Ack Phhht!

Japan Nite, the annual Japanese indie rock package tour, rolled into San Francisco last Saturday.  I was a little ambivalent about going this year, since the band listing seemed a bit mundane compared to last year’s line-up — no teenagers in school uniforms or cute girls singing bluegrass in squeaky voices while strumming on ukeleles. This year’s bands seemed like pretty ordinary rock bands by comparison.  Of course, the awesome detroit7 was playing again this year, so I knew it wouldn’t be a total wash, but little else stuck out on the line-up — a punk band with big pompadours, a couple alt-rock bands.

As it turned out, though, this year’s line-up was much more consistent than last year’s, and if there was nothing quite as surprisingly awesome as Scandal, overall it made for a much better show.

First up was Okinawan all-girl alternative band FLiP, whose grungey rock would have sounded right at home between Hole and the Breeders on US alt-rock radio circa 1995.  Which isn’t a bad thing — their playing was tight and sounded good, the songs seemed solid.  The only real weak point was a rather lackluster stage presence.

Next up was punk band SA.  Given the spiked hair and leather and over-sized pompadours, I was expecting to be bored silly by an overly reverential band trying to evoke the sounds of early Exploited records.  But SA turned out to be a blast, treating punk rock more like revved-up, fist-pumping blue collar rock-n’-roll than the music of social alienation.  Lead singer Taisei worked the crowd to a degree that I don’t think I’ve ever seen in an American band.  It was almost embarrassing during the first song, but by the third he had the crowd singing along enthusiastically, even if nobody could quite understand what he was telling us to sing (did he ask us to chant “no stop, no stay, no weeps”?!?).  An absolute blast.

Then the weirdest show of the night, Omodaka, a one-man electro-pop outfit playing goofy songs constructed out of video game blips and traditional Japanese folk song vocals.  When I was looking at the line-up in advance and complaining that it wasn’t quirky enough, I obviously didn’t look too closely at this one.  I don’t even know how to describe this shit so I’ll just play a video:

Okay, now imagine that song being played by a solitary dude in a Noh mask, playing bits of music on Gameboys and PSPs, with the female vocals being sung by jerky computer-generated women on an LCD monitor, like something out of a William Gibson novel.  I’ll confess that a little went a long way, but it was broken up by enough good gags (like when he introduced his hardware in lieu of a band) that it didn’t grow old.  And the music was catchy.

Next was Sparta Locals, whose colorful shirts and floppy hats had me expecting a hippy jam band.  Wrong:  dance punk, of all things.  At their most ferocious, in fact, they were verging on Gang Of Four territory, with the funky rhythm section anchoring the music while the guitarist alternately played funk riffs and jagged blasts of guitar noise (the GoF similarity ended at singer Kosei Abe, who sounded nothing like Jon King).  I’m not sure it all quite came together, but it was sweaty and intense.

Finally, detroit7.  This band explodes at least three stereotypes:  that girls can’t play guitar, that girls can’t play drums, and that Japanese bands can’t play dirty gutter rock.  Like last year, the band just killed, absolutely ferocious garage rock.  I’m not sure what else can be said about them — this band absolutely needs to be seen live.

Anyway, that’s the run-down.  I doubt that I’m going to pick up music by any of these bands (well, maybe Omodaka) any time soon, but live they were all pretty killer.  In particular, you should see SA or detroit7 if you have a chance.