Japan Rock-out Tour!

For a seasoned rock fan, I attend very few shows. In fact, prior to my recent trip, the last one involved Iron Maiden in Montreal just about a year ago. Embarrassing, no? I have good reasons for this near-lack of rocking out, however.

Considering that this past year involved many an-80-hour week with my job(s) and my seemingly (?!) misguided decision to pursue a PhD, I've decided to reward myself with a visit to Japan. The latter was also geared toward getting my strong interest in that country's pop culture (music and film) out of my system. Alas, the opposite had occurred!

Three shows, three cities (Kumamoto and Hiroshima in the southwest and Morioka in the northeast), two bands (Buck-Tick and Sex Machineguns) in one week (!): Japan had the effect of viagra in my rock world! I shopped for records and visited the tiny, hole-in-the-wall, and all the more quaint metal bar, Godz, in Tokyo, the following week. Twice. On both counts.

Veteran J-rockers Buck-Tick deserve their own blog entry. So, I proceed with the second band, which I lovingly call "'Sexy' Machineguns".

Sex...Machineguns!

In light of Anchang's unfortunate tendency to replace band members, including the last stellar lineup with Panther, I decided to catch these mainstream power/thrash/speed/glam, comical, "shrederrific", and generally over-the-top metallers prior to any more drastic changes.



Picking a fairly little (300,000) town of Morioka in a northern Iwate prefecture was geared toward seeing the "Sexies" in an intimate setting - second row of a small, smoke-filled club, towering over the majority of fans. There was another unplanned benefit. Not only war Morioka gorgeous - with its rock-splitting cherry tree and castle park, but the Shizukuishi resort area and lake Goshoko were both pristine and almost people-free this time of the year.

The ticket was purchased at Lawson (a convenience store chain) prior to the trip, and seating was all-floor. I am unsure whether my being the only Westerner among the fans helped me push to the front without any problems. The band only played a couple of songs from their latest, Cameron, like the single Hitozuma Killer. So, I got to enjoy all the expected "hits", including total rockers like Aijin 28 and German Power. When he played the latter, Anchang, as cartoon-cute as ever, pronounced "Russian power" with a thick accent. I was tempted to point the finger at myself. "Come on...Canada kara kimashita! Roshiajin desu! Be impressed!", I mentally repeated carefully memorized lines.

The stage show was both highly entertaining and bizarre. All the members wore matching band jerseys and performed tricks throughout – well-choreographed and perfectly in sync. These larger-than-life moves, popularized in the 1980s, looked odd, yet dedicated on a small club stage. Anchang's solos both impressed with their technical virtuosity (more than anticipated!) and flashy visuals.

Sex Machineguns also had the tendency to play multiple songs in a row, then talk. A lot. Too much! Especially the rather aggressive, tiny Shingo ☆ with his all-too-silly blond spikes, which soon fell apart from sweat. Based on the band members' and fans' laughter, I'm sure these intermissions were very entertaining. I, on the other hand, knowing only a few polite words and numbers in Japanese, stood "looking like a ram staring at a new gate", as we, Roshiajin, say. A complete idiot, in other words. So, when Anchang described the fiasco with EMI Music Japan, I was very proud of myself.

While my lack of linguistic prowess was expected, the metal etiquette was not. First, just as the band performed in sync, so did the fans. They often chanted and gestured "Sex Machineguns". In sync. Yes, apparently, there is a pseudo-sign language gesture for the band's name. Second, specific parts of specific songs led to other (specific!) kind of gestures. Again, in sync. They occasionally headbanged too - from side to side only - no windmilling action there! I sure do hope that my traditional fist-pumping, horn-throwing, and full-on head-banging did not translate into, "This band sucks!", because I enjoyed the performance immensely!

Finally, the lack of scene insignia at a mainstream concert did not surprise me, nor did all the school girls in summer dresses. But, a grandmother with cotton balls instead of ear plugs?! This grandmother turned out to be better prepared than I was: I experienced ringing and muffled hearing for days after the show, despite my vast rocking experience. I am now very curious as to what the metal etiquette at underground shows is like.

Tokyo metal bar, Godz



Yasuyuki of Abigail / Barbatos / Cut Throat / Tiger Junkies / (live) Sigh fame (and sporting a very stylish BASTARDATOR shirt), graciously introduced me to the Tokyo metal bar, Godz, in Shinjuku. The latter operates from 7 pm to 5 am, has a decent record collection, and a giant TV screen. The drinks, however, are expensive. And, North Americans not used to smoke-filled environments, like me, will suffer!

As soon as I walked into this bar, I was impressed by the fact that many of its patrons looked like regular business people. The music selection, unfortunately, featured poor mainstream bands: Yasuyuki commented that it gets more underground as the night progresses. The choices seemed to have been indicative of the regulars and the bartender. One exceptional patron in a sharp gray suit and with even sharper cheekbones exhibited good taste with a Faith No More request. We, the fatigued representatives of kvlt, left prior to hearing our own, and thus did not get to "stoooop the chemical invaaaaaaasion!"

Visiting central Tokyo a few days later, I snuck into Godz again for one drink. This time, the bar met me with old school thrash blasting through the speakers and the new Iron Maiden documentary, Flight 666, lighting up the screen. So, I got to reminisce about last year's Toronto concert and my tortured article on "Rime"!

Memento mori: a canine obituary

Varg, the German shepherd, was my living-vicariously-through-someone-else pet-from-distance after the Big Move to Toronto. Fulfilling the sensibilities of a teenage metalhead, Varg, the discarded and unwanted shelter dog, was adopted and named after a controversial Scandinavian musician. When his canine namesake first met me and let me live, I knew it was love at first sight. (The latter concept is always possible with dogs and never - with people.)

Today Varg journeyed to Valhalla, where, I hope, he can now carry beautiful valkyries on his back. He may not have been a real wolf, but he was more than worthy.

Varg, the German shepherd (not the musician), was very militant (like the musician)...with raccoons and alpha-male pit bulls. Yet, at the same time, he was incredibly gentle with a certain small, but fierce dachshund. (...That is, after the infamous introductory paw-flip that sent the said dachshund up into the air and made him spin a full 360. Varg just didn't recognize his German Volk right away.)

The historian in me wonders whether (post-)industrial advancement, which, in part, completely sanitized death, has damaged our ability to deal with it. Having frequent, direct, and normalized contact with death, our European predecessors practiced memento mori. I, on the other hand, will just have to settle for listening to Buck-Tick's album with the same title and allow that band's dark humor make me feel a little less rotten. Deo volente.

"Varg-bit-hard". R.I.P., Varg.

Putin's pro-natalism meets format television

Close to the end of his second term, the now-former president Vladimir Putin publicly began to emphasize the severity of the demographic crisis in the Russian Federation. The media often describes Putin as the man who had brought short-term stability to that country through oil and gas revenue. Journalists also argue that his main goal is to reclaim the so-called great power status for Russia within the international arena. Yet, as Putin himself had announced, the state's efforts may only be sustained by a healthy population growth. (See my May-06 blog No Children. No Future.)

Instead, the opposite is true. After the collapse of the USSR, millions of ethnic Russians remained in the former Soviet republics - from the Baltic to Kazakhstan. More important, Russia's death rate (in part - a result of alcohol-, tobacco-, and pollution-related factors) significantly exceeds its birth rate. Combined with a Gastarbeiter-migrant flood from the former non-Slavic Soviet territories and beyond, the state became rather alarmed (its seeming lack of effort to repatriate those ethnic Russians notwithstanding).

It is not uncommon for the modern government to be actively involved in promoting pro-natalism, most overtly in an immediate postwar setting. (See Mary Louise Roberts' article "The Dead and the Unborn: French Pronatalism and the Abortion Law of 1920", for example.) A new state may also require a growing population to physically sustain its industry and mentally uphold its ideals. (See David Hoffman's Stalinist Values: The Cultural Norms of Soviet Modernity, 1917-1941 about state advocacy of strong, patriarchal families in the 1930s.) What, then, was Putin's solution to the Russian demographic crisis?

Most immediately, the now-former president's pro-natalist program involved various types of financial benefits granted to new and future mothers. While critics scoffed at the program's long-term effects, there was a spike in the Russian birth rate last year. Less obviously, the state has been attempting to construct and promote a new Russian identity through various means, including the consolidation of history teaching in schools. (One has to consider that from the mid-1930s and until 1991, Soviet schools taught a curious blend of ethnocultural patriotism and dialectic materialism. By contrast, many texts published in the 1990s went too far in the opposite direction.) Most recently, a plethora of blockbuster films regarding accepted patriotic subjects, including Alexander Nevsky and the Polish invasion of Moscow in 1612, has been released.

Yet, I wondered whether the state would use mass cultural methodology to address the subject of children more directly. And, it did!

While post-Soviet Russian television had borrowed much from its North American counterpart, including the proliferation of reality content, it also exhibits certain differences. For example, one of the most popular types of content to broadcast is a series, which is essentially an extended film with no possibility of a sequel. This format ranges from as few as four to as many as sixteen episodes. Expectedly, all such series are driven by plot and advertising alike. Here, Russia's "serious" film actors and A-list celebrities frequently play major roles. So, their star power combined with exciting, unrealistic plots, is capable of attracting a wide audience.

One such four-part series is Atonement - Starting All Over. Marta. (Искупление - Начать сначала. Марта.) - an over-the-top, sappy "chick-flick". Maria Poroshina (known to the North American audiences through her role in Night Watch and Day Watch) plays Marta. An attractive, successful forty-something, this woman evaluates her life: she recalls that success did not come easily: abandoned by her husband, she spent years in poverty. One of the ways in which she had earned money was through...........surrogate motherhood. Not once. Not twice. THREE TIMES: repopulating the early post-communist Russia one surrogate baby at a time.

Throughout the series, Marta and her best friend debate the pros and cons of being a surrogate mother and have endless discussions about the biological gift of motherhood and the joy of raising children. She searches for the three that she had once carried to term for other parents and tries to have a baby of her own. Most important, Marta reconnects with the prince charming from her past, who uses martial art skills (!) he evidently picked up in Soviet-era Afghanistan (!) to teach the bad guys a lesson or two (or THREE?!). The ending is, of course, very happy.

This particularly terrible example of Russian format television was created by a Russo-Ukrainian production and distribution company, Star Media. One of its major partners is Russia's most prominent state-owned television, the First Channel. The connection between such exaggerated case of pro-natalism is not only conceivable but also - likely.

Whether this type of mass cultural propaganda ends up contributing to the aversion of a demographic catastrophe remains to be seen. I just hope that the Russian state's next effort involves a better screen play.

Sex...machineguns!

Anchang. Sex Machineguns.

A clever man once proclaimed that he needed no instructions to know how to rock. I, on the other hand, need no instructions to know how to contribute to my illustration Rockfolio! :)