SOIL! SOIL! SOIL! SOIL! SOIL!

"We call it....... DEATH JAZZ"



This weekend I went to see Soil and Pimp Sessions in Shinsaibashi in Osaka, on the fourth floor of a building called called 'Big Cat'. I can't generalise to every gig in particular, but there were some pretty big differences between the times I saw them in the UK and here. *The crowd went nuts from the start. Not like Cargo, where everybody's way too cool for that and it takes a while to get going, these guys went from silent to crazy in a heartbeat like it was the best gig ever from practically the first note. *No one was really drinking. The bar was in the next room, and no one left to get drinks and come back that I could see. *I could see really well. I heard before I came that Japanese people are in general shorter, but I haven't found that to be the case usually, but at this gig, I could see perfectly over everyone's heads. Lucky! *No talking. I kind of liked this one. Nobody was talking AT ALL throughout the entire gig, even between songs. It was a little... eerie, but coupled with the next thing, *amazing sound quality, best of any gig I've ever been to, the music sounded reaaallly good, especially when they cooled out as they always do on 'Mo Better Blues'.


Soil and Pimp are much more chatty at home in Japan. They also seem to talk a lot of crap. I couldn't understand most of it, but at one point, Midori, the drummer, was going off on one with a stupidly fast bossa n breaks solo, and Shacho (the 'flava flav' guy) was like

Shacho: "hang on a sec Midori". (Midori stops.) "Sounding pretty good there. What did you have for dinner?" (?!?)
Midori: (In a gangsta sounding voice) "I had......... OMURICE!"
Shacho: "I see. So I guess OMURICE MAKES AWESOME DRUMMER!"
.......
(Midori starts again)

Oh also you couldn't take pictures, which we only found out when a guy came over to stop my friend taking them. (Which is why these blurry ones are all I have). Wish I could have taken better ones, but then again was really good not to be in a situation like back home with everyone just filming it on their mobile not really looking like they were enjoying it.


The tunes they played were really cool, but as always the ones off their first album were far and away the highlights. They haven't matched the quality of songs on that one yet - although the latest one, with tracks like 'Sabotage' came pretty close. (In fact an even more disco-ey version of Last Long off Pimp of The Year - borderline speed-lounge in fact, was kinda fun.) Oh, and for soil and pimp fans, the following was pretty cool:



The smudge in the middle is Josei (keyboardist) rocking out on a keyboardy guitar thing like this during the encore, a stupidly fast version of 'fuller love', which was fun in itself, but the smudge on the far left is shacho playing the piano backing! He wasn't amazing, but it's cool he's even more talented than a regular claves and egg shaker man.

The crowd was nuts though, jumping about like no ones business, finishing off with a girl with a back covered in a massive snake tatto riding on a guys shoulders to just in front of us to flash the band. All jazz should be like this.

Saturday I went to help judge a speech contest in Sanda, at a stupidly beautiful school. Seriously, it looked like a really nice villa or something (and not in a cheesy way) with elevated wooden walkways around a lake surrounded with tall trees, a tall tower.... man. Check out these pictures:



As we got out of the car, the school orchestra was practicing the theme from Phantom of the Opera, which added to the mood. I was reminded of how lucky I am with my school and my teachers, I went with my supervisor and another teacher from the department who's cool, and we had a real laugh, some of the boring middle aged grey suits who didnt smile didnt seem so fun.

In the evening, maybe as punishment from god for enjoying such good music the night before, eating in a pretty nice restaurant in Osaka with a friend, nice decor, soft lighting... and Craig David's album on loop? With a whole bunch of identical remixes of Fill Me In at the end? Why, Japan? Did remind me of high school though, which was okay.

Sunday I engaged with the nerd in me and went to the Nintendo World exhibition in Osaka where they were showing off the Wii.



Was fun, although the queues to try stuff out were loooong. We just tried Golf and Tennis and they were really fun. Even Casey who I was with who first thing she said when we got in was 'I can't BELIEVE i'm HERE' seemed to enjoy it. Kind of made me want a Wii, but been spending too much money anyway. Might give in and get one though.


It is getting COLD round here. I have an electric futon now though, which is the business. Things are more settled into a routine, I'm no longer OMG JAPAN at everything, which is kind of nice, but also you need to look a little deeper to find something a bit more. Hopefully it'll give me motivation to study Japanese.