I didn't know how to start this piece. Should I mention the beauty first or the ugliness? Japan are a strange, magical, lighter than air device, floating, hovering, just above global stardom.
They have more good ingredients than any band has a right to! The delicate asexual attraction of one called Sylvian, looking oh so cool in a pale suit, with sultry pout, dripping talent. His foil is the cruely mincing Karn on bass, throwing us offers we can never take-up and venomous licks from his unfretted instrument.. Looking like a toy soldier - beating a Tin Drum? - Mick thrusts bass(ic) reality down our throats, relentless as a New York super-stud! (Don't get too carried away - Ed).
Musically, this has been my gig of the year - the drummer sitting majestically on a 20 foot high scaffold, keyboards/- computer synth breathing a peculiar fire through the PA, an anonymous lead guitarist weav- ing chords into the structure with the precision of a surgeon performing an eye operation and the antics of the inseparable 'Twins'. Tonight stank of soul.
The set, a mixture of numbers from Gentlemen Take Polaroids and Tin Drum proved musically impeccable. And it's a relief to know even drummers on high towers, protected by the mantle of impending super- stardom, can break sticks and still carry the show.
Timelessness - the numbers from 'Drum' which is the LP of the year, if not the decade. The beauty that before was David is taken from his face and wrapped in vinyl caresses. A logical, cold but not heartless musical landscape has been presented, a place where souls can travel passing all barriers. Japan now are an Oriental painting come to life. Any critic who doesn't recognise this unique art must be bitching from pure jealousy! Japan on record, or on stage, are unashamed art. Sad that such ideal purity attracts dirt....
Words will never describe the feelings of this reviewer. If you're not convinced already, you never will be. . . Also, I'm typing this with a damaged fin- ger, the result of 'talking' with over-enthusiastic security staff. I tried to ask for a track list, I wanted the name of the guita- rist, I wanted to tell the band, personally, how much their music meant to me. And I was kicked in the face and nearly run over as the band sped off in their luxury van. Perhaps this is Japan's trouble. . . the fact that they carry all the trappings of stars, before anyone has told them they actually are! The hundred or so fans clustered around the stage door were treated abominably by bouncers and roadcrew. This was the most callous exhibition of heartless strength I've ever witnessed. The band, it seems, refused to see anyone, not even to sign autographs for kids who'd come from Scotland just for the gig.
I feel desperately hurt, because the visions of beauty have been soiled with the expected trappings of The Business. Tonight, a priceless gem - integrity - was plundered and raped. A group which I thought had escaped the confines and dictates of the industry, behaved as though they had Invented it! If this is their treatment of people who idolise them, Japan's reign will be very brief.
&emdash; VALAC VAN DERVEEN (Unknown Publication)
Created: 11/1/97
Modified: 11/1/97
Maintained by: Ashley Fletcher
nwc@nerosoft.com