The Tokyo Concert Experience

  In the Edgar Wright documentary The Sparks Brothers, there’s a scene that shows a concert at a small venue here in Tokyo, maybe Club Quattro, and the warm reaction of the crowd, implying that in Japan, Sparks has a strong dedicated fanbase. It is true. I remember they coming here almost annually for a while. Not for nothing they chose to do some of the initial promotion for their new album Mad! here as well. You can’t help but draw the similarities between them and Cheap Trick. The quirkiness in the contrast between the sort of goofy oddball looking member and the adonis type one is an obvious one, but also both bands have delivered powerhouse pop material. The difference, in my opinion, is that unlike Cheap Trick, Sparks had the ability to evolve and adapt their sound with the times without ever sacrificing their personality.                          It is fa...

  In the nineties, when rock was king, according to some, the biggest band of them all hailed from Washington State. No, it wasn’t Unwound . It was another one we all know that to this day has its nameprinted on t-shirts worn by people whose parents might not even had been born when they were active. Seattle, Olympia, Aberdeen, Tacoma, that whole area shaped popular music in that era, modern culture even, to an extent, Unwound operated within that space and were able to stand out among the bunch. They were quite possibly among the most experimental and interesting groups that came out of that scene.                          Their first recordings definitely were grounded on grunge and its post-punk emo offspring, but soon they developed their own sound embracing electronic influences and a more ethereal approach to their music. By their last album, L eaves Turn In...