Blog - Lullatone / Watts Towers live report
Lullatone / Watts Towers live report
Last night was the occasional Watts Towers show at Club Goodman in Akihabara, and it was my first time seeing the band fronted by sometimes moustached widow, sometimes "studist" Kishino You-ichi (岸野雄一).
First was a set by Lullatone from Nagoya, who I also wanted to see badly. The unit is mainly that of Shawn James Seymour, who I first came in contact with years ago on the old mp3.com back when his unit was called Music For Nintendo. I'd have to dig out my MD player and Music For Nintendo MD to say this with more assurance, but I think Lullatone is more quiet and cute than MFN was. The show, accompanied with video, features Shawn playing his iBook and various electronic and toy instruments while girlfriend Yoshimi sings in a whispery voice and also plays some percussions. Shawn also MC'd a few times in Japanese.
Check out their album "little songs about raindrops" 
out on U.S. label Audio Dregs, or better yet, catch the label's tour tonight in Tokyo.
Next on stage came Watts Towers, self-described dreamy fantasic space rock opera. The large band features two guitars, bass, piano, two drums, and sounds to me like "Kichijōji rock" (a genre in itself in my book). At the front is Kishino-san who sings, tells stories and MC's almost non-stop. Jon the dog and Herumoso the rabbit ("impersonated" by applehead's Mayutan) joined a few times for dances! Jon also had brought its organ and played about two songs backed by the band.
One of my favorite Watts Towers songs was one about the rabbit who goes to line-up in the morning at a record store on sale day and buys expensive records to resell them on Yahoo! Auctions, but, not knowing prices too well, emails other stores first to ask how much they're worth. Not sure if it was the same song or a different one or some sort of interlude, but there was also one about the rabbit looking for a rare 7" forever and finally finding it for ¥100 but the record skipped, and trying to pass through the skipping part by putting a ¥1 coin, and then a ¥10000 bill, on the turntable's arm. Just hilarious!
Another one had Kishino-san talking about a kaiten-zushi where instead of a mini-conveyor belt was a turntable. He asked people in the audience what sushi they wanted to eat, and using his iBook he added looping samples of the sushi names, to a crazy result! You'd probably have to see it to get it, but anyway!
The show ended around 23:00. Took the train to Ōkubo (Korean town), ate bibimbap, and then walked back home. That was a fun evening, despite legs and back slightly aching from standing for about 4 hours.
Posted on May 6, 2006 at 15:11 | Tweet
|
Trackback
Comments RSS
Lullatone are married!
I kicked myself when I missed them in Nagoya. Sounded like a great show...
Posted by jariten on May 8, 2006 at 22:41
Oops, yes I knew that from reading it on Shawn's Mixi, but the old interviews persisted in my bad memory.
They sure are a very cute couple!
You'll probably have a chance to catch them again in Nagoya, where they surely play more often than in Tokyo.
Posted by Patrick on May 8, 2006 at 22:47