Iwaki Music

I managed to finish half of what I wanted to accomplish today. I did a major overhaul of my apartment to get everything cleaned up. I bought a few dishes, guitar strings, bus tickets for next week’s trip to Aizu, and acquired a library card. I spent most of my day with a buddy who speaks very good Japanese, so it made buying bus tickets and getting a library card quite easy. I was secretly hoping that I would have to go to the bus station on my own to challenge my Japanese abilities, but at least now I know that I have the right tickets and when to catch my bus.

We went to a guitar shop to buy a case for a guitar that he recently bought. I noticed quite a while ago that my buddy had long fingernails on his right hand. Several years ago, I would have figured that this guy was either into drugs or was a bit dandy. Since I started playing guitar, I’ve learned that people with long nails on their right hand are usually classical guitar players. I’ve never met someone my age who’s been into classical guitar seriously enough to grow their fingers long, file them into proper plucking form, and use glossy nail hardener to keep them from chipping. I don’t think he uses the hardener anymore because he is a bit out of practice, but he was still able to rip up a few pieces in the store. I wish I could play like that.

In the store we also met a couple of young guys who were dressed like musicians. The one guy looked like he was about eighteen, wore a blazer over an Oasis t-shirt and had his hair down over his eyes. He came over and started talking to us, which when he realized how terrible my Japanese was, he mostly talked with my friend. He told us to come to his show that he was opening tonight at a club called the Sonic. He even said that he’d put us on the guest list.

I had heard of the Sonic as a place for live music and had ridden by it on my bike a couple weeks before. It looked dark and seedy – a place for my kind of music. The walls were painted black and had event posters tacked all over. Weak fluorescent lights and a few hanging light fixtures definitely added to the seedy atmosphere. The walls and floors were scuffed up as if, over the years, a lot of musical equipment had banged in and out of the place. People are still allowed to smoke inside bars and restaurants in Japan, and there was a constant haze that hung up around the lights. I noticed we turned a few heads being the only two gaijin in the building.

We got our tickets and entered a sort of pre-show room, where bands hawk their wares. T-shirts hung on wire stands; CDs and posters strewn about tables; profanity scribed across all of the walls. The place smelled more like rock and roll the deeper we went.

The next door took us into the show room. The place was tiny, but it was lit up for a rock show and the music was loud. There were only about 40-50 people in the room, but because it was so small, it felt crowded. The guy we met at the music shop was playing, and he ripped it up pretty good. He played a real dark and heavy sort of Oasis style of music. He had told us that he was really into British rock. We arrived midway through a song in the middle of their set and they were playing a heavy grungy song. I think both our eyes went a little wide at first and we each had a shit-eaters grin on our faces throughout. The front man probably weighed about 90 lbs, but he was throwing his body around and wailing away on the microphone while he thrashed his guitar, building to a climactic finish, where afterwards, the crowd… clapped politely. My friend called it the kind of applause that you would see at a golf tournament, and it was pretty standard for each song that all the bands played – very odd and out of place compared to what we were used to at a rock show. During the songs, some of the crowd would get right into the music – I almost had to dodge a few roundhouse kicks from the front. The screamo singer would especially get the crowd going as he’d walk into the audience. But between songs, he was the nicest gentlemen while he announced their next shows – very soft spoken and polite.

We watched three bands before leaving for another engagement. All three bands were great. The second band was a screamo band and the third played sort of a Franz Ferdinand, almost Kings of Leon style. I got to see big Marshal stacks, Gibsons, an ESP, and a Telecaster with some killer guitar players behind them.

Now, sitting at home, with my ears ringing, writing this blog, picking photos to use in this post, I miss the Wail. Check out their show if you’re in Vancouver: http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/event.php?eid=127594807644&ref=ts

I really wish I had my Nikon with me – and maybe a new wide angle lens of some sort, but my cybershot managed to get a few decent shots.