The 7th annual BPI/UKTI Trade mission to Japan is happening this week and below is a daily blog from delegate Brett Leboff, whose company Monumental Music Group is looking for licensing deals and touring opportunities in Japan.
Brett Leboff
Monumental Music Group
Today I didn't sleep until 5.30am. I hardly drunk anything last night, just had a very relaxing meal with a couple of Japanese associates that I have worked with before and I am putting a business idea to. So, after dinner I returned to the hotel by 11pm and caught up on emails. Well, I was still sitting there at 5.30am having not been able to sleep. The whole jet lag thing is so strange, because you are a day ahead, so when you are eating here, you would normally be sleeping and viser verser, I am not sure the body is good at acclimatising to this. Well, evidently not!
So, I finally slept at 5.30am, having emailed ALL the people I had met on Tuesday for follow up to set up meetings for Thursday and Friday. Which meant the only thing I could do to not miss an opportunity of a meeting was be up at 9.30am to check my emails. When the alarm went off, the last thing on earth I wanted to do was check emails! I dragged myself out of bed and had a green tea and turned my computer on. There in front of me were all the meetings I wanted confirmed. The first....11am! Brilliant; just enough time for a shower and to go downstairs to the coffee bar and get some breakfast. I had now by this point taken to going to the local 'French' bakery in the shopping centre next to us to buy Croissants. At least I knew that these were just croissants and not bread with some strange deep sea creature that lives 3 miles down at the bottom of the ocean!
I had meetings all day. Some help from the staff at UKTI had assured that I was back to back today as we were also invited to a gig by EMI at a club in a very cool part of Tokyo. People likened this place to Camden – Shimo Kitazawa. Very unlike Camden in aesthetics, but I could feel the atmosphere and understood the connection. Well, the band were very good indeed. In recent years major record labels in Japan have been trying so hard to open up the doors to Japanese export of bands. In many ways it is tough, as we in the West often think of Manga or some Japanese Jimi Hendrix wannabesinging the lyrics to 'F'oxry Rady'! So, we were all quite impressed with this band. Just a guitarist and drummer, the guitarist had all kinds of toys that made his guitar into some kind of power bass guitar racket and the drummer was a really funky, syncopated being. Together they rocked pretty hard. Though most of us on the British Mission were continuously debating the sex of the singer. He was pale, with a lot of make-up and androgynous to say the least, we were generally very impressed with 'his' swagger and performance. The crowd certainly absolutely loved it.
The amazing thing about the Japanese audiences, which constantly overwhelms me, is that they don't talk at gigs. They cheer when they are meant to, they repeat words or sing melodies when requested and they jump up and down in time, in a very orderly fashion BUT, they don't talk about what they had for dinner, or who is bitching about who at work. Consequently the sound quality is unbelievable and you don't go deaf when being at a gig, though you may leave very sweaty in this climate!
We thanked all the EMI contingent and then went to get some food. At which point I bowed out to get back to the hotel and write this and sleep. I have been speaking all day about our wonderful acts and again I will do the same tomorrow as well as having to navigate around the city.