Miaou, Shibuya O-Nest, April 22nd

I've never been to the opera but I occasionally watch the cultural programmes on NHK on a Sunday evening and the music gets me in that place where you can't explain it but the audience inevitably brings me back to Earth and reminds me that I know nothing about this kind of music and that they will take great pleasure in reminding me of this at every possible moment. I love instrumental music - give me Mogwai, Explosions In The Sky, Tortoise et al and I'm a happy man. Unfortunately, these bands seem to attract a similar audience to those cunts who claim they are opera lovers but go there for no other reason than to lord it over anyone who has the misfortune not to be as well versed in the intricate history of the music being played as they are. People like the bint who told my friend to 'shhh' at the show tonight in Shibuya. He's not the quietest of people but it was a fucking concert. It was between songs, not during one - stop being so fucking precious, get over yourself and accept the fact that people may talk to each other at a concert - it's just what they do.

Right, rant over. Miaou were fantastic. Swirls of blissful music made by people who were lost within what they were doing but never lost control and never allowed themselves to slip into the wankery that so often bedevils concerts of this type. Their music sounds and looks like it's great fun to play. They will never be huge but they deserve the kind of cult following that much more undeserving bands earn. If there is any kind if justice in the world people will get over Shonen Knife, see them for the dull shrieky bores that they are, and swoon at the majestic feet of bands like Miaou. It's not going to happen but we are allowed to dream - isn't that what keeps us going?

No excuses, and some updates

I'm not even going to try and make an excuse for the lack of posts recently, so here's some information instead. There is an event tonight in Tokyo, organised by Ian Martin:

2007 3/29 (Thu)
Shibuya O-NEST
「マスビーニューニュー(MUST BE NEW-NEW!）Vol.4」
w/ SKOOTER, ゆやゆよん, ウサギスパイラルアー, SHOOT MY DISCO,UMIBACHI
【DJ】IAN MARTIN（Call And Response）
開場18:30／開演19:00
● 前売￥2,000／当日￥2,300 ●ドリンク別

... and on (I promise this won't turn into an 80's Ariston advert)

Today's delectables:

Agaetis Byrjun - Sigur Ros
Airportpeople E.P - Ellis
All Shook Down - The Replacements
All The Stuff and More - The Vaselines
Alligator - The National

I'm currently ploughing my way through Always Outnumbered, Never Outgunned by the Prodigy, which is looking like being the first album that's bumped from the iPod. Why the hell did Liam Howlett feel the need to do a cover of Love Buzz? Nirvana got there earlier and did it a whole lot better. Music For the Jilted Generation (surely one of the best album titles ever) and The Fat of the Land are two of my favourite albums, but Always Outnumbered sounds like the work of a group that have already split up and reformed - it's like watching a paunchy George Foreman go through the motions.

Today's other stuff hasn't been bad though. Ellis were my friend's band and the E.P of theirs that's on my iPod is one that they released in around 2001/2 (I think). On the day it was released it sold more copies in HMV's Edinburgh branch than the Britney Spears record that came out on the same day. Various members of that band who may be reading this blog are probably composing hate mails to me now but I stand by my opinion that this was a band that ought to have gone much further. Timing and luck were against them but the talent is clearly there.

I was in Shibuya again today and The Vaselines were the ideal soundtrack for my wanderings. Shibuya is a place where there are just too many people trying far too hard to be too cool. Maybe it's inevitable given that it's considered to be the hub of young Japanese fashion. Regardless of that, someone needs to tell the majority of the people there (both male and female) that whatever 'being cool' actually is, it's something that takes a lot more than a pair of huge sunglasses, a scowl, and a strut. In fact, it probably takes a lot less than this - have these folk never heard of 'effortless cool'?

Anyway, as I mentioned, The Vaselines are the perfect antidote to this bastion of laboured attitude. Their crunchy guitars and naively out of tune boy-girl vocals seem to kick against Shibuya's triumvirate of pricks - posing bints, their himbos, and the bling-obsessed, vacuous hip-hop (Japanese and American) that soundtracks their lives. The beautiful people? Bollocks.

P.S...

I meant to add this into the post below but I forgot. This sign belongs to an English school I passed today while wandering in Shibuya (I was listening to Dot Allison at the time - see, still Tokyo Music). Would you trust them to teach you English?