The kids are on drugs. All of em. There is a plump Japanese guy sleeping facedown in his underwear outside the club. His plumper, slightly-less drunk friend begins slapping him in the face to wake him up, slurring some insults in Japanese. He begins to take off his friends shirt and rub his belly.
The club is called Buttobi, which translates loosely to “going off the rails.” It is something like a budget hostel meets a punk squat. This is the club I will perform at in five minutes.
The aftermath
There are those gigs that should just be written off as a “drive by”. That’s right. You just slow down the van in front of the venue, take a peek at the bleak club, and keep on driving. Never look back. Burn a bridge with the promoter. Don’t bother getting paid. Drive by the gig. It ain’t worth the pain. This was one of those nights. The perfect cocktail for a drive by: shitty PA, no pay, drunk rave kids with no cash to buy Merch, and a massive language gap.
To prep for the show, I take a nap on a street bench. I am shot. Jet lagged. Newly single and alone. There is a bone-crushing loneliness to Asia that trumps all other forms of loneliness. Almost no one speaks English and life moves at lightning pace. You are invisible amongst the millions. It is life on mars.
But I’ve come too damn far to throw in the towel. I’m in Japan! Playing here has been on top of the bucket-list my whole life. I don’t care if I’m playing for 18 drunken psycho Japanese delinquents, it’s going to be worth the story.
The 18-year-old promoter informs me that there will be no pay tonight. Something about that didn’t surprise me.
The PA is completely shot. The wiring is all fucked up, power keeps going out, and the guitar tone sounds like the Fischer-Price acoustic starter guitar I bought with my McDonald’s allowance when I was 14. Must persevere. I decided to just plug into the guitar amp and turn the distortion on full-blast.
“Ahhhhhhhh!” the hammered Japanese chaps start to freak out. At this point the mic stand was falling apart, so this mop-top dude just grabbed the mic and started holding it for me. He was singing along right in my face to some song he’d never heard, in a language he didn’t know. For only a split second, I thought we were going to kiss.
Meanwhile, a girl standing 4’4’’ is peaking on lsd right in my face. She is twitching with her eyes crossed. Is this good? Is she going to pass out? She looks happy. I think this is good. I’d like to believe it was my freakish guitar playing that made her see God, but it might’ve just been the drugs.
A giant sumo looking guy has isolated himself in the corner doing a rain dance. He is ten beers deep and he’s still their best option for a ride home.
Amidst the mayhem, I look down to find the promoter at my feet, unplugging shit from my guitar-pedal-board. I squeeze his head with my hand and try to signal for him to leave it alone. English isn’t working. He rips out a plug that eventually shuts off the guitar, leaving a violent buzz in the speakers. I think he was trying to turn up my volume (god bless him) but he just ended up almost getting kicked in the head by me. I plugged back in, started playing, and the people immediately started jumping around like the true liabilities they are.
To my right, there are three tiny Japanese girls double fisting 20 oz beers. They have built what appears to be DIY bleachers out of some tables. They look twelve but have to be at least 26. Their craftsmanship should be celebrated for decades.
The room is completely disjointed, people raging in all directions. At this point I just ditch the spot on the floor I called my “stage” and started walking around on the couches, playing grunge riffs with Cobain levels of dementedness.
Ditching the acoustic tone and going full grunge has scored me scene-cred with the Japanese youth.
The people are freaking out. Is it the drugs? Is it my billboard chart topping acoustic punk songs? Whatever. Things are going in the right direction. Six minutes ago I was crying over my ex-girlfriend on a cold street bench in Tokyo. Now I’ve become a cult legend to at least three unemployed 25-year-olds that don’t know who the Beatles are.
I cut the last eight songs from my set and finish with a razor-tight, 15-minute, four song set. Leave the people wanting more, they said.
With anything, there is a point when you have to relinquish control. Just let it all go with good intentions and let the universe dictate your fate. I realized I probably wasn’t going to sound good in that room, so I just stopped trying. I need to do this with other aspects of my life. Just let it go. I try too hard too often and I just end up being disappointed and anxious. I don’t wanna do that to myself anymore.
Tonight I had fun and the people followed suit. Fun is contagious. Gotta remember that. The victories are often small and not so obvious. We have to find them under a microscope sometimes. They are under our nose everyday. We can close our eyes from the mayhem and just breathe in the sweet tiny victories. They might smell like butter, or coffee, or stale-beer on a hardwood crusty floor in Tokyo.
Am I getting anywhere? Maybe. Am I cracking the Japanese market? Maybe. Maybe not. Am I on my way to some nuanced form of underground success? I am if I tell myself that in my head. I think that’s all I need tonight. For myself to be nice to myself in my head. Tiny victories.
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