Every so often at Urbanguild, you discover something quite rare and strange and wonderful. On Tuesday night it was ぼーぼーず (Booobooozz), two girls Y子 and K子, playing bass and accordion, with big hair and a rocking attitude. They totally blew me away! So there I was thinking: they really remind me of Black Sabbath, when they delighted me with this: I asked them to play … [Read more...]
“Children of Water” & Morphic Jukebox @ Jittoku
Last Friday I attended the Kyoto premiere of Roger Walch's new movie "Children of Water" at Jittoku. The venue was a legendary live house in Kyoto (Japan's oldest in fact) that has been open since 1973. Like the equally famous TakuTaku the building is a converted saka-gura - a kind of traditional sake warehouse. This was my first time to visit this fine old venue. Folk … [Read more...]
TakuTaku
磔磔 is a live house I've been meaning to check out for donkey's. This converted brewhouse opened as a coffee shop in 1974. In those days the master would spin a few discs for the clientele and there would be one or two live performances a week, but gradually the performances increased and it became the famous live house we know today. I was impressed to see the names of those … [Read more...]
Gnome
In Search of ... the Craic Part 5 This is the fifth and final part of a series of posts on Kyoto's Irish pubs. Earlier this month my friend David Ewen and I went on a pub crawl of five Irish pubs in Kyoto to see what they had to offer in terms of food, beer, music and the craic. Tonight's post is on... Gnome Gnome opened in October 2007, which makes it the newest Irish pub … [Read more...]
In Search of… Vinyl
I have previously written about the record shop Prototype, managed by my good friend Yoshida-kun but I've been thinking it's time I added a few more Kyoto record shops to the list. I asked friend and collector Nana H. (that's her on the left spinning discs at Joao) to give me some pointers and she recommended the following stores. Bootsy's A pure, minimalist store without … [Read more...]
Chigaihouken
治外法権 ("Chigaihouken" literally "Extraterritorial Rights") is a 34 year old rock bar hidden away in one of the alleys between Kiyamachi and Kawaramachi. The original and best rock bar in Kyoto, Chigaihouken is a bar for those who know that real men wear very very tight trousers and have their hair in long feathered perms. It’s for those of us who want to hear rock music so loud … [Read more...]
