the Painted Sunrise
Luke, Tash, Rachel and I kicked back some Asahi pints from Lawson and watched the cedar, concrete and sulfuric steam of Beppu drift away from the deck of the Sunflower, its big neon orange painted sun chasing the real one descending over Beppu Bay. The first drunken, sleepless leg of our quest for rock in Osaka had begun with the sound of the foghorn at exactly 19:00, Friday the 11th.
"Osaka is not Japan," one of my favorite students had told me, "It's another country." Osaka. Just the sound of the word had mesmerised me for months. Osakaa! It was the sound of the breaking point of a nation repressed by manners and etiquette, its marrow oozing out in the form of a cuss-laden local dialect and experimental hardcore. Osakaaa! A drunken mosh pit sucker punch one can only stumble up from with an insane laugh and a punch in the opposite direction. And when applied to the tune of AFI, the Deftones, Avenged Sevenfold and Metallica, OSAKAAA!!!! was the antidote to a melancholic stagnation that had stifled me for months.
Rachel, from New Zealand, has only been here for a few weeks. In expat drifter fashion, we shared things over cans of warming Japanese beer that neither of us would dream of telling a near-perfect stranger back home, but it always seems right somehow when you're in transit. Talking to her was especially interesting because she's still in that "honeymoon" stage of culture shock where everything is new and different, you notice everything in vivid detail like a Zen master, and you're still riding the adrenaline rush of your getaway wave from wherever.
Not that having lived here for a year and 2 months makes me a grizzled expat or anything, but being with the newbs lets me relive those days. At least, the drunken good parts that I care to remember.
Having, erm, beer and sake for dinner didn't do much for my ability to sleep soundly, nor did attempting to go to sleep 4 hours before my usual bedtime of 3am. So, I disembarked with my compatriots and waded into the sticky dawn of Osaka feeling like a wino who'd spent the night in a gutter.
And the weekend was just starting. Fuck. I'm tired. Not to mention hungry as balls.
Where the hell is Osaka?
If I didn't know better, I'd say I was on Main Street in Buffalo on a Sunday afternoon. Osaka was absolutely dead. Not a car in the road, the stoplights do their pathetic useless jobs like elevator ladies. After months of envisioning a pulsating urban chaos, Osaka was thoroughly disappointing. But wait a minute: a night owl to the core, dawn is a time I see only when I haven't yet fallen asleep from the night before. This can really play with your concept of time. It's 7am on a Saturday morning ass-crack of dawn. Like me, Japan likes to sleep in, and most shops and restaraunts don't open until 10 or 11. Man, that really pissed off our grinding GI tracts (did I mention I was hungry as balls?) Finally we found a 24-hour Subway, incidentally one of the only fast-food establishments I ever ate at back at home. I tend to avoid these temples of culinary imperialism, but...
holy fuck that was a good sandwich. like i said, i was hungry as balls.
On the Train
After 4 hours of napping in air-conditioned rapture in my friend Ben's flat, it was time to hit the show. Cosmo Square, the official venue, was reverberating through the tram line, and we could hear (and feel) it 3 stops away. My hands began to twitch like those of an junkie watching his friend cook. Usually laid-back, I began to silently freak out about our leisurely pace to the concert. I HAD to be there, NOW. I cared fuck all what band was on. whoever it was, I was missing the greatest rock spectacle of all time; I was certain of it to my very twitching nerve fibers. Luke made a remark that people could just watch the bands from the giant screen of the Osaka WTC.
Mais non non NON, Monsieur LaPlante. the stage was pulling me like a black hole, and i'd be sick until I was right up there in that parade of chaos, its fervent collective fix.
And Now comes the part where i'm a wannabe rock journalist again
After a ridiculously involved quest for our admission wristbands (they place the gate in Tokyo, or at least it sure as hell seemed like it) our trio found ourselves in the main indoor arena poring over the schedule. apparently the Schedule Gods of Osaka Summer Sonic have some musical vendetta against me, as the put AFI, the Arctic Monkeys and My Chemical Romance all at the exact same goddamn time. Shit! I'm not a huge Chemical fan, but AFI and the Arctic Monkeys went to their respective corners in the music sector of my brain for a grueling deathmatch.
Damnnn..... In this corner, AFI, one of the first bands I got into once I went away to college, away from my sneering Counting Crows and Depeche Mode-loving high school friends. and i STILL haven't seen them live. Whereas the Arctic Monkeys were a recent discovery, but also appealed to my Britrock-loving past that still lived on. what to do!!! LET'S GET IT ON--DING!!!
Davey Havok and his sparkly eyelids and goth-punk won the deathmatch (poor Monkeys, they didn't even see it coming). I made it up to the front of the stage just in time to see Havok's shadow seemingly float into the liquid nitrogen dry ice and audio feedback. then--aahhhhh.... the hit. those raw, raunchy basslines that i love so very very much about AFI so perfectly complement Havok's helium screech. my only complaint was they didn't play a DAMN THING from Art of Drowning or prior. that's how much AFI wants to change its image from its dark, yet high-energy punk fury to Gothic despair. however, the new stuff they played brought back some of that raging punk electricity that i know and love. there may be hope after all.
that scheduling snafu took care of most of the bands i wanted to see on Saturday, so i met up with Luke and Tash. after an hour or so of gawking at this one goth chick and being part of a wastoid utopian community, we headed over to Open Air Stage to see Muse. I'd heard of Muse before from my Britrockophile Japanese ex, and always meant to check them out; live in Osaka seemed as good a time as any. From Britain, they ride the crest of Radiohead's hard, spacey and epic music that's positively made for big arenas like this one. Luke and Tash weren't into it so much, but i was positively mesmerised. ( i have a picture from their set, but haven't figured out how to upload pictures yet. ) the lead singer's voice is reminiscent of something between Liam Gallagher and Thom Yorke. it was so distinctly... British. if i didn't know better, i'd think i was at Glastonbury or Reading, drinking Stella Artois to the Queen... ok, maybe not that far.
a bit dehydrated, i wandered back over to the indoor stages to see Massive Attack with Luke and Tash. i don't know how they found me; finding one person at these things is kind of like finding Waldo, except he's in camo hiding in a jungle.
now, as much as i enjoyed Massive Attack's contributions to the Requiem for a Dream and Matrix soundtracks, their live show just doesn't do it for a fist-pumping mosh junkie like myself. gotta say it was kind of a buzzkill. fortunately, Luke and Tash agreed with me after a while and we ducked out of Saturday's festivities early. we managed to breeze past the teeming masses in line for tram tickets (thank you, THANK YOU OSAKA DAY PASS!!!) and get some orgazmo-fabulous sushi. whoever thought of duck and camembert on a rice ball should be on Iron Chef. seriously.
but wait! we're only halfway done! next time, we'll cover Sunday's Summer Sonic. so stay tuned.
