I just spent my second night this week at this wonderful little jazz club in takadanobaba (affectionately dubbed 'baba' by us gaijin), called "the intro." I'm gonna write a long blog about it soon, but I want to tell you all about it--this will be the draft for my blog. I just got home (and have a belly full of beer) so I want to write this down before it fades. But this message just got really really long so feel free to skip through if your bored.
I absolutely love this little dive. It's a dim, narrow basement room-- cozy but not dingy, warm and smoky, but not stuffy, and close to the action, but not too loud. The place is packed with musicians. It only fits about 15 or 20 people, and all but 5 or 6 of those were musicians. The bartender/manager/#1 sax sets his beat up brass on the counter to serve drinks in between his sets. His name's Inoue--he's portly and bespectacled, cheerful and mild-mannered, and he wore the same beat-up "california" sweatshirt tonight and last Thursday. But when he picks up his instrument he really knows how to sizzle. The he has a list of names, sorted by instrument, and each time a new player squeezed through the door, a name got added. Inouesan assiduously manages it, putting together sets. Every fifteen minutes or so they rotated.
Today I asked if I could make a request--"Song for my father." I asked if he knew of it and he thought for a minute, then nodded. As Inoue pulled out a floppy, dog-eared songbook, the lanky drummer I was chatting up at the bar--Tohru--turned and said, "Ah, fazzah... Horasu Siruba, ne!" (^_^) So after a little while Inouesan and this fresh-faced young American sax player from New York--David--stood up in front of the songbook and played the chorus four or five times in a slightly stiff, stale manner. I started to think, "oh gosh, they must not get requests much--what have I done?!" But of course, they were just getting the melody down, letting it sink in. Because, after one of these reiterations, Inouesan, without skipping a beat, busts into a solo, taking the melody and running with it. Maybe I imagined it, but I felt like the energy throughout the whole room picked up, like Inouesan was outdoing himself just for me. He was so wonderful--I really love his style. There were probably four or five different sax players tonight, but by far Inoue is the highlight of the show. One of the sax players was a little too smooth and predictable, another had great precision and breath capacity, but played really fast and a bit rough, not alternating his tempo enough to remain interesting. He had wonderful Bowie hair though, and a bitchin black leather jacket (^_^). The other sax player--the kid from NY, who happens to have a sort of James McAvoy thing going on--was impressive, but in his solos he tended to get stuck in loops, which is always a shame. But Inouesan--I don't know how to describe it, but it's like, the way he plays, I just get sucked in and not a single note seems out of place.
Thurs. night I discovered the place while out with an acquaintance I had met at a party a few weeks ago. I knew the neighborhood--takadanobaba-- was famous for good jazz clubs. Just a couple weeks before I had come across an American sax player in Yoyogi park who swore by The Cotton Club, which is one of the pricier joints there. When I met my friend at the station, he asked me where we were going, and I realized that I had kind of assumed we'd just stumble upon something. Luckily we did, after about five minutes of walking. A sign simply said, "Jazz," and pointed down a flight of stairs. We heard an enthusiastic drummer as we descended and approached the heavy metal door that leads into the tiny club.
We arrived at about 6:30 and they were just setting up. For a while it was just us and the band. I doubt more than eight people came in the club that whole night. It's a spare group on Thursdays-- a couple college kids, the owner (who plays drums and looks suspiciously like a yakuza), and Inouesan, although an impressive trumpet player came in around 8pm. A slightly disheveled businesswoman in a skirtsuit sat beside me at the bar, and after some time she took out a sketchbook and began drawing the performers. A few businessmen ambled in around 8 or 9, regular salaryman types, but you could tell they 'got' the music. The vibe was relaxed, but the music was fast-paced. The college boys played with a kind of intensity and energy that was different from their Saturday night counterparts. They had an easy camaraderie with Inouesan, and you could tell he is a mentor to them.
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| Hiro and I at the same club a couple weeks later. Not the most glamorous photo but it gives you an idea of the place--the other wall is just outside the left side of the frame! So cozy--love it. Walter (see "oh tokyo" entry for photo), a fellow angelino and avid jazz fan, is holding the camera. His girlfriend Steph (see "oh tokyo"), who also love Jazz, is behind him at the bar. |
Tonight the group was much bigger, and with more musicians, the dynamic changed a lot. Not only did the musicians seem to barely know each other, but they were playing for each other, where Inoue and the college boys seemed to just be playing for fun. Tonight Inouesan was pretty busy, giving people directions, telling them who was playing next, scratching and scrawling on his list at the tiny bar. One of the players, a bassist with unfortunate aspirations to the avant-garde, kept dragging out his solos to ridiculous lengths. By the third time he'd done it, even the super-polite Japanese people around him were pretty impatient. In america someone would've thrown a beer bottle at him, I'm sure, but I think the most overt sign of displeasure was a grumble or a snort from the audience... although the pianist was practically hitting her head against the piano-lid! The boy had really pretty hair and a nice face, but that's about all he had going for him. Thursday night's bassist did impressive solos, was even younger, and also had cool hair, but wore a hipster hat on top of it all. The comparison wasn't favorable. ^_^
Tonight I dragged along Dan, one of my only American friends who weathered the quake, and met up with Takashi, another person I met at the Sakura House party a few weeks back. Takashi and I have done some conversation practice sessions at cafes in Ikebukuro--he's very amicable and speaks great English. I hope we'll be friends for a long time. It was fortunate that Dan really hit it off with Takashi, because that fun drummer, Tohru, sat next to me for a couple of hours, and after beer #1 my Japanese skills were getting pretty good. (^_^) I was really on a roll. We talked about all sorts of stuff. (Tohru: "Who are your favorite musicians? Do you know In-ton Maruserisu?" Me: "Oh, Wynton Marsalis! Yes! And I really like when Baado--Chyaari Paaka--plays with Dizzy Giresupi--do you know of them?" "Ah, yes, they're very good aren't they!") Plus, he must have been speaking slowly and/or clearly because I understood almost everything he said. It was really nifty. He actually said that Tokyo's summer jazz festivals are a little overrated, but gave me the names of some good clubs like "Intro" that are fairly inexpensive. I gave him my phone number and he said he's gonna come to a picnic I'm having on Thursday, and maybe karaoke some time next week too.
So all in all I had an awesome evening. I remember thinking how unbelievable it was that I was chatting up these really cool guys in fairly fluid Japanese in a cozy little hole in the middle of Tokyo--I bet six months ago I wouldn't have believed it! Haha I can't wait to go back again. And the best part? I spent the first five hours of my day doing intense Japanese study and volunteering for tsunami relief. So, I'm on vacation, but I'm making progress too.
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