Well, seeing as I didn't get any pics from this one, you're gonna have to take my word for it. This party was a fractured celebration of noise, poetry, rock, dissonance and harmony. I started off the night DJing some more classic NY sounds including Patti Smith and James Chance as well as mixing in some Richard Hell and William S. Burroughs spoken word into contemporary post-punk from the east coast US, namely i, fanblades from Delaware, MD and Armedalite Rifles from Pine Bush, NY. Too band a crowd didn't start filling in until a bit later begging the question put to us by the age old Zen koan, "do records make music if no one is in the club?" Too bad, cause Burrough's "Dead Souls" sounded even more apocalyptic against the dub reggae groove of Armedalite Rifle's "Tomorrow Never Comes." Nonetheless, I was very to happy to have a nice crowd file in after I tapped guest DJ Luca Tieri who was manning a merch table with his art at the moment and in town from Italy for the week. He spun a rare blend of vintage Italian punk & power pop and Japanese new wave exotica.
The first band to play was ROCKET JACK VADERS, a Japanese underground group that started out doing surf and garage and is noted for joining the NYC Japunks entourage nearly 10 years ago. More recently they've adopted a no-wave influenced sound with extra percussion and some alto horn sounds while keeping their surfy roots. If this sounds good to you, you can pick up their CD Vector at Pacifiction Records. I don't have any pics of them at Mystery Monday, so here's a video of their song "$ ¥" complete with samples from Blue velvet!
Rocket Jack Vaders
Etching out a name in the Tokyo arts & poetry underground scene over the past couple decades is Yuichiro Azuma and his no-wave inspired group FLIGHT OF IDEA. I met them several years ago after taking a trip to Taiwan's Spring Scream festival. They were also the first band I helped gig around NYC where Azuma met some local poets including the late Tuli Kupferburg. Their CDs "Talk Hard" and "a Day" are also available from Pacifiction Records. FLIGHT OF IDEA were the second Mystery Monday band performing their mixture of saxaphone bursts and rock structure, call-and-response monologues and poetry that converses rather than talks to the audience. In a joke aimed at me, Azuma started off saying he hates Mondays in an improve piece... they ended their set with another improv song called Mystery Mondays! Here is a video for their latest major song, "Beat Boat."
In between the bands, expat Michael Pacheco, formerly of the Asian American new wave rock band THE SLANTS, played a DJ set under his new moniker LAKESHORE DRIVING, really a project that remixes and mimics 80's electro-pop but with a modern dance party vibe. I finished the party with a set geared more towards UK post-punk, ie. Gang of Four, The Flys, and NYC No Wave, artist like Mars, DNA and Lydia Lunch. definitely a fun party for a Monday and special thanks to all the musiciana, DJs, friends and guests that came out!
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