not sure what genre that would fall under, maybe freak-folk? At any rate, we sat through their cringe-worthy performance, hoping that the next act, a rock band called “The Brave,” would deliver the goods.
Now the last time I checked, the word “rock” didn’t normally include sensitive singer-songwriter types like this guy but if I understood him correctly, his band couldn’t make it or something? So I guess he decided that the next best thing would be to replace them with (unintentionally) cheesy, MIDI-quality orchestration and beats. What’s more, he was visibly very nervous and didn’t seem to be putting any effort into his singing. I understand what he was going for and I don’t think that the idea was necessarily ill conceived but the execution left a lot to be desired. Had he been more graceful he might have stood closer to his peer Shugo Tokumaru but instead he came across like a self-conscious Dashboard Confessional with a Casio.
Okay, well, at least they saved the best for last, right? I guess so, if we assume “best” to be a relative term. 荒谷正勝社中 (in the rough valley of Masakatsu?) are a so-called folk band from Takisawa who have been playing since 1978. As you might imagine, they’ve become rather comfortable on stage during the last three decades, so they were well equipped to deal with the small child behind us who decided to vocally protest the band’s snooze-worthy songwriting. Realizing that a good percentage of his audience was nodding off, the bandana-sporting frontman attempted to recapture our interest by talking for a really long time in-between songs (at this point I leaned over to Ryan and said “I thought this was a music festival, not a talking festival”).
When it appeared at long last that the folk band was done (I swear, they said “This is really our last song” before each of their last three songs), they brought out all the performers on stage for what appeared to be some “We Are the World” style Kumbaya shit.
The reality of the situation was far worse. Instead of “Kumbaya,” they sang “Amazing Grace”. Now, of course, Mr. Bandana didn’t know the actual English words, so he instead substituted the following lyrics, which I can only assume he penned himself:

Ahhh Ahhhh
Ahhh Ahhhh
Ahhh Ahhhh
Ahhh Ahhhh
Ahhh Ahhhh
Ahhh Ahhhh
Ahhhhhh Ahhhhhh!

It still makes me shudder just thinking about it.
After finally escaping from the “music” festival, we returned to Matt’s native Nambu-Cho (the artist formerly known as Nambu-Machi) and dined at Megu, the coffee shop/Italian restaurant down the block from Matt’s house. Thanks to their policy of playing only 50s and 60s pop, our eardrums were able to recuperate from events prior. Consider this a warning: I’m not sure what they equivalent of “amateur” is in Japanese but it apparently means that something really sucks.