The Deviants In Japan by Mick Farren Originally published in Ptolemaic Terrascope Reproduced by permission

"We want to f**k you!" Indeed? The author of this bellow from the packed crowd is a headbanging young male, so is the statement to be taken literally? Is it how hard core Tokyo psychedelic punks express their appreciation? Or maybe just the result of some deep linguistic misapprehension? I smile and execute a slight and superior bow. "And f**k you too." This elicits a loud cheer, so I seem to have done the right thing. A relief because, frankly, I don't have a clue what I'm doing here under the hot lights on the stage of On Air West in Tokyo. As the ranting quarter of a four piece band, the one who depends totally on the power of the English language, I am, to say the least, way out on a slender limb of a very mysterious tree. I am totally clueless as to how many of the capacity crowd are getting any part of the crucial lyrics. Culture shock? Who the hell knows? Maybe Eddie Izzard is right and any performance is eighty percent sub-literal. The punters are jerking their heads up and down like maniacs, and my long velvet coat received a round of applause all on its own, but in most respects, I might just as well be on Mars. And on the subject of Mars... Guitarist Andy Colquhoun and I are sitting on the bed in my space capsule of a hotel room watching a primetime Japanese TV show called Battle Banana, in which competing chefs turn gourmet cooking into a competitive contact sport of howling humiliation. Again the feeling is of being on another planet, which, in itself, is not a bad thing. All my life, I have wanted to visit another planet. Not the planets that NASA has shown us, all terminal dust bowls, or cloudscapes of methane and ammonia. I wanted to go to a planet with an advanced civilization, and big mind-blowing architecture. I wanted to go Vulcan, or the city of Mekonta on Venus in the old Dan Dare strip. At age eleven, I pretty much realized that this wasn't going to happen, but then, finally, earlier this year, I discovered the city of Tokyo was a very fair approximation. This piece of surrogate space travel occurred back in February when The Deviants were summoned by Ken Matsutani of Captain Trips Records for a short tour of Japan to promote the CD The Deviants Have Left The Planet -- a prophetic title if ever there was one. By way of a little background, in this last decade before the millennium, The Deviants, as a performing entity have been something of a floating crapgame, the generic title of the post-punk, psychedelic, rock & roll adventures of myself and guitar master Andy Colquhoun, and anyone else who was willing. Over the last half dozen years, fellow voyagers have included Adrian Shaw and Andy Ward, Wayne Kramer, Jack Lancaster, and Philthy Animal Taylor, and Andy and I have even performed as a bizarre duo. In this instance, since hard rocking seemed to be the order of the day, we needed a rhythm section, and the most appealing and logistically viable combination of was that of Doug Lunn on bass and Ric Parnell on drums. Doug and Ric had played together on a whole bunch of projects, the most recent being the Wayne Kramer's live album LLAMF. I'd worked with Doug previously on The Deathray Tapes with Jack Lancaster, and Ric and I had been involved in a couple of one-off jams. Far from questing into the musical unknown, we knew we were headed into the rising sun with a guaranteed solid foundation Having been on the road with Bro. Kramer for a while, Doug and Ric were so tight you couldn't slide a Zigzag paper between them. At Tokyo's Narita airport the luggage trollies actually attached themselves to the escalators and traveled up right along with you. From this moment we knew in the presence of a superior culture. Bone lazy, and also smoking too much, anything that reduces effort of schlepping stuff through an endless international airport gets my instant approval. The next phase of the adventure was disappointingly anticlimactic. The road in from the airport could have been anywhere in the developed world; Charles de Gaulle, Gatwick, or Newark, New Jersey; an identikit 3-2-1 motorway, except they drive on the left as in Blighty, and the signs are, of course, in impenetrable characters. But then we see Tokyo. and it's everything I could have wanted. Like the images from the anime cartoons, or maybe Bladerunner, Tokyo is a city of light, with narrow crowded medieval streets, and all the rearing science fiction architecture I might desire, irregular towers, pyramids and angled wedges of curtain glass terraces, everything lit up like Chuck Berry's downtown Christmas tree. Neon flashes from every available surface and is reflected back from the wet streets. Billboard size video screens carry glowing messages both familiar and incomprehensible, and the global logos for McDonalds, AM-PM and Citicorp shine between the unreadable ideograms, above streets choked with vehicles and pedestrians, to the point that, day or night, Tokyo seems to be in a state of permanent rush hour. Neo-samurai figures on small but high powered motorcycles zip in and out of traffic with near-suicidal skill. Everyone seems to be talking on the phone; the bikers probably have headsets inside their black visored helmets. Billions upon billions of digitalized electronic words are being generated, but I wouldn't be able to understand a single one of them. The young women have little twinkling LED antennae on their cell phones adding another small strata of glitter to the citywide lightshow -- although I use the term "young women" loosely -- with the possible exception of little old ladies, no woman in this land of Hello Kitty looked a minute over seventeen, even though they might be all of thirty five. Our first public appearance -- very suitably -- is like nothing I have ever encountered before. Loft Plus One was not only a bar and nightclub, but also a cable TV show that aired live. From the literature we couldn't read, and the posters decorating the walls, the joint seemingly featured everything from poetry readings to bondage performance art. On the night in question, the feature was us. Not playing music, but as the focus of a kind of extended press conference, except we weren't talking to the press, but to a packed room of paying customers -- Japanese bohemians who seemed to hang on every word. And most of the words were mine since my comrades had taken an attitude of "go to it Farren, you're the son of a bitch with all the mouth." Accordingly I wandered through a mess of topics, from Philip K. Dick to psychedelic guerrilla warfare. At first, it was hard to reach any narrative intensity via the interpreter, but, after a while, the lady translating my impassioned ramblings and I managed to improvise a rhythmic double act, and we finished to fairly tumultuous applause. Alcohol also helped. Jack Daniels means whiskey in any language, and the Japanese treat their beer with a sacred fervor equal to the British, (indeed, it's even sold on the street from vending machines) and drunks are not subjected to any twelve step contempt. The audience looked not only to enjoy hearing me, but watching me drink, and it seemed to be a matter of honor not to allow my glass to remain empty for very long. Both our hotel and Loft Plus One were in the Roppongi district, a kind of rock & roll, legally sanctioned dreamland of highrise strip joints, massage parlors and rock clubs, neon kittens with whips, and Yakusa gangsters in huge black overcoats. A techno-pleasurezone where words like LESBIAN and SCHOOLGIRL blinked among the Japanese characters as Sony and Barclays had in other parts of the city, and the fully loaded band truck was lowered to a subterranean garage in a huge auto elevator. "Holy moley, Dr. Strange, can I go to a place like this when I die?" Sadly, we never really got to explore the fullness of Roppongi. I believe that Nambu, our ever-patient tour manager, knew full well if we got loose we'd never return. Also Nambu took no prisoners. The first lesson was that we were there to work; to do press and radio interviews, to eat and sleep, to watch a bit of Battle Banana, and then do it all over again the next day, precisely on time, no excuses. The schedule had no blanks for hanging out, fucking up, or wandering off. On the other side of the coin, everything worked with an efficiency that would be an unbelievable bloody miracle in Europe or the US. Everyone from the auditorium bouncers to the roadies and stage crew appear dedicated to keeping us happy. Even our more foolish requests are honored. Soundchecks were for real -- and so they should have been with us cutting a live album in the course of just three shows with no chance of phoney studio overdubs. The lighting plan was precise and imaginative, and the dressing room fridge was always full of beer, no matter how much we drink. None of us could operate the dressing room heating system, however; a major problem since we seemed to be virtually living the damned dressing room while in Tokyo. We are thwarted by the instructions being in Japanese. Andy and I try to figure it out by blind guesswork, but only succeed in cranking up the air conditioning even though it's snowing outside. Reduced to the level of illiterate hottentots, the barbarians put their coats on until someone came to translate our dilemma. I use the word "barbarians" advisedly. Aside from being on Mars, our only other point of reference was James Clavell's Shogun, either the TV miniseries or the big fat novel, hence barbarians in a strange land. Courtesy and nuance is the key to the daily overcrowded life of the Japanese. Fortunately, as three Englishmen and a very cultured Yank, we were prepared to give it a shot. Our bowing may have been more that of the highwayman or the Hell Fire Club than what our hosts expected, but we seemed to score beaucoup points for a dignified and lordly flourish, and -- domo aregato -- very quickly we are Mick-san, Andy-san, Ric-san, and Doug-san, the veteran rock band considered as barbarian princes. At one point, I found myself addressed as Mick-sama, seemingly a high mark of respect. It also helped us a great deal that we landed in the Tokyo marijuana underground. "Would you honor me, Mick-san, to smoke some of my Afghani hash?" I bow and smile. Does the Lord Buddha shit in the woods? I take the pipe from the seasoned Tokyo superfreak with a full head of dreadlocks. Since they slung Paul McCartney in jail, we'd pretty much assumed that Japan was devoid of dope. Not so, Jah man. Like everything else in Japan, it seems to be confined in its own territory, but what the hell? We're slap in the middle of it, not only happy, but discovering that heavily stoned good manners constitute another common language. We also discovered that the freaks in Tokyo is pretty damned freaky. The reefer elite included day-glo punk Transformers, Bushido rastas, and Count Dracula with opera cane, cape and waist length hair. We also encountered the guys from the band Ruby, survivors of Tokyo glitter all the way back the era of Ziggy and The New York Dolls, who seemed to have a rep as misbegotten as The Deviants themselves. After Tokyo came Osaka, and the two hour trip on Bullet Train brought out the grubby schoolboy in each of us. A hundred plus, a ride like a 747 in clear air, and attendants bringing sandwiches and beer, and bowing subserviently as they left the compartment. Amazing. We scrambled to right hand windows as Mt. Fuji approached, but the sacred volcano was shrouded in cloud (bummer) although, in the foothills, there were those pine forests from the Kurosawa samurai movies like Yojimbo and Throne Of Blood. In Osaka, a blue collar town with echoes of Birmingham, we had a bit more time to roam, to shop for presents and sci-fi tripe, and for Ric to take the drummer's statutory look in the drum store. We discovered to our delight that, out in the street, any western rocker is a Beatle. "Banda?" "That's right." Young girls giggled behind their hands while we signed autographs, and even posed for photos with passersby whom I'm absolutely certain had no idea who we were. "Banda?" All this attention notwithstanding. Osaka was something of an anticlimax, another hotel, another gig, Battle Banana, and then home tomorrow. That's before, though, we found out about The Feast. We'd heard rumors that Japanese tours ended with some kind of ceremonial feast, but we'd heard a lot of other rumors that had turned out to be nothing more than occidental stupidity; no dope in Tokyo being the obvious one. However, after we'd wrapped it up at the Club Quatro in Osaka, we were picked up at the hotel and taken to our first traditional Japanese restaurant of the trip. Sunken tables, shoes off, crosslegged on the floor, while forty miles of highly exotic foods, sake by the gallon, and endless liter bottles of Sapporo passed in a continuous stream. It was definitely a Feast, but hardly ceremonial. Ric was bonding with the other drummers, and eating and drinking everything within reach. Doug had the expression of a happy Treen. The Japanese musicians were getting royally drunk. A powerfully built guy with the face of a 16th century swordsman gave each of us a warrior massage which not only made us feel a whole lot better, but enabled us to drink more. Ken Matsutani, our ultimate host and a fine and wonderful cat, had become a happy presiding Buddha in a Frankenstein t-shirt. A good deal of bonding had already taken place, but here, with booze flowing and the Japanese lads really tying one on, the realization of solid friendships in the making and a great mutual respect became abundantly clear. Everyone had done us proud, and we, in turn, had come through with what seem to be judged as a series of killer shows. Despite the differences of language and culture, it had really worked, and a genuine affection has been generated. Better than that, faith in the Ancient International Brotherhood of Stone Freaks has been positively reinforced. With a grey Osaka dawn on its way, and a plane back to LA to catch the following afternoon, all the hands have been shaken, the photos taken, and the bows and compliments exchanged. All that remained was a way to end things on the perfect high note. Andy and I struggled to our feet and launched into an acapella version of Roky Erickson's "I Walked With A Zombie". The entire room joined in and we exited with them still bellowing. At the end of each show, instead of the usual baying of "more-more", The Japanese kids break into a chant. "Play-rock-&-roll. Play-rock-&-roll. Play-rock-&-roll." We know this is a mark of appreciation, but the temptation to surly rocker ingrate arrogance remains, despite how well we've been treated. "What the hell else did you think we were doing?" Barbarian princes to the last. (c) Mick Farren 1999