The Japan Nite US Tour finally came to San Francisco! It has been going on annually for a successful 13 years, managed by Audrey Kimura. This year’s tour in San Francisco included detroit7, SA, SPARTA LOCALS, FLiP and OMODAKA. With Audrey’s help, we were able to go backstage to interview SPARTA LOCALS, SA and FLiP.

SPARTA LOCALS is a rock band from Fukuoka, founded in 2003. It’s a four-boy rock band including members Cousei Abe (vocals, guitar), Shiichi Idou (guitar), Mitsuhiro Abe (bass) and Takeshi Kajiyama (drums). Here is the interview:

Interview with bass player Mitsuhiro Abe from SPARTA LOCALS:
Skinni: Hello Abe san! Nice to meet you.
Mitsuhiro Abe: Hello. I am the bass player from Sparta Locals. Nice to meet you, too!

Skinni: What other bands are your inspiration?
Mitsuhiro Abe: I love dance music, Gang of Four, Cake, Talking Heads, punk…

Skinni: What do you want to say to Jpopexpress audience?
Mitsuhiro Abe: Hello, we are Sparta Locals, we play very exciting music, sweet songs, please enjoy the live show! On the plane to San Francisco is very cloudy, and happy to see the sunshine here! This is the first time we played in the US.

Skinni: Thanks a lot for the interview!
Mitsuhiro Abe: Thanks a lot! Please enjoy the show!

During the middle of the show, ‘the king of punk rock band’ SA shows up, and the whole scene suddenly turn into a hyper dance floor. SA has been rocking since they were 16 years-old, in 1984. It started at Gifu-ken, and their members include Taisei (vocals), Noaki (guitar), Ken (bass) and Shohei (drums). Here is the interview:

Interview with vocalist Taisei from SA:
Skinni: Tell us a bit about SA.
Taisei: SA is Japan #1 Punk Rock band.
(Audrey states, “yes, they are though!”)

Skinni: What other bands are your inspiration?
Taisei: All kinds of Punk Rock.

Skinni: What do you want to say to Jpopexpress audience?
Taisei: We love to visit more often to have a SA invasion!

FLiP is a teenage-girl rock band from Okinawa with 4 members: Sachiko (vocals/guitar), Yuko (guitar/chorus), Sayaka (drums / chorus) and Yumi (vocals). They spell their name using the small ‘i’ with the rest in capital letters because it looks ‘more appealing and cute.’ Here is the cute interview:

Interview with FLiP:
Skinni: Tell us a bit about FLiP.
FLiP: We are a 4 girls band for 4 years, our average age is 19.9 years old (^^)
We are FLiP from Okinawa (still live there).
Sachiko, the vocalist/guitarist states, “Usually people imagine girl bands are more toward to pop, but we want to form an oh-so-cool [and] strong band, at same time we want to have a girl (female) sound too.”

Skinni: What music genre are FLiP?
Sachiko: Rock but mixed [with other mediums].

Skinni: Why did FLiP choose Rock but mixed style?
Sachiko: We form [this style] naturally since we started, is a mixure so [FLiP has a] different setting point.

Skinni: What other bands are your inspiration?
Sachiko: We all have different taste toward music.
Yuko and Yumi: We love Red Hot Chill Peppers.
Sayaka: Bob Marley, Stevie Ray Vaughan.
Sachiko: Many different kind of genre but Kurt Cobain is my favorite.

Skinni: What do you want to say to Jpopexpress audience?
Sachiko: Hello we are FLiP, please come to our live show when you come to Japan. Please check our band’s infomation because we are unusual girls band as their age. (They stated on their website they formed FLiP at McDonalds in Naha City in Okinawa in 2005). Our website is http://flip-4.com.

Skinni: Thanks a lot everyone in FLiP! Is my honor to meet you in person!
Everyone: You are welcome. Nice to meet you as well.

Sachiko: Yes, please keep in touch, We will be rock here in the US!

And later on, OMODAKA shows up on the stage with a mask and Shinto shrine-maiden’s outfit, and lots of electronic gadgets including PSP, PC, gameboy advance and all different handheld gadgets.

As OMODAKA states, “OMODAKA is the name of the project developed through a trial and error process of mutational fusion of music and motion graphics. It will knock over your existing image toward a music video by a beautiful trajectory.” For me, it is exciting to see the live performance with the mixed crossover between enka (演歌, えんか), electro pop and video game bitmap music. This new genre is about mixing old traditional Japanese music with the new technology as a medium. At the start of their show, they introduced the gadgets from psp, gameboy color and PC laptop, and used those gadgets to play chiptune mixes with the computer audio singing. The whole show was amazing. He wore a mask and Shinto shrine-maiden’s outfit in a mime style to give us a great performance of mixing real electro music live.

The last to play was detroit7, with their edgy hard rockin’ trio let by barefooted. left-handed female vocal/guitarist Tomomi Nabana, Nobuaki Kotajima (bass) and Miyoko Yamaguchi (drums). They formed in Tokyo in 2001 and toured with Shonen Knife in 2004. Their lastest mini album is “Third Star From The Earth.”

Overall the show was terrific and had a great variety of musical styles to choose from. Here are some audience comments:

Audience member interview:
Skinni: Hello, what you think about the show?
Detroit: Hello my name is Detroit, I come here from Santa Cruz, and for Detroit7 because they have the similiar name as I do! (^^)
Skinni: What makes you come here?
Detroit: I want to have fun and the most interesting music from Japan.
Skinni: Hello, how you feel like the show so far?
Detroit: This is awesome, I think I am waiting for detorit7…I love Vow WoW….the venue is perfect and is intimate! I really enjoy the venue.

Audience member:
Skinni: Hello, what do you think about the show?
Japanese Audience: Hello, we are local here, this is the second time we come to Japan Nite, We come for FLiP….
Skinni: So you are the fan of FLiP? (He wears the FLiP’s t-shirt has signatures on it!)
Japanese Audience: Yes, I love pretty girls and they are very good.
Skinni: Would you come back next year?
Japanese Audience: Yes definitely!

Links to the bands’ official website:

SPARTAL LOCALS
http://www.spartalocals.net/

SA
http://www.bandsjapan.com/SA/index.html

FLiP
http://flip-4.com

OMODAKA
http://www.fareastrecording.com/

Detroit7
http://detroitseven.com/