A documentary film: Live From Tokyo – Tapping Into the Tokyo Music Underground!

Date: October 29, 2010
Venue: Asia Sociey (NY)
Presented by Asia Society and New York-Tokyo

Text by Jim Hoey

What first caught my eye about the film Live From Tokyo was the mention of these obscure Japanese bands that most people I meet from Japan have never heard of: Kirihito, the Boredoms (or one of their side projects) or eX-girl. Float these names to your average Japanese visitor in New York and you get a blank stare or some polite response, just like if an American visits Tokyo and some crazed Japanese music-obsessive with a knowledge of enough English starts to ask questions about Lightning Bolt, Sonic Youth, Fugazi, the Minutemen, or Faith No More. The average guy on vacation is just like, “Sorry man, I don’t know those bands”. And if you meet someone who DOES, and YOU are the obsessive, you have an instant connection and end up in a long conversation about what’s new and on the way up, and you feel good exchanging information that has yet to permeate the further layers of the cultural experience elsewhere in the world.

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This movie is like that conversation.

When my ex-girlfriend from a few years ago introduced me to Seagull Screaming Kiss Her Kiss Her and Romantic Gorilla and other Japanese bands, I’m sure I had the same look (“I don’t know this music, what are you getting on about!”), but when you hear some of that music from a different place for the first time (especially when “western” rock/punk trends go east), you get hit by a twisted-up re-alignment of energy and structure: old forms re-interpretated and/or imitated are shot back at you full-force with abandon and originality.

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I made it to the world premier of Live From Tokyo Lewis Rapkin’s first documentary film about underground music in Tokyo, and I sat with the sold-out crowd at the Asian Society Center theater, ready for a glimpse of some part of a “scene” all the way on the other side of the world. I happened to be sitting directly in front of his parents and some of his friends, and I caught the strength of the hometown crowd. What I didn’t expect was that this director would be fairly young (24), yet so adroit at putting himself in the right place at the right time, and then so good at stepping back and letting the music and musicians speak for themselves. Fresh-faced bands that had recently played their first shows mix with older, more worn veterans of Tokyo’s nightlife onscreen, some working their way from jam-packed-rooms to bigger venues, others toiling at the same old spots.

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Watch more of the highlights from director Lewis Rapkin’s post-screening Q & A at Asia Society New York (4 min., 32 sec.)
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Amidst all this, Rapkin uses an enveloping mix of shots from around Tokyo to emphasize the point that many of the musicians make in the film about the constant force of incoming energy that people in Tokyo experience in the form of multimedia advertising, traffic, overpopulated streets, the glow of neon day and night, and new music from abroad. The perspective of a number of native musicians is that the Japanese are experts at embellishing and innovating, tooling with, and adding their own voice to styles that started from other places in the world, taking in the influences that are unavoidable to create new and idiosyncratic kinds of art and music.

Rapkin adds amazing sequences, some digital, some claymation or stop-photography, to segue between interviews with band members about how that music came from the environment of Tokyo, with the soundtrack of the featured bands as background music.

The 19 featured artists include Para, an ex-Boredoms jam band psychedelic unit, DMBQ, blues-drenched and balls-to-the-wall histrionic Jap-rock, D.V.D., visual art/electronica who are amazing for their synchronization of sound and light, Kirihito, the duo of classic experimental noisemakers who have been around since the 90’s,Optrum, who feature the homemade fluorescent light bulb instrument that translates sound into noise, via effects pedals and amps, backed by a drummer that shoots laserbeams from his bass kick (yes, that’s laser beams!), Ex-Girl, twisted all-girl J-Pop indie punk, Zoobombs, more direct high-energy rock, The Lady Spade, 007-themed all-girl synchronized dance band, short on irony, high on flash, and Tokyo Pinsalocks, all-girl retro-synth heavy dance pop, among others, (all of which can be found, with raw footage not available in the movie, at www.livefromtokyo.net.)

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Rapkin filmed in Tokyo for only 8 weeks, but he went with an understanding of what the city has to offer, and the film he made is just that: a cross section of the music that was happening at one time, emblematic, but by no means an exhaustive retrospective of all that was taking place. And it was completely true to its name: Live (only) from Tokyo. I was hoping to see a few rare videos of my favorite band from Osaka, Afrirampo, a female duet of drums and guitar, but alas, it was not to be found therein. They weren’t there at the right time to make it.

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That’s also one of the draws of this film, it’s a portrait of the underground, in a moment, and the snapshot you get is just that, profound, comic, quirky, and dignified too, in its portrayal of independent musicians doing everything they can to make their art.

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Although the film hasn’t been picked up yet for distribution, Rapkin did recently screen it in San Francisco, with a live show simulcast from Tokyo afterwards. According to Rapkin:

“The San Fran webcast was really cool. It was a hell of scramble to make it work – insane language barrier and time zone barrier trying to organize it and make sure the technology worked. Many skypes/email at like 2am for me. I was in NYC, we had a friend from GoForALoop gallery helping us in San Fran and then Takehisa Ken (from Kirihito) and the guys at Forest Limit (venue in Tokyo) helping. We had Kirihito, Yudaya Jazz, Sajjanu and Onna-Kodomo performing in Tokyo for the audience after the LFT screening in San Fran (and a bunch of other people from around the world tapped into the feed). The artists in Tokyo really put together a great program, the VJs integrated visual art with a multi-camera shoot of the bands performing.

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“It was a real testament to the power of technology today and I think most in the audience had that feeling of stepping back and saying wow the internet is amazing these days… those dudes are in fuckin’ Tokyo and it’s 2 in the afternoon TOMORROW for them. We had never done anything like that, and to have this sort of thing happening on the grass roots level was really great. I mean, this isn’t like simulcasting the World Cup. I was on skype with the guys in Tokyo during the Q&A so they knew when to start performing and it was the first time some of the artists in Tokyo had ever performed “live” for Americans.

“It’s a format that I think will continue to be exciting as people start using it more and more. The next step is being able to simulcast artists from the States back to Tokyo. It felt very 1-way, and with so many artists/musician/creatives in the room in San Fran it felt like we wanted to give something back to Tokyo as we were watching. I’d really love to put on an event where the bill is shared by bands in different locales. A band in Tokyo plays and then one from San Fran, and back and forth. Hopefully we can make that happen in 2011.”

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The next screening of Live From Tokyo is in Schenectady, NY on Jan. 25th at the music center at Union College.
For more information, click here.

About this film

Director: Lewis Rapkin
Producers: Lewis Rapkin, Ian Sotzing & Eric Mintz
Cinematographer: Ian Sotzing
Running time: 79 min.
Release date: October 29, 2010 (USA Premiere-Asia Society, NY with director Q&A)
Genre: Documentary and Music (HDCAM)
Language: English
Film locations: Japan and New York

About the director

Lewis Rapkin is a NYC-based filmmaker and musician. He has worked on documentaries for PBS, HBO and is currently editing a TV series for the Discovery Channel. As a musician, he has worked on soundtracks for industrials and short films and has composed the original music for Live From Tokyo.

DooBeeDooBeeDoo NY

DBDBD NY – cross-cultural on-line magazine – believes based on the view that music and community are indivisible that a social awareness can be fostered through music.

A documentary film: Live From Tokyo – Tapping Into the Tokyo Music Underground!

This movie is like that conversation.

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About the director

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