JAPAN TOUR-DAY 5 Tokuzo, Nagoya Performance

Raining like Noah is building an ark. Waking up on and off as usual. I can’t remember how to sleep. Up at 4AM then reawake at 8AM. Check out is 10. We rush to get our crap packed, luckily most of the gear is still packaged up from last nights gig.

We manage to scarf down some breakfast and meet up with Mike and the drivers and photographer that will take us to Nagoya.

Relaxing but humid trek to Nagoya. The heat just sticks to you. You pants and shirt
always feel damp. The rest stops in Japan are great. I had eel. Very good, healthy food, no crapfood overload like at most reststops. Also these stops were very picturesque
I saw Mt. Fuji and the Pacific Ocean today.

Music listened to during the journey.
-Sun Ra Arkestra live in Poschiavo Switzerland-Uncool Festival
-Happy Mondays, Squirrel and G-Man 24 Hour Party People Carnt Smile
-Charlie Parker, Dial Sessions
-Deerhoof, The Runners Four
-Pink Floyd, Dark Side of the Moon
-Lee “Scratch” Perry, Black Ark in Dub

Got to Nagoya. Weird town. Energy is off. It is like a strange 1970’s Japanese Asbury Park, think Pachinko and massage parlors and you get the idea. We have to go right to sound check because of time.

We get inside of the club. Tokuzo is very nice. Extremely organized sound engineer. Good people. We set up and go to check into the hotel. The rooms are all singles, we get our room assignments-the place is tiny, I couldn’t find any info on this place, I assume it is because it is close to the club. I get into my room-it is about as big as my walk-in closet but with really strange angles-I couldn’t hang with that room, the energy was all wrong. I see a little window, so I try to think about making the best of it. I think I get some light and good energy into the space if I open the window, I open it to a brick wall. No way!

I check out Bob’s room, big double window, still a shoebox but at least a window-that room went out to the long street so it created space. He suggested I go and ask the lady for another. I will take his life if I am forced to sleep in that coffin.

The hotel manager or Mama-san of this evening “business-class” hotel wouldn’t budge. Yoshi was kind enough to trade with me. Thanks Yoshi, you have no idea how shitty my sleep would have been, especially to a person that is getting such poor sleep.

So I move my crap into his room-I can deal with it. Much better.

So what’s with the free kinky porn on two channels? This place is off .

Try to get settled for an hour. Bob came to my room, impressed that I was watching children’s cartoons instead of free porn.

Back to tokuzo. We played well, off to a slow start though. Marshall decided to play mostly keyboard. It is almost impossible for either me or bob to accompany marshall on keyboard. A couple times his finger slipping and hit a preprogrammed cycle of “what child is this”, me and bob settled in. it got better. I swear marshall does it on purpose to keep us from doing the same thing twice, forcing us to come up with something different, even if what you did last night was spot on. Well I have been listening to marshall’s cues better and we accompany each other very well when we finally get out of the keyboard loop.

Club is packed but not nearly to what is budgeted. How could they even fit into this club. Too late to worry about then now. We are here.

Nagoya, although I had a nice dinner and much beer at 11PM, I miss home today, and I miss Tokyo. Nagoya, you made me homesick tonite.

This town just has a strange vibe like some hick beach town with no beach.