Taxi Driver, Slovakian Drummer

Word of the week: hebereke. Equals drunkard/untrustworthy person. Say it out loud with me: Hebereke. Hebereke. HEBEREKE!!! It's awesome. (How do you think it's pronounced?)

Went to my first Hiromi show in Japan today. Holy shit, she's famous here - a totally different story from Marian's Jazzroom. Meaning no chit-chat with the band (they did wave at me though), different sound, different performance, different atmosphere. But I must say I was positively surprised by the energy and support level of the Japanese crowd. The band had a different guitarist than the fantastic Fuze come along for this tour leg: John Shannon. Though he's a respectable musician and I dig the stuff he does with Waking Vision, I can't help but think he's not suited for Hiromi's compositions. Basically, Hiromi, Tony and Martin blow him out of the water - with all due respect, it seems like it's all he can do to keep up. And though Fuze made mistakes as well (come on, the songs are ridiculously difficult), his personality has the right kind of unique power that Hiromi's band is all about.

Which is not to say I had a bad time. On the contrary, it was fantastic - another one of those pieces-coming-together experiences with the transcontinental connection, gulping it down from the largest fountain of inspiration I've come across so far, and, now that I'm so busy with Jungle Mic, a slowly crystallizing perspective on the musician's future (which, as of now, is still something I am seriously considering, and, as before, not without having a strong alternative..thus the physics).

I particularly enjoyed the drum solos: in one, the downright coolest syncopation (and I love syncopation) I've ever seen, where very full beats were broken down to whisper-level hits at completely irregular intervals but you're still grooving along. In another, an experiment with the extreme dedication Japanese have of doing certain things - in this case, clapping one's hands on the 2s and 4s of every measure. They're the best in the world at it without a doubt, and indeed, it took Martin at least two minutes of bouncing through a wide spectrum of tempos and time signatures before the audience lost track of the original 2s and 4s. Finally, though it might seem like trivial entertainment, I was quite moved by the last hits of XYG (a completely nuts drum fest, even more so live than on the CD), which were on imaginary drums in the air beside the floor tom.

I went with Sonoe, as usual - damn, it's a small world - and she's trying to convince me to go to all kinds of cool stuff in December: Hiromi's show with a tapdancer in Osaka (I really wanna go to that one), Tony's show with his own band in Tokyo (awesome as well but right in the middle of the week before Bounenkai, the end-of-the-year dance meeting where I'll probably be doing 2 shows), the last Hiromi show of this tour in some huge-ass Tokyo venue...except for the tapdancing, I think I'm going to have to spend my money on blankets though, this month. It's getting cold and I don't have much to keep warm.

After the second encore, Sonoe was in a rush to get to the station, so we grabbed a cab. On the way, we talked excitedly about the gig and a bunch of stuff, also informing the driver what it was we were so excited about. When we got to Shin-Osaka after about fifteen minutes, with plenty of time left before the last Shinkansen to Tokyo would depart, the taxi driver turned around to receive our money and exclaimed: "Oh, you're a foreigner! I completely hadn't noticed!"

Despite his age and dreaminess, it was an injection of happiness that went straight to the core of my being.

PS. Had dance shows yesterday and today. Really fun, great feedback, and now gathering people and creativity for the next bout - a 10-people fun-extreme locking/funking/house fest to What Planet Is This? and a bodily interpretation of three Hiromi songs with Ikeyan. Oh, and I shook hands with Hiromi's husband, the famous clothes/shoes designer Mihara, who happened to be present tonight. Yay it's 6 am, off to sleep.