Wednesday, 14 January 2009

Tokyo 2004

Not much happening in cold dark London so I pulled out some old footage of a gig I did in a small club in Tokyo in April of 2004. I had a ball for ten days - mixing with the locals and playing all over the city.

The clip is an excerpt from Good Golly Miss Molly which I was hammering out on a gorgeous Yamaha grand - every club had a beautiful piano for obvious reasons.
I also stayed one night in a capsule hotel after seeing Palin do it on TV. You leave your shoes in a locker in reception and then get a gown - leaving all your clothes in another locker on the floor of your capsule. Then you have to find your capsule ! After a few drinks that ain't that easy - I was on the upper row but managed ok.
Very cheap and small but enough room for a TV at the foot of the bed on a small ledge. I have some video footage of the entire experience and maybe I should put it up sometime.
The trip inspired a song on my last CD "Tokyo Blues Guitar" and also inspired me to record a version of "Red Stripe Boogie" in Japanese! I got some boys from the local jive band "Ban Ban Bazar" to help me translate it after a gig one night and wrote it down phonetically - it worked very well.
I have a mind to do some promotion in Tokyo on the back of the track but for now I am concentrating on the UK market.
Enough for now. Enjoy the video.

1 comment:

Nick Tann said...

I love these blogs but there aren't enough of them.
So many stories mate, come on.
How about that trek from the wonder that is the Marlborough Jazz festival to the Dover Working mens Club?
And what happens at those SAGA gigs?

We've got our interview coming up soon too eh?