I meet with Jorge at about one thirty at NakaZ san’s studio, where we left his bass and my guitar on Thursday after the last rehearsal before the concert. Rikimaru san seems surprised to see us because we’re not booked on that day but quickly realizes that we’re only there to pick up our stuff. He’s stringing an acoustic guitar. He’s always doing something to a guitar. He’s a passionate guitar veterinarian. We’re opening the door and just about to leave when he tells us that apparently NakaZ san’s back hurts today. We all hope it’s not too bad. He wishes us good luck and we go.
It’s a pretty bleak day outside, with dark clouds and a bit of rain. The instruments and our bags feel heavier than usual. We go through the endless subterranean walkways that lead to JR Osaka and then we make our way to Nishikujo. When we get there I tell Jorge there’s no need to look up the place on the map on his phone because I remember where it was, but I obviously start walking in the wrong direction. We find the place, though. It’s next to the Manmaru, where we’ll hopefully have the time to have a drink or two with Ian after the concert, before we have to get on the last train home.
The Brand New Nishikujo live house has obviously been there for a long time. You can smell the music, and you can hear and feel every train moving above it, as it was built right under the railtracks of the JR line. At first you think it’s an earthquake, but soon you get used to it and stop even noticing it. NakaZ san is there, cheerful as usual. We ask him about his back and he says he’ll be okay. There’s a few people there from the other bands and the atmosphere seems pretty cool. I wonder how many of the other bands sound checks we’ve had to miss because of my morning classes. I love to see other bands’ sound checks.
We have a quick look at the stage. It’s deep, and there’s a platform and a barrier before it. I fear we might be too far from the audience when the time comes, but I decide not to give it much thought.
ILUMA starts their sound check. That’s Yoko san’s new band. She used to be the singer in Judy and Mury, which also had NakaZ san on drums, Nami on bass, and this guitar player who seems to be a really nice guy but whose name I’m sorry to say I can’t remember now. They broke up and I guess Yoko san formed ILUMA. I don’t think I’ve ever seen their drummer before, but the woman on the bass seems familiar, and I have definitely seen that guitar player a few times before. He’s really thin and even though this is just the sound check you can tell he really knows how to move onstage. He’s got a fake tattoo on his neck. Jorge tells me he’s surprised there’s so few tattoos in the NakaZsphere given people’s age and fondness for heavy metal. Yoko laughs a lot and tries her best to make sure everybody feels comfortable. I think they’re all a little bit nervous because it is the band’s first concert. They shouldn’t be. Their harmonies are really something, and the sound check doesn’t even seem necessary at all because they sound great already.
There’s a few young guys around and I wonder how old they might be. After you get to a certain age you just can’t work out other people’s age as you used to do. Now there’s only four possible ages: children, younger than you, about your age, and older than you. I’m guessing these guys must be orbiting around thirty, but humbly assume that I could be way wrong in either direction. I talk to one of them. He’s tall. He’s got a goaty. He’s wearing basketball shoes and an Orion Biiru shirt one size too large. He tells me the band had their first gig only last year, and that he’s new in the band and that he’s really nervous.
Yoko’s band finishes their sound check and it’s our turn. I set the volume on the Marshall at seven and the gain at ten, and the image of the Spinal Tap guys comes right through my head (“these go to eleven”), but once NakaZ san starts on the drums I realize the guitar has to be set even louder than that. It does sound okay, but it’s so loud I can’t hear my voice, which comes only from the monitor on my left. I wonder if it’s normal that you should only be able to hear your voice from one side, but I assume that the sound guys here know their stuff and that there’s probably a good reason for that. After the first song all three of us ask for more voice on our monitors. Jorge changes the bass amp and uses NakaZ’s instead (NakaZ is playing bass today with another band). Our second sound check song has both calm and noisy parts and we need to check that balance. After that the levels of the voices and of the different instruments seem more or less okay, but we decide to play the first part of another song, just to be sure. When the check is over we realize that we haven’t tried the platform as we should have, but that is the least of our worries now. I’ve sung horribly, I’ve messed up with the chords where I never would at rehearsals, and I’ve done really poorly at the more improvised guitar parts. I feel an urge for sugar. I have to get out of here soon. But there is one last band’s sound check and we’re curious about them so we still hang around a bit.
It’s the young guys band that gets on the stage for their sound check. I see that the guy with the flashy shirt and basketball shoes is their guitar player. He’s got about five pedals spread on the floor before him and he plays a classic Les Paul, red and yellow. That must be really heavy on his back, but I guess he probably doesn’t care much about it. The band is called Beyond Max. The singer sings and the bass player knows his stuff, but they’re all a bit hieratic and they keep their eyes on their instruments. I wonder if they’ll do too when the time of the concert comes.
Jorge and I are now at the seating area of a nearby Lawson, eating scones with chocolate chips and trying not to think about the horrible sound check. We’re doing our best to stay positive. We have about twenty minutes to kill before we have to be back at the venue for the briefing with the other bands, where everyone introduces themselves and says a few words about their band, and where the people at the venue tells us their rules. It’s a nice opportunity to try to give a good image of your band and get to know the people you’re going to be sharing the stage with. When, back in the changing room of the Brand New Nishikujo, I ask NakaZ san what time the meeting starts, he tells me it’s already over and everybody has a good laugh and I think he’s pulling my leg. I ask again and he tells me it’s over again. As it turns out, we’ve missed the briefing because I got the times wrong. Fuck! It’s the second time in a row, and both times it’s been my fault. He tells us it’s okay, but I feel really embarrassed about it and apologize to the guys from the other bands, who don’t really seem to care at all and are really nice to me anyway.
So the concert starts. There’s some young people of an indefinite age that have come to see Beyond Max, girlfriends included, and they color up the place a little bit in a refreshing way. The band plays more or less like in the check, but I feel that the guitar is too loud and I can barely hear the keyboard. I share that with Jorge and he agrees with me and I wonder if I should tell them about it, but I end up deciding not to.
The drummer starts the show with his T-shirt on, but after a couple of songs he sets his six-pack free and I guess that we all wish we could do that on the stage too. After each song the singer goes behind the guitar player to grab his bottle of water and the guitar player tells him off and asks him to put the bottle of water next to his mic stand instead and everybody has a laugh. Then the guitar player takes off his right shoe and pours some tea on it and has a drink from it. He says that’s something that everybody should do from time to time, but he’s not really convincing.
After Beyond Max it’s Spancall’s turn. In Japanese that would be スパンコール. We have seen some of their members around during the sound checks, and I’ve referred to them as the women dressed as Cleopatra when asking about them to other musicians. Some people really do put on a show for the concerts: heavy make up, nails, eyelashes, one-day tattoes, disguises, props, and even portable neon signs. I sometimes feel slightly guilty that we never do anything like that and I even fantasize with the idea of playing in a woman’s dress sometime. Spancall’s show starts with one of the Cleopatras on the keyboard. She plays Chopin’s Fantaisie Imprumptu and creates a great atmosphere with it. Then a second Cleopatra comes in and gets on the platform and bows reverentially and then goes behind the drums set, so I realize then that she’s the drummer. I’m sure I’ve seen her before with another band. The guitar player comes in. It turns out it’s ILUMA’s guitar player, so he’s doubling tonight, and I can see now that there’s a reason for that tattoo on his neck. Last, the women I’ll be referring to later as CatWoman comes in with an extremely tight red leather dress and a black cape that she soon loses and throws at the audience, among which I realize there are two or three little girls who are probably somebody’s daughters and who I hope are wearing earplugs of some kind, though I know they probably aren’t.
In between bands Jorge and I decide to break our own no-drinks-before-the-show rule and go get ourselves a can from the Lawson we had been to a couple of hours before. We find an IPA that’s only 4% and not 5% alcohol, so we feel a little bit less guilty about it. Somehow we end up talking about Metallica and he tells me that Cliff Burton —Metallica’s first bassist, who died in an accident after their third album was recorded— was really, really good.
We’re back in, just in time to see Jagabits, about whom we know nothing at all but that they are a three-piece act, just like us. A power trio. Drums, bass, guitar.
After Jagabits comes The glory A, which is a Ziggy tribute band. Ziggy is an eighties and nineties Japanese band that worked really hard to look like Guns And Roses. I don’t think I’ve seen The glory A’s drummer before, but I know the other members of the band, some of them very well. I’ve seen the vocalist play the guitar before with one of the various NakaZ san’s Loudness tribute bands, and he was really good. Now that I see him sing he reminds me of Bruce Dickinson from Iron Maiden, and he’s just as good at the vocals as he was on the guitar. The bassist is no other than NakaZ san, our drummer, and the person who organizes this event. As Jorge likes to say, he nails every note, just like a clock, as if he wasn’t human. And then on the guitar there’s Riria san, who we have seen on drums and on bass before with other bands.
In comes ILUMA. It’s not really my kind of music by they know their parts and their instruments and how to put on a show. It might be their first gig as a band, but you can tell that each of them is experienced. Again I wonder why nobody makes any mistakes and why we were given the closing spot of today’s show. At a certain point the guitarist plays a solo resting his foot on a monitor and I decide that one day, maybe when I grow up, I’m going to do the same thing.
ILUMA’s act finishes and now there’s no possible delays or excuses. It’s our turn. We get on stage. We set our phones and start recording videos before we forget, hoping the framing is at least not too bad. Then we set up everything: amp controls, pedal controls, cords, mic stands, setlist sheets, water, and then we wish for good luck. I make sure to put the melodica on top of my amp because the last time I had to pick it up from the floor and it felt really lame and looked bad on the video. I take a second to go to the bathroom and wash my face and wet my hair not just because I really feel like doing that for no reason, but also because I know that for the next thirty minutes I’m going to be sweating like crazy. We’ve just tuned our instruments and everything is ready. I feel there’s a fairly large amount of people at the other side of the curtain between the guys from the other bands who’ve decided to see us and their friends and I’m really hoping that we can give them a good time.
And then we play. We start with “Journey” and move straight into “Hysteria” and Jorge and NakaZ nail them but I don’t. In spite of my mistakes I feel that we sound great and move fine and that maybe we can do something decent here. The audience is really supportive and makes us feel good about what we’re doing. I say a few words and tell everyone that for the next song the bassist is definitely going on the platform so that Jorge has absolutely no excuses. Then we play “Buy Me a Clone” and I do the melodica bit and both Jorge and I get on the platform and I do put my foot on the monitor while soloing, just so that I can have something to tell my grandchildren some day. Then we play the slower songs, “Into the Ocean” first and then “Echoes in the Well” and the people in the audience are really responsive: you can see that they know when the choruses are going to come in and it even looks like they appreciate them, as if they had listened to those songs before even though nobody other than the three of us has. Then we play “The Enemy Inside” and in the first verse I mix up the chords: for a few seconds I’m playing A C and not C A, but Jorge and NakaZ and my voice manage to keep the song together so it’s not a big deal, and then the choruses work great with NakaZ’s backing vocals and I think the song ends up well.
Thirty minutes later we’ve cleared the stage, packed up our staff, settled, and we’re in front of a beer at the bar below the venue, celebrating, and wondering what it will sound like on the recordings we made and hoping for the best.
