Uncle Acid and the deadbeats at Club Quattro, March 11th 2020

The coronavirus is real. There’s no question about it. This pandemic is a world health crisis and serious measures need to be taken to control the spread. The media plays a crucial role when it comes to alerting and keeping the population informed. Having said that, there’s one phrase that keeps popping in my mind whenever I watch the news. It’s the title of one of my favorite movies. Fear eats the soul.

“Kowai” in Japanese means ‘scary’ and it’s one adjective, like ‘delicious’ or ‘cute’, that is used a lot in Japanese. Not just for truly scary stuff but literally it could be for anything. Honestly speaking, the overuse of that word is something that I find rather off-putting. You can imagine how that sentiment is being exploited by the news shows. In the last couple of days music venues and live shows in general have been the main focus.

In Osaka a few music venues have been confirmed as transmission sites, as several cases have been reported to spread from those places. Concerts and live shows have been cancelled left and right. I definitely thought that this one was going to be cancelled as well. The day before the show was scheduled a post on the promoter’s site confirmed that it was still going on and listed a number of preventive measures that would be taken at the venue.

I got there early and saw al the staff members wearing face masks, same as I was and most of the people in attendance were. Before entering the venue each person got their temperature checked with a device pointed towards one’s forehead. After getting the green light I got in and found a spot at the rail on the left. As expected the turnout was not the best and the place was not tightly packed by any means. The 50 minute wait before showtime was actually a pleasant one due to the b-movie soundtracks and trailers samples played through the house PA system. I realized that this key esthetic element was not going to be part of the show as soon as I noticed that there was no screen on stage. As it turned out these background projections were not missed at all.

At 19:05 the guys from Uncle Acid and the deadbeat walked in on stage wearing matching long sleeve tight black t-shirts, just like the Manson family members in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. Even though they are usually compared to Black Sabbath their opener had more of an AC/DC edge to it. I See Through You did its job pumping the crowd. They then hit hard with the one-two sludge punch of Waiting for Blood followed by Mt. Abraxas. Both them extended in the grooviest and funkiest of ways.

I’m a sucker for those one note grooves best exampled by Waiting for the Man and I Wanna be your Dog. Mind Crawler covers those bases painting a landscape of late sixties psych motorcycle debauchery. The whole Barbara Steele-Jess Franco-Russ Meyers mix worked wonders on this one as in many of the rest of the tunes. The energy coming from the band was palpable, you could tell that perhaps because of these circumstances they were giving their all. By the fourth song most faces were already melted.

Then Kevin Starrs, AKA Uncle Acid, introduced the next tune as a love song. It was none other than the over seven minutes long Death’s Door, a centerpiece from the Blood Lust album that was rendered as menacing and filthy as it is on record. Speaking of filth, I was surprised by how powerful these songs were by removing the purposefully lo-fi hiss of their recorded versions.

They played two of their more garage influenced tunes from their first album, Dead Eyes of London and Crystal Spiders, before diving into what ended up being maybe my favorite song of the concert. Pusher Man was epic. They truly reached sublime heights during the instrumental stretch at the end of the song. The dope peddling (hope peddling?) lyrics resonated strongly.

They treated us to a rare rendition of Blood Runner before closing the show with three tunes from the Blood Lust album: Ritual Knife, I’ll Cut You Down and 13 Candles. Each building up to a final climax that ended the show on a high.

The band came back for an encore that started with one of their better tunes, Melody Lane, which twists the misogynistic Giallo plot on its protagonist who ends up wounded and stabbed by the woman he’s stalking. The ninety-minute show’s last song was the nihilistic No Return, in this context sounding maybe more relevant than ever.

This was truly a magnificent show. From the fact that it went on, the promoter’s clear communication and thorough organization, especially under these unusual circumstances. To the pristine and well-balanced sound of this venue. Most importantly, the quality of the music and performance. At one point Starrs thanked the audience for ‘being here in spite of all this corona bullshit’. It was nice to see a band that for a change actually treated the Japanese fans with a set longer than usual delivered in full energy. Uncle Acid and the deadbeat’s first Japan show was definitely a triumph and was exactly what live music fans needed in these times of uncertainty.
  
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