SATURDAY JUNE 26. 2004 to see all the pictures (40 ish) click on the photos below!!
My pal Hatsaplenty, at around 3:30 in the morning, pretty much summed up this gig: “soto wa ninki ga aru.” (outside is very popular now). With no less than 11 bands and 10 DJs, it seemed at least half the crowd preferred to chill outside in this narrow alleyway where they kept getting almost run over by taxicabs and mocked by inebriated Australian tourists. Which isn’t to say it was a Bad Time ? actually it was really fun! It was basically like the Smoking Section of your high school, if high school never ended.
The audience was a mix of foreigners and Japanese; gothic people and fetish people, loudly giggling teen girls in Al Capone drag, and super-withdrawn walking dead, with the occasional drag queen or cyber warrior robot thrown in for good measure. Also some very confused and frightened kogals. Despite this being an event with ‘DARK’ in the title, everyone was really friendly and there was not a lot of ‘don’t you know who I am?’ bullshit or ‘I want to be alone with the crushing pain of my existence in a meaningless world’ stuff either. I’m sure there was some drama somewhere but I didn’t go looking for it. I mean, besides spreading rumors of my fake marriage and divorce, and stuff.
possibly the funnest thing about this event was. . .it was my SECOND live show of the evening. the first live show was like this:
. . .so i kept imagining how awesome it would be if both concerts were held AT THE SAME TIME. total gangsta goth. if i was a concert promoter, everyone would be killed at my shows, i swear.
AUTOMOD played some hard rock music. They didn’t try very hard this time ; no S/M and barely any fog machine. it made Spinal Tap cry.
SECRET SECRET were one of the few bands that could get the audience to come inside. Perhaps it was their matching red-and-black stockings or a violinist who looked like Beck if Beck wore kitty ears and hotpants. Also their singer is around 9 feet tall and every single song he’d wander into the crowd crooning at the ladies and giving them flowers. If you’ve been tuning into my campaign speeches, you’ll know that this gothic / crooner / lounge fusion is a big plank on my platform; something I’ve been agitating for for some time now, so it’s good that SECRET SECRET was representing. Pro gothic lounge, anti gun-control. Pro Dark Crooners, anti tobacco lobby. It’s all there in my campaign literature, I take a firm stand, not like those fat cats in Washington.
DEMONS were fucking amazing. The music was some sort of generic hard rock with occasional Sabbath breakdowns. But they all had matching leather hockey masks, and the bass player was wearing a traditional Japanese festival headband with 500 facial piercings and what appeared to be platform Nikes. He was all jumping around and having great fun. Later I spied him with some kind of black leather Crocodile Dundee hat, riding around on one of those Tiny Toy Scooters that you push with your legs. I have no idea either, but it was brilliant.
DESPAIR played again. If you like fat mohican guys in makeup and nazi uniforms waddling around stage without playing any instruments, while a DAT tape loudly malfunctions, this might be your band. Oh, now they are also cyber. (science fictiony shiny blinking microphone stand = cyber)
SINS OF THE FLESH- were also fucking amazing. One guy in a leather catsuit, another guy in fake-hitler-youth outfit, and a lady in a surgical smock and a Shirley Temple perm, and they’re all in their forties. All hitting synth drums and singing about surgery and meanwhile thinking about their insurance and car payments and what should I get for my nephew’s birthday party? The name and the costumes suggest that they are interested in ‘transgressive’ shizzle, but their music is actually quaint and old-fashioned: this is the conundrum of the retro-80s ‘dark synthpop’ band. Be very afraid. On the good side, though, the singer was wearing Dark Birkenstocks. These were black and purple beach sandals with spikes covering the perimeter, in an attempt to evoke the blade of a chainsaw. This is WAY better than anything I have ever come up with in my Fashion Predictions, and I have to salute him for it. He said he got them in Thailand from some street vendor, whose other sandals were even scarier.
I’m not even going to review the rest of the bands because they were all the same band: one or two guys playing a synth, while a DAT plays the rest of the backing tracks. I just can’t get past the arbitrariness and the pretentions. It’s like, how do you even decide which of your 5 synth parts to play live, and which other 4 are handled by your DAT? Who is in charge of performing Synth Triage?? And what makes you think you are a band, if you KNOW your job could be done better and more efficiently if you just let the DAT play ALL the parts for you? The guy playing the One ‘live’ synth is not improvising or adding anything to the performance. . .he’s only there because he wants to tell people, ‘i’m in a band.’ And can I possibly say ‘synth’ more? Synth synth synth synth synth synth synth synth synth.
Synth.
.
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