This evening I went along with Chris to Damians street gig in Shibuya – he’d negotiated the Yamanote line with his box and drum, including a hairy juggling moment attempting to pass through the barriers out of Shibuya station.
The other half of his band was there already, and mostly set up, ready to go. They started with the singer alone, playing acoustic guitar too, then Damian joined in on his drum. Musically rather more folk than I’d normally bother to listen to, but it was interesting to have an excuse to be there for a bit.
The people behind the manga stall next to the band kept sweeping aside the crowd the band were drawing so that their punters could get to the table.
There were some rather enthusiastic flyerers who had managed to thrust a leaflet into the hands of a passing old lady who happened to be moving past slowly enough she seemed to be a part of the crowd.
After the second song we decided to make a run for it, leaving Damian drumming away, and headed up to Criston Cafe. Damian caught up with us after he’d finished beating his drum, and regaled us with tales of his conquests here.
Damian, if you can imagine it, is rather like a scale model of Dwarfy Mike, in character if not appearance. Except, its a Mike from a parallel universe where he’s recently discovered cute Japanese girls.
“Come meet my friend at this little blues bar just around the corner from here” – we were lead through the streets of love hotel hill, down a little alleyway into a basement bar. A little confusion ensued while the drum was stashed and a table was cleared in the corner so the strange westerners wouldn’t cause too much discomfort for the regulars.
We meet Damians friend and her friend, who was a dentist who had spent some time in the states but confessed to not understanding English English. He did well though.
A little while later the band started playing, their singer seemed to have a disproportionately large head but had a good voice to go with it so it wasn’t a problem.
It became clear that it was a bizarre karaoke night, as they gave us a well thumbed book of songs (published by the Zen-on Music Company) with an index in Katakana but words in English (or hiragana for those in languages other than English). Every so often someone would leave with the book and return a few minutes later with some photocopies of the pages of their song for the musicians to play.
Damian got up to sing Daydream Believer, which went down very well with the regulars, as much because he was joining in as anything else. When he’d finished it was time to head home – before they tried to pursuade me to join in the singing, there’d be nothing I’d like to sing there.
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