A trailer for Live From Tokyo; a documentary from Director Lewis Rapkin about the underground music scene in Tokyo, Japan.

You can tell where the venue is because through the layers of wall and door, concrete and insulation, the bass always rings true. Across the street, a salaryman heads out of the Family Mart already enjoying his late-night snack of onigiri and Kirin. He peers over at you, squints and tries to remember when he was young enough to brave the cigarette smoke and stale beer smell – not to mention the days of ringing ears that you anticipate with a self-destructive smirk.

You plunk down some yen and receive two tickets; one for admittance and one for a “complimentary” beer from the bar. You hand off the first ticket to the bouncer. He accepts it with a nod and pries open the venue’s door. What’s inside could be anything; a revolving representation of musical genre and talent. The sound is deafening as the door swings open.

That’s how I felt walking into various venues in and around the Kansai music scene during my all-too-brief time in Japan. More often than not I’d head into a venue completely unaware who I was going to see or what kind of music I was going to hear. I didn’t care. Whatever it was, I thought, it would be something I’d never heard before.

I was always right. Some nights there were post-punk bands. Some nights I’d walk into a wall of rhythm and blues with hip-hop lyricists. There was ska and jazz and ska mixed with jazz. The heavy metal nights were my favorite though it’s hard to recall much of them through the boozy haze.

Yet, as diverse as I found the Kansai music scene to be, it no doubt pales in comparison to the frenetic generation of musical ideas bursting at the seams of Tokyo. At least that’s what the trailer for Live From Tokyo (above) leads me to believe.
Read More »