michael lambe's scrapbook

Last December I went along to see the 軽音部 live performance at my school. 軽音部 (kei-on-bu) translates as “light music club”. Actually that’s a misnomer. What they are is a rock guitar band club. And they were pretty good too. I don’t know how many bands I saw play over the 3 or 4 hours I was watching (12? 15?) but I was really impressed. Even more so when everyone present started headbanging on mass. But there was one song that stood out. I liked the guitar riff. This song is pretty cool, I thought. Yet, though it’s in Japanese – it’s strangely familiar. I finally caught one of the guitarists in the school corridor today and asked her – what was that song at the start of your set? “How Do I Survive ?” by Superfly, says she. And this is it:

Sounds like the Stones, right? Actually, what it sounds EXACTLY like is the Dandy Warhols copying being influenced by a little bit of  the Specials copying being influenced by a little bit of the Stones’ Brown Sugar, with this song (which I won’t show here because this is a nice family blog but which I’ll link to for those of you who really want to see a chap getting his langer out in a bar): “Bohemian Like You” by The Dandy Warhols. Alternatively, if in Kyoto you could just go to Ing.

And yes that last sentence was deliberately ambiguous.

I went to see the Robert Doisneau exhibition at the Kyoto Station Art Gallery today and it made me want to live in Paris AND become a black and white photographer. Robert Doisneau really knew how to wait for the perfect moment and he knew where to wait too. Pure genius. Every picture is a fascinating character study of a person, or place, or relationship… or dog. Wonderful stuff. I was sorely tempted to invest in the book of the exhibition but didn’t have ￥10,000 on me. Probably a good thing. I’ve got too many books as it is. Anyway, I recommend seeing it if you’re in Kyoto. It continues until February 22nd and you can find it on the 7th floor of the Isetan building.

This month sees Deep Kyoto‘s debut column in Kyoto Visitors Guide. I’m hoping some of those 15,000 a month readers will be interested enough to come back and check out my site. Anyway, I’m getting name recognition and the editor has agreed to do a monthly guest column for Deep Kyoto in return so everyone’s a winner.

A short while ago, another Kyoto blogger Ted Taylor, told me about a music event at TakuTaku, a pretty famous live music venue I’ve been meaning to check out for ages. You can read about TakuTaku here. The event was Soul Flower Mononoke Summit and their guest Ainu musician Oki. Soul Flower Mononoke Summit is an acoustic offshoot of rock band Soul Flower Union developed after the Great Hanshin Earthquake. At that time SFU decided to help keep people’s spirits up by playing for them in the streets, and because they were in the streets they swapped their electric guitars for Okinawan sanshin and supplemented them with old-fashioned chindon style street-band percussion. They are obviously very popular in Kyoto, TakuTaku was packed, and everyone (young, old, families, babies…) seemed to know the songs, singing along, swaying, dancing, waving their hands in the air… A great night with good community feeling. Many thanks to Ted for letting me know about that one. You can read more about the gig and specifically Oki’s performance on his blog here. Here is a video.

If you like that there’s another one here.

Hurray!

Umm huh!
You wouldn’t forget him either if you
had met him where I met him
Talkin’ about desolation!
Desolation is a railroad station ‘roun’ about 2:00 am on a weeknight
When you walk into desolation like that
and suddenly, from nowhere comes a
warm song, you aren’t about to forget it.

Betty H. Neals (From Introduction to Theme for the Eulipions)

The other night I had a dream like this: a jazz band playing in a smoky old bar and one guy in particular playing sax and he is hitting all these sweet sounds,  and it’s soooo good, because of all the joy and the heartbreak in it and just being happy to be alive, him just happy to play it and me just happy to hear… How wonderful if I could sing or play like that I thought as I woke up tangled in bedclothes.

Then tonight, back in reality,  I’m on my way home from work, and I have this really strong urge to pop into Lush Life for a bit. I haven’t been there for ages. Not since Randy Weston was here. So I order a beer and the guy there puts on a Rahsaan Roland Kirk record and I hear the voice of Betty H. Neals talking about the Eulipions:

Listen!
Listen to his tune. Call’s it his “Duty Free Gift” for the traveller.
Like I said
This is the first time I’ve seen him at an airport.
I know he moves along the piers.
Calls himself a “Journey Agent”, a “Eulipian”.
Say his friends, the poets, the artists, the musicians are the journey agents too…

Betty H. Neals (From Introduction to Theme for the Eulipions)

Well, that got me interested. Who is this Betty H. Neals, I wondered, and who are these Eulipions? (And I still do, because I can’t find anything on her on the interwebs…) But back in Lush Life, the saxaphone starts playing, and I am looking out the window at the young people returning bicycles to the shop next door and they look like they’ve had a good day cycling round the city, even on a cold grey day like this, and I am thinking about how strange it is that I’m sitting here in a cafe in Kyoto, Japan, listening to old jazz records, and how weirdly normal that has become to me… What a strange and wonderful reality I’m living in I’m thinking… and then I think how really really strange it is that I heard this song before once, in a dream:

If there were so Sun,
You would have this Song
To give warmth and light
And to keep you strong.

I would make Love a Gas
Spinning ’round and ’round
And when meteors fall,
Love would reach the ground.

And this lady, and it is a lady mind you, is singing Betty H. Neal’s words like they are a hymn, all glorious and sonorous and spiritual. And despite myself I’m moved. So I ask for the album sleeve and I write every single last word down. And I’m glad I did too because you know what? You might find this in your dreams but it aint on Wikipedia.

If there was no Moon
To control the tides,
There would be these notes
As the sailors guide.

We would make Song the King.
Have all praises sung
Call the author of Love
A Eulipion.
(Betty H. Neals Theme for the Eulipions)

Two more posts have gone up on Deep Kyoto since last I wrote: Field and The Hill of Tara.

Here’s some pictures of Luka’s birthday party last Tuesday. He gave us all these cool little toys that whine eerily and shine a light when you press a button hence the strange lights in some of the pictures.

BubbleShare: Share photos – Easy Photo Sharing

Here’s some pictures of Osaka architecture and views of and from the Sky Building. I went to the German Xmas market there with M.T. on Xmas Eve.

BubbleShare: Share photos – Find great Clip Art Images.

Here’s an a capella band that performed at the Xmas market. They are called “Permanent Fish” a name so stupid I just love it.

Here’s a couple of videos from last night’s session at Woodnote. The first one is just a short clip because my camera ran out of memory, but I’d like you to take a look at it anyway because the fiddle player is really very good indeed. He also (bizarrely) looks kind of Irish.

This second one is longer, as I filmed it first and I think I overheard that it’s a Canadian waltz. Nice place this, full of softly spoken gentle souls, enjoying the simple pleasure of making music together. Just watching them makes me want to learn an instrument myself and I shall have to go back again for more…

Happy Halloween!
&
Happy Birthday
MT!

	Frank Sinatra – Witchcraft
	Found at bee mp3 search engine

Recently organisations I basically agree with have annoyed me by muddying their messages with bad propaganda. Yesterday, for example Greenpeace sent out a mail that read:

The world could eliminate fossil fuel use by 2090 — That’s what Reuters and NewScientist wrote today about our new Energy [R]evolution plan. We can beat climate change. And with aggressive investment in renewable power generation and energy efficiency, we can create a 360 billion dollars-a-year industry…. Please watch this historic video.

Sounds exciting, doesn’t it? So I watched the video and basically it was a pretty seamless mash-up of John F. Kennedy and (presumably) an actor’s voice giving a speech on Greenpeace’s projected Energy Revolution. I hate that kind of thing. It’s just poor taste to put your own words into a dead man’s mouth.  It’s disrespectful and it does the message a disservice. Of late Greenpeace propaganda has been irritating at best but this is a new low in uncool. I’m not even going to link to it.

Then today (!) Avaaz sent out a mail today that read:

Right now, desperate conservatives are employing the dirtiest of tactics in the US election — distributing millions of videos, online ads and fliers deceptively linking Obama with terrorism, deliberately inciting hatred against Muslims and foreigners, and creating a sense of global fear and suspicion amongst Americans voters. We won’t remain silent in the face of these negative and misleading global messages. That’s why Avaaz members from across the world have made a positive advertisement calling for change, which we aim to have viewed by millions of Americans before they go to the polls in just one week.

And I thought, “I could go for that!” If you look at what Sarah Palin has been saying in recent weeks, it’s definitely dangerous stuff. But they were being a little disingenuous.  I watched the avaaz vid and it was a pro-Obama propaganda ad pure and simple – nothing to do with appealing for an end to incitement. Not only that but it seemed to be claiming that America was the darling of the world, a country that never put a foot wrong before the dark days of Bush: “I can remember when America was headed in the right direction…”, says an American, and then other people from all over the world chime in with praise for the Golden Age of the America they remember they used to love so much: “you stood against tyrants and inspired us to dream…” blah blah blah. Well, I’m sorry I don’t remember it that way. That aint cool propaganda. You can watch it up here if you want, but I’m not posting it here.

This next link though is very cool propaganda indeed. I’d post it on the page but the player just won’t work. Click on either link and find some very cool and funky propaganda remixed by Tano Sokolow:

When Allen Toussaint wrote Yes We Can for Lee Dorsey in 1970, both men obviously knew what was to come in 2008, and felt the need to pave the way for young Barack Obama….Yes We Can! mp3
LINK

There’s a fresh post up on Deep Kyoto tonight of tasty cafe & bakery Le Petit Mec.  I’ll be posting something else French a little further down too, but for now here’s a picture of a Japanese otaku as drawn by one of my 1st year girls last week:

I guess お宅 (otaku) is usually translated as geek, nerd or even freak and this can be a good or bad thing depending on your perspective. For example, if I like comics and describe myself as a comics fanatic or manga otaku then I obviously feel this is a good thing. The girls who explained this particular drawing to me however obviously have less sympathetic feelings towards our otaku bretheren. He is an Akihabara Otaku they told me. “Look,” they said, “his pants are too short and too tight.” “He has hairs growing out of a mole on his nose.” “He has an unnatural love for the figure in his hand – more than he feels for any living human being.” (Yes, she really said that. Only in Japanese of course.) Let’s take a closer look at the figure in his left hand, shall we? They’ve written a helpful note for us, it’s a 涼宮ハルヒフィギュア – a Suzumiya Haruhi figure. Don’t know what that is? Take a look at these images, and then this song, and then this wiki. Like the fellow holding her in his hand, she lives in a parallel universe and has little interest in normal humans. She’s a heck of a lot cuter than he is though.

These kind of toy figures are big business in Japan, but there are some who are taking this mania and exploiting it for more artistic ends. Like this fellow Tei Ryosuke a creative designer and (toy figure maker) who has said (and remember he’s not speaking in his native tongue):

I don’t think that this is toy – only toy. …Now we have a new mania, it’s toy you know. So, we use toy design… and er change the media and send to world… and so many people show this, make happy, yeah? Link to (Dutch?) feature on urban toys.

Here are some figures he has designed himself (I especially like “mummy the rabbit”): LINK
So, you see, otaku can be artists too.

Tei Ryosuke is also an animator and here is a wicked animation he did for DJ Missill’s “Forward” which features (as all French electronica videos should) a giant guitar-playing robo-rabbit. Great tune too. LINK (via Pink Tentacle)

Listen to DJ Missill’s album here: TARGETS
Get DJ Missill’s album Targets from amazon UK USA JAPAN

Another great song from Michael Franti’s new album All Rebel Rockers. I’ve got this one on repeat mode. He always hits the mark.

Download this song as an mp3 or download the full album: All Rebel Rockers.

Order the album on CD from amazon JAPAN USA UK