I’m still blown away at how over the top Hello Kitty Puroland was. As I said before, I was expecting an excruciating day of rusty bumper cars and chiffon colors, but was shocked to find a technicolor Vegas acid trip instead. You’d have psychedelic Cirque du Soleil moments like this:

And then absurd battles with cheeseburgers the next:

Then there was this forest-themed toilet.

See that sign to the left? It’s pointing to an outhouse with a freaking ANIMATRONIC BEAR taking a dump! (While humming/grunting “Home on the Range,” no less). Don’t believe me? Checkit:

Apparently, in Kittyland, bears DON’T shit in the woods. Well actually, that’s not entirely true – there seemed to be some kind of bears-relieving-themselves-in-nature theme going on in murals on the walls.

Am I lying? And can someone please tell me what the hell that organ grinder monkey is doing?

We rented a car this weekend to take the kids to a farm in Chiba, but when it rained, we needed an alternative. My wife suggested Sanrio Puro-land, home of the Hello Kitty overload. “I know, I know,” she said, “but it’s indoors, ok?” Normally, this would be grounds for divorce, but I had a headache and my mother was visiting, so I played along.

I am SO glad I did. The kitsch was completely off the charts. Every inch was covered in syrupy cuteness. I was expecting to spend hours waiting in lines for run-down amusement park rides, but Puroland is basically shows full of glittery dance routines somewhere between a Vegas floorshow, a Miyazaki film and that friendly village in How the Grinch Stole Christmas. We were right up front, next to the unicorns and jugglers:

I was damn-near giddy, giggling as I walked around snapping shots of every little bizarre detail: Kitty dancers in black pleather mini-skirts; walls painted like library with book titles such as “Pyramids are our Friends” and “Is sound Pink?”; a forest-themed toilet with an animatronic bear taking a dump. Every so often I got self-conscious and though I shouldn’t find this place so fascinating. Then I bumped into a pierced-up gaijin punk, and we both gave a knowing nod. Now I understand why goths have their own day at Disneyland.

There were more than a few japanese teen goths at Puroland, too, but my fave was this guy:

More Kitty reports to come as I sort thru clips and pics. Goth day link lovingly relayed via Boing Boing

I haven’t stopped listening to the new M.I.A. record since I got it last week. Miss Arulpragasam represents one of my trends in music: globetrotting populists who make music on the fly and on the road (think Manu Chao and Diplo). She’s set her sights on becoming the spokesdiva of the 3rd world, and succeeding. The low-tech mix of worldbeat and old-school electro is as vibrant and seizure-inducing as her site and myspace page.

The video for Bird Flu:

Ping Magazine has a great interview with Richie Hawtin:
A lot of what we do with Minus stems from my kind of experiments with sounds, like what I did with the Plastikman albums. When working with sound, and as my songs don’t contain too much information, I kind of visualise them and place them in a three-dimensional space. For me, to fully understand how these sounds interact physically or in these virtual spaces is to go and see another artist’s representation: standing in front of a Rothko or walking around a sculpture of Serra, go towards his huge pieces of metal and get the weight of the situation. That enables me sometimes to formulate a musical idea. It’s a way connecting to our sonic expression…

Full interview is here

Hawtin also talks about collaborating with visual artist Ali Demirel, who mostly does the VJing and video work for Hawtin and his label minus, and blew the crowd away at Metamorphose this weekend. See some of Demirel’s work here.

Special Bonus, Richie Hawtin documentary:

Ambient devices like the Beacon to the left deliver information in a soft, subtle way. Think about a wall clock or speedometer – you don’t concentrate on it, but merely glance at it occasionally. Ambient Orbs do the same thing: relay information from your periphereal vision. They were originally designed to follow your stock portfolio (red = bad, green = good), but as Clive Thompson points out in Wired, they can be programmed to follow the weather, pollen count, sailing conditions in your area, or more interestingly, monitor your energy consumption.

Or you could just rock out to the Eagles:

Joe Strummer is all but dieified in the minds of many fans (even stronger among Fujirockers), and the new documentary about his life and career, The Future is Unwritten, will likely draw large crowds. And damn well it should.

I saw a little sneak preview of it the other night and was blown away. There are many Strummer disciples here in Japan, and I’m not one of them, but the guy deserves praise more than most rock stars, for sure (reasons could fill many more posts). And as a document of the punk movement, it’s jaw-droppingly great: amazing footage and editing, but always cutting back to friends and old bandmates sitting around a fire relaying their experiences with the guy. Joe himself does most of the voice over. Was afraid this would turn into a petition for sainthood (there are moments), but overall, director Julien Temple (the guy that did Galstonbury, The Movie) shows Strummer as a real person.

There are too many people and great quotes here to choose from, but for some reason a very stoned Johnny Depp shows up and sounds like a putz:

I keep waiting for him to shout “AAARGH!”

Spoon, are about the most consistently great band in indie rock. Little Keepon thinks so, too apparently, as you’ll see below. They had him and his scientist buddy walking all over Tokyo. How many places can you identify?

Decent Spoon profile in the New Yorker here. Stay tuned for Spoon and Keepon to reunite for a benefit in San Francisco for Creative Commons. All part of WIRED Magazine’s Nextfest.

Ran across this by accident today. No pun or play on words here. Nope, this is really what a sonic boom looks like:

I found the image and explanation HERE

Just uploaded a few vid clips from the Fratelli’s show at Shibuya AX last week. Reminded me of that wave pool I mentioned recently. Wow. Amazing what one iPod ad can do for your career, huh?

Japan’s love affair with ska, reggae, mambo and other Caribbean music is well-documented, but I’m starting to see steel drum bands popping up all over the place. Is it just me? First there was the Panorama Steel Drum Orchestra at Fujirock this year, and now the Caribbean Magic Steel Drum Orchestra from Trinidad & Tobago play next next week, and just this weekend a Steel Drum band played at my local grocery store – I’m not kidding:

A big R.I.P. to activist, bandleader and drumming virtuoso, Max Roach.

A belated R.I.P. to Manchester’s finest, Tony Wilson

Animator Yannick Puig creates a beautiful video for French band Kwoon, who incidentally make some lovely stuff themselves (come to Japan, come to Japan!).

More info on Kwoon here:
Kwoon on LastFRM: http://www.last.fm/music/Kwoon
Kwoon’s MySpace page: http://www.myspace.com/kwoonmusic

One of my favorite acts this year was Marva Whitney with Osaka Monaurail, Japan’s finest funk outfit. These guys do a note-perfect impression of the JB’s, and have all the moves down cold.

Whitney was in James Brown’s backup band, and she is still a show stopper. Check this out: that’s her walking in from the left - hard to see, but she trips on a wire and wipes out.

Then what does she do? Pops right back up and bring the house down, that’s what she does:

Here she is back in the day:

Here’s a quick video rundown of highlights from the last party at Fujirock’s Palace of Wonder 2007 area. The Sunday Night/Monday Morning party at Palace is arguably the best moment of the fest each year, because it brings everyone together: staff, press and many of the acts on the bill (Chem Bros, !!!, Kaiser Chiefs, etc) end up here drinking with the locals and regular ticket holders, usually till long after the sun is up (I left at 9am because it started raining, and it was still going).

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Here’s a few clips of the final acts in the Crystal Palace, a kickass tent on the Palace of Wonder grounds.

After killer funk DJ, Lincoln, finished his set, on comes Kwabana Lindsay, aka “Fiddler on the Rope”

Next up is Lil’ Fats and the Swingin’ Hotshot Party, a great Tin Pan Alley act complete with washboard percussion.

They had these costumes made especially for Fujirock (last time I saw them they were dressed as French Sailors from the 30’s). No vid of it here, but Lil’ Fats does an incredible Louis Armstrong impression. The crowd loved it. Here they formed a conga line:

A few glasses of champagne later it was the JVC Force DJs. This year they had a squad of American-style cheerleaders.

They’re spelling out “Arigato” if you didn’t catch it.

Amazing what short skirts and pom poms can do to a crowd (we’re dancing to the Bay City Rollers, ferchrissakes). Shouldn’t be surprised, tho. The JVC guys are the ones who brought the incredible Murasaki Babydoll burlesque team last year (English site here, Japanese site here).

A few more drinks and then it was off to the swing outside:

I still have a few bruises under my arms from wiping out like the punter in this clip. Then it was on to try to convince Fi from The Whip that she should climb one of the Palace sculptures for my own amusement. It doesn’t work.

That’s a wig she’s wearing. Most of us were wearing them since they were handing them out at the entrance.

Friend of a friend, Jerome Olivier, creates a beautiful Japan love story set in a coin laundrette.

http://speaking-pictures.com/coinLaundry.html

Interview with Jerome:
http://www.newvenue.com/archives/feature49/about.html

This is the only vid I got of the bizarre mummies-on-stilts I saw wandering around. If that wasn’t weird enough, they were being led around by some sort of sci-fi traffic controllers with blue LED flashlights:

The Palace or Wonder area has always been my favorite part of the festival. I’ll add more details later, but here’s what your confronted with upon entry:

Giant sculptures made out of scrap metal, trees made out of mufflers, freaks of all stripes and usually some kind of carnival act that revolves around pain and/or danger. This year it was the “Globe of Death”

That’s THREE motorcycles in there. Great cheap thrills. And if that wasn’t enough, the bottom opens up. I caught it as it closed.

Wicked video of Japan vs Korea B-boy battle teams fighting it out. Link via tvinjapan.com

Samm Bennett wears many musical hats: bluesman, avant-guardian, percussionist extraordinaire. He and his wife, Haruna’s project, Skist, is a dark and mellow affair. Here they are performing at Loop-line, a cool little gallery-cafe in Sendagaya:

Sequencers and percussion are the basis, but they also played bells, a jew’s harp even candy wrapper. Here they are using little electric fans for effects on the mic:

I want one of these drums Samm uses:

The HYPTYO message board says John Wesley Harding’s doing an in-store performance at the Shibuya Tower Records this Sunday (7/1) at 3pm. Here Harding sums up his career arc in one neat little folk song.

Dunno how many of y’all were (and still are) Bad Brains fans, but as they’ve reunited once again, I was crossing my fingers and whispering “Fujirock, please” ten times before bed every night in hopes of a visit to Naeba next month. I’ll still keep up hope.

Actually I’m surprised there hasn’t been more Afro Punk stuff in Tokyo. There was last month’s event at O-Nest with The Eternals, a good band who put on a great show, but c’mon - as much as Japanese kids love their punk and looove their reggae, who else better to give them both?

Back in the day:

The promoters at Smash have always had a soft spot for both Latin Rock and local talent, so I’m surprised we haven’t seen Copa Salvo on the FujiRock lineup, but I guess it isn’t too late.

Here they are rocking Quattro:

That’s the saxophonist from Ego Wrappin’ back there:

And the piano player’s a banger:

Mitsuyoshi Azuma is a bigwig at NTV (Nippon Telebi), one of Japan’s top broadcasters. He and his band, the Swinging Boppers, are entertainers in the classic sense, and possibly the country’s best purveyors of old-school rock n’ roll and R&B.

Their site

I mean, the guy is just a geezer salaryman having a blast, right? But he connects with young Tokyo hipsters in a way rarely seen. Too bad he performs only a few times a year. Their last performance sold out a month beforehand, but I was able to see Azuma-san perform with a trio at Club Quattro’s Orbit Blender event a few weeks ago. The only vid I caught was of Azuma breaking and fixing a string, but even this relays why people flock to his shows. Here he is playing jazz standards, his string breaking just as the vid ends:

Handclaps and the upright bassist take over during repair:

The crowd, unprompted, stays with him, keeping the beat:

String fixed (sort of), and Azuma plays it for laughs: