A postmortem on how promoters let a Blur gig in Japan slip away - The Japan Times

A postmortem on how promoters let a Blur gig in Japan slip away - The Japan Times

Well.  That's a shame.  I wasn't going to attend Tokyo Rocks anyway because I'm not a big Britpop fan in the first place.  I would have been more interested in the local groups.  On the other hand, I'm a huge supporter of music scenes in general, whatever they might be.  Hip hop, noise, punk, classical, jazz, R&B, funk, rock, pop, avant garde and any of those hundreds of other genres and sub-genres I'm too tired of typing to type.  You know what I mean.  Just because I don't buy Blur doesn't mean I dislike Blur or disapprove of your enjoyment of Blur.  On the contrary, I celebrate it.

What we all need are more opportunities to see groups.  Those we already love and, more importantly, those we have yet to discover and fall in love with.  I know I personally need more opportunities to experience live music. My show attendance is way down.

Back when I was single and living in Athens, Georgia, I probably saw a show a weekend.  Perhaps a show and a half.  I can't even remember all the bands I saw because of various chemical brain alterations I underwent just prior to each and every one of those shows, but a short list runs a little like this:

Dreams So Real
Chickasaw Mudpuppies
The Opal Foxx Quartet/Smoke (I forget which iteration, maybe both)
The Replacements
Bob Dylan
Drivin'N'Cryin'
Violent Femmes (twice!)
Five-Eight (many, many times)
The Glands
The Possibilities
Harvey Milk
Melt-Banana
Fantomas
Jet By Day
Modest Mouse
Built To Spill
Weezer

And so on.  I'm leaving out roughly one hundred.  Since I've been in Japan, my show attendance has dwindled to once a year or less.  I've seen Melt-Banana at least six more times, caught two members of a great pop-rock indie group called Toy Missile outside Shinjuku Station and went to a five-band show at Club Metro in Kyoto.  That's it.  I don't really have anyone to go with and while Hamamatsu is a musical city, the venues tend to be small and I haven't put much effort into checking them out.

So, yeah, I've been slack.  Very, very slack.  Living in Tokyo or Osaka would probably help, but I haven't been able to make that happen and now I'm getting married and it's time to settle down.  I don't want to end up being one of those people who start saying, "Yeah... I don't really listen to much music these days..." though.  Music is too important to give up.