So the weather over the past few days has been pretty awful. Yesterday it was rainy all day, but it was also incredibly windy. Garbage cans were overflowing here with broken umbrellas. Today, thankfully, is a beautiful day! I`m going to head over to Shinjuku after this and eventually we`re all meeting up at 11 for a ridiculous 6 hour all you can drink Karaoke.
And last night… wow. I have never in my life seen fewer people at a concert. When we got there at about 10 minutes until start there were literally 10 people there (I counted). When Melt Banana started there were 20. At the peak of it all there were no more than 70 people. The venue was also the smallest I`ve ever seen, much smaller than Cat`s Cradle, much much much smaller than The Orange Peel, and even smaller than Asheville Music Zone (whoever remembers it, at least). Melt Banana played their little Asian hearts out to those sparsely spaced 20 people though. It was cool there were so few people as it meant it was extremely easy for me to come 3 feet from the band on stage, grab a setlist afterwards, and talk to the lead singer who informed me that they don`t ever headline in Japan. This makes sense, as I remembered right afterwards reading about how incredibly unpopular they are in Tokyo and how they draw much larger crowds in America and Europe.
The other 3 bands were classic doom and gloom metal. ”Breakfast” had the craziest fans. A group of about 5 or 6 guys with long hair dressed in black flailing around insane like I’ve never seen before, punching and kicking the air, running in circles, falling on the ground. This one guy’s shoe came off and he didn’t skip a beat, he threw it in a corner and continued flailing. It was an awesome spectacle. The headliners “Doomriders” were American and every bit as lame as their name sounds.
Here’s a picture of me taken with my cell phone in Shinjuku with “Gatchapin!” I had no idea at the time who or what this was and I still have no clue.
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