Exile Osaka

The Hanatarash and Violent Onsen Geisha parts of the article were taken from Exile Osaka’s (Matt Kaufman’s) Wordpress. The Gerogerigegege one comes from an EBay listing. Hanatarash’s and Gerogerigegege’s parts are a live report of the October 30th, 1995 show at Shinsaibashi MUSE HALL. Thanks to silvermutantchildren for sending me the Gero article.

Who would have ever thought that a scene as extreme as the Japanese noise scene would ever produce superstars. Sure, that’s an exaggeration, but not at all inaccurate when one considers how much press Yamatsuka Eye and Violent Onsen Geisha have managed to receive in Japan in the last year.

In Eye’s case most of the mainstream press has been fueled by the recent popularity of The Boredoms. (The Boredoms are not a noise band in the traditional sense of the word, but most journalists tend to overlook that fact.) A couple of issues back I wrote that the Boredoms were barely known in Japan. Feel free to rip that page out of the zine and mail it to me with some steak sauce so I can eat my words. The Boredoms are now better known and more successful in Japan than they are abroad. Not as big as X Japan or the icky teen idols, mind you, but they “move enough units” to command respect in the Japanese music press. I’ve seen interviews with Japanese pop stars (who would never dare to set foot in a place like Bears) talk about how much they admire the Boredoms.

If the Boredoms can be regarded as popular, then the Hanatarash can only be described as legendary. Eye’s exploits in the Hanatarash have become a part of underground folklore. People thought (with good reason) that Eye was insane and were literally frightened to see a Hanatarash show because of the violence : Eye threw gasoline cans and cases of beer bottles around the stage; Eye brought a gasoline bomb to a Psychic TV show (He intended to use it but was caught) ; Eye strummed a guitar with an octopus; Eye accidentally cut his leg with a powersaw; and the incident that effectively caused the end of the Hanatarash: Eye destroyed a live house with a bulldozer ( actually a back hoe) that caused anywhere from $20,000 to $60,000 in damages depending on who tells you the story.

Some people were baffled upon seeing the Hanatarash listed as the opening act for the first appearance in Japan by The Zip Code Rapists and Faxed Head at Muse Hall in Shinsaibashi. What in the world was he going to do? That was the question on everyone’s mind. Masonna, Sekiri and the Gerogerigegege were also listed as openers so the show, organized by Japan Overseas, promised to be a good one. It was the first live show by the Gerogerigegege in the Kansai area in over eight years and people were curious to see him as well.

Let me make it clear that this performance was is no way shape or form billed as “The Return of The Hanatarash,” but it was certainly a rare performance. I’m not sure if Hanatarash had played out sinced the low key “return” performance at Bears in early 1993. In an interview on the Music for Psychological Liberation TV broadcast, Eye told Satoru Higashiseto that the Hanatarash was no longer a live act and that Hanatarash 4 (Public Bath) was recorded in his bedroom.

In any case, there were people in the audience who came expecting to see an over the top noise performance. Shortly before the show started I overheard three young guys dressed Boredoms and UFO or Die t-shirts talking about how excited they were to finally be able to see the Hanatarash. One of these guys, who had to be about nineteen or twenty, wondered out loud (in so many words) if Eye would try to“ blow Masonna and The Gerogerigegege off the stage to reestablish himself as the king of noise.“ It reminded me of all those “John Bonham was a better drummer than Keith Moon” debates that I was endlessly subjected to during lunch in high school.

Here’s how the show went down. There was a loud droning sound that sounded like a warped version of the Emergency Broadcast System. The curtains opened and Eye was standing in the center of stage motionless. He was wearing a blue t-shirt with “I Hate Music” written in white letters. In his right hand he held a megaphone wrapped in a plastic bag from a duty-free shop. In his left hand, he had a metal hook shaped like a question mark which he held across his chest. He was also wearing “glasses” made out of a bicycle wrench. The only other thing on stage was a plastic bust of Darth Vader which was placed on top of a speaker. The music did not stop and Eye did not move. After about two minutes he extended his left arm out sideways and held the hook in the air diagonally. Then he walked off the stage. The curtains closed and the music stopped. That was the end of his performance.

I was watching one of these quiz shows that are all the rage in Japan, corny moronic nonsense like Tick Tack Dough or Hollywood Squares. In most cases the guests are shown a video and they answer dopey questions based on what they’ve seen. Bona fide edu-tainment The only difference is that in Japan famous celebrities, not common folk, compete for prizes– something which does not make sense to me. Anyway, on this particular show the celebrity panel was shown a short segment about Boryoku Onsen Geisha aka Violent Onsen Geisha aka film critic Masaya Nakahara. The clip showed Nakahara in his room performing noise. The narrator pointed out that Boryoku Onsen Geisha had remixed a track by some popular star named Cornelius and the camera zoomed in on the credits listed on the CD as if to prove the national television audience that this was no crackpot, this was someone that trendy young consumers should know about. The celebrity contestants (who one year ago would have made faces to show how perplexed were by a such a strange performer) all tried to show how hip they were to the noise scene. One middle aged comedian mentioned that he knew about Einsturzende Neubauten; some young singer said that she was really into “noise music.” As I got up to turn off the TV I heard the host of the show say something about a “noise idol.”

The meteoric rise Violent Onsen Geisha is fascinating when you take into consideration that the Japanese recording industry is tightly controlled and extremely conservative. A few years ago VOG was releasing tapes on Vanilla Records in Kyoto, an extremely influential label that is also responsible for early releases by Masonna and C.C.C.C. Now VOG’s mug is splashed across the pages of everything from TV Guide to the Japanese equivilent of The Saturday Evening Post. (It’s kind of pathetic how the Japanese media suddenly took interest in VOG only after his major label debut Que Sera Sera was released by giant conglomorate Toshiba EMI. Kansai labels such as Vanilla and Bron never get credit for anything.)

Violent Onsen Geisha has created some of the most spectacular albums to emerge from the Japanese underground scene. Start with Shocks Shocks Shocks, a reissue of the first Vanilla cassette on CD by Ring Records in the USA with stunning cover art. It’s raw sounding and filled with VOG’s trademark off the wall samples, jeep beats, and sheets of pure noise. The relatively new Teenage Pet Sounds is a maxi single but it has close to an hour of music. It’s much more produced and commercial sounding than his earlier work but a blast to listen to, especially on headphones.

Nakahara pulled off a prank that is also a part of underground folklore: He convinced people that there were other members in Violent Onsen Geisha who died under mysterious circumstances. Everyone now claims that they were in on the joke all along, but the truth is that there were many who believed the story and reported it as fact.

There’s been a boom of young bands who have started their own cassette labels who list Nakahara as a major influence. Nakahara is the “cassette tape superstar” and the rare appearance of Violent Onsen Geisha at Japan Overseas Night at Bears in September was highly anticipated. Machine Gun T.V. and Masonna played highly entertaining sets; Masonna was especially confrontational at this show, he grabbed an audience member and shoved him around violently. Solmania was scheduled to go on next but for some reason Ohno (and Nakahara) had not arrived yet.

After about 45 minutes they walked through the door, much to the relief of Bears manager Yamamoto Seiichi. After Solmania finished his set the lights came on and there was another delay. Suddenly, the inside of Bears was pitch black. It was impossible to see the stage but I assumed that Violent Onsen Geisha was on because everyone moved up front to get a better look. It was a long set of pure harsh noise and it ended abruptly. Later on I found out that Violent Onsen Geisha didn’t even appear that night. He popped in a prerecorded cassette and took the bullet train back to Tokyo. When it became apparent that Nakahara was not coming back an angry fan (Mikio of Prisoner #6) picked up the cassette deck and threw it on the floor. Was it live or was it Memorex™? That is the question to be decided.

I became intrigued with the Geroerigegege after reading an interview with Juntaro Yamanouchi conducted by Mason Jones in File 13 (#11/Fall 1991, the seminal Japanese Punk & Industrial Issue). Yamanouchi revealed the origins of the band, how he and Gero30 (a 56 year old exposure maniac/exhibitionist) used to do noise performances at S&M clubs. Part of their act included masturbation on stage and eating one another’s (and the audience’s) shit.

Yamanouchi mentioned that they once used fire at a live house and received a warning from the police. He also said that he would like to be caught by the police once because “it seems to be cool, like G.G. Allin.”

When I came to Japan I started to notice that the Gerogerigegege’s name was curiously absent from most of the major noise shows in Osaka. Whenever I asked about them people would tell me how much they hated the band without bothering to explain their reasons. Whatever.

The Gerogerigegege’s show at the Muse Hall was the first performance in Osaka in eight years. I’m not sure if Gero30 is still in the band or not because Yamanouchi was the only one to appear that night. He came out and meditated onstage for about ten minutes, which was really creepy because he looked a lot lot [sic] Aum Supreme Truth cult leader Shoko Asahara minus the beard. Remember, all cults start with one follower and Yamanouchi had already filled his quota: some scary young guy in the audience actually got into the lotus position and started meditating with him.

After Yamaouchi came out of his trance he proceeded to play a koto (traditional Japanese string instrument–see photo) which had a contact mike that may or may not have been connected to a signal generator (I need to take Understanding Noise 101 so I can stop making a fool of myself with these lame technical explanations.) It was a very quiet sound that was filled with an air of tension–it sounded as though his fingers were getting caught between the metal strings. This went on for quite a while and it was very relaxing to tell the truth. All of a sudden a very loud prerecorded coda blared over the speakers. It was the type of music used to introduce someone of great historical important like the opening theme to a public television production of I, Claudius. The music did not let up and there was little variety in the performance. Half the crowd was in the lobby drinking beer and waiting for it to end (I’ll admit that I bailed out half way through)

Afterwards I started thinking there was a correlation between the absentee noise performance of Violent Onsen Geisha I saw several months earlier; the short anti-musical “non-performance” of the Hanatarash; and the musical climax of the Gerogerigegege. What I’m trying to say, somewhat convolutedly I might add, is that if you saw these performances one right after the other there would be a natural progression–something like a three act play written by different authors that has the same underlying theme.

What I’m really trying to say is that Hanatarash, VOG, and Gerogerigegege are three sides of the same coin and if they ever got together to collaborate on anything–even something as innocuous as building a sand castle–then God help us all.

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