golden week world punk festival part 2
Crazy texas bodybuilder guys. They were on tour with old school burning-spirits veterans Forward. (it was said that world burns to death is like the American equivalent of Forward: bringing back the serious threat/danger vibe on the political tip). This was the end of their Japanese tour and they were about to do every American punk band’s dream and record an album in a Japanese studio. Their music got a great reaction from the crowd, but later I showed the singer around Kabukicho and in return he told me some of his war stories. And to me, the storytelling was even better than the rock music.
motherfuckers were just bum-rushing these guys the whole time. it was like The Alamo!!
Dude was not fucking around. yelling like some scary-ass gym teacher. "Drop and give me 20!!"
GAUZE
Gauze ruled shit as always. but this time i was in the eye of the hurricane. could not see anything ,and in between dodging bodies, just held my camera up all submarine periscope-style to take pictures of whatever was in front of it.
beer's-eye-view. funny thing is, it wasn't even my beer! i have no idea whose beer it was ,but this is what it was looking at.
I don’t have nothing new to say about them, except the crowd was so dense that there was no room for a pit. People just kept surfing back and forth on top of the crowd, unable to land. Here is a thing: Hadaka matsuri. The meaning is literally “naked festival.” It is really deep, traditional culture and really violent. Kind of like the Japanese version of Running With The Bulls. A lot of small towns and even cities still do it ? once a year. I never been but they say that all the dudes in town will pack into one room wearing nothing but traditional g-strings called fundoshi, and someone will throw a white wood baton from the rafters. Dudes will then make a HUGE CRAZY DOGPILE trying to grab and hold on to the baton. Whoever makes it out of the room and I guess past some kind of finish line is officially Da Man that year.
Anyway the shit is totally naked and writhing bodies of like 100 or 200 guys all going fucking nuts. And getting back to Gauze, I think they are a modern updated version of Hadaka Matsuri, and part of their appeal is they tap into this vein of pure old-school japaneseness. Like even modern dudes living in Tokyo their whole life have this subconscious urge to get their Hadaka Matsuri on and aren’t even conscious of it until they see gauze and wind up cannonballing through the air covered with 20 dudes’ sweat.
seriously!
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