Where
did Japanese rock get its reputation for extremity? Like any broad
categorization, it's got no shortage of exceptions, but still...when a
rock 'n' roll band makes a name for themselves outside Japan, more
often than not, recommendations involve the phrase "dude, they're insane."
DMBQ has played no small part in that perception. Since their inception
in the late 80s, the quartet has been defined by a manic frenzy that
can alternately be described as dangerous, hilarious, obscene,
irresponsible, destructive, exhilarating, and a hundred other
adjectives that mean "completely unhinged."
The band's been quiet for a few years, but recently started playing
again, with a handful of dates in Tokyo and their native Osaka. Jrawk
somehow managed to catch DMBQ mastermind Shinji Masuko (left) in a
reflective mood, just before their return to the legendary UFO Club in
West Tokyo. Over a plate of veggies, Masuko-san pontificated on
creativity, noise, the differences between Osaka and Tokyo, and the
state of music in the internet age.
JR: So, DMBQ started in '87?
SM: Hmm...I think I started...maybe '88, '89. I started this band in
Sapporo, my hometown. Although when I started, I wasn't so focused on
the band thing. I was more focused on reading books, just listening to
music. I was very interested in musical instruments, all instruments.
Electric things, moving speakers around, playing with the magnets. I
was more like a noise musician, I was really interested in that kind of
stuff. I would work out why some gear would make a sound.
JR: ...and now you make guitar towers! (NOTE: Masuko-san constructs the
guitar towers for eYe of The Boredoms.) So, basically, you started with
sound, not necessarily thinking about being in a band, per se.
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| Toru Matsui (L) and Shinji Masuko |
SM: (nods) Yeah, I would make guitars, things like that. I wasn't
focused on the band.
JR: When did you move to Tokyo? Was the move a musical decision?
SM: '91 or '91. Yes, musical.
JR: It's interesting that you have that background in noise. When I
think of DMBQ, it's as a big, loud rock band with a lot of primal
energy. There's a lot of sweat and movement on the stage, which isn't
something I see in noise bands at all. Did you start out with that kind
of crazed energy?
SM: Yeah, I also liked rock music, watching footage from the 60s or
70s. Sometimes I could find pretty crazy stuff, like Arthur Brown,
MC5...very unusual rock musicians. They had huge energy. It's the same
for me with noise music. It's very natural for me.
JR: OK, just to clarify, you're interested in noise as an expression of
energy more than texture, or as headphone music. When you started
playing in DMBQ, did you feel you fit in with...
SM: (immediately) No! No, no...no! (laughs) It was the 90s, so the
music scene in Tokyo was...popular bands were punk rock, hardcore punk,
American style hardcore. We'd play with bands like that, the
audience...(gives the thumbs down sign.) They'd say it was an old style.
JR: Did that encourage you to go further?
SM: Yeah! (laughs)
JR: It seems the energy is always just about to spill over into danger.
Have you ever gotten yourself in trouble with this stuff?
SM: Yeah, sometimes. Most of it it happens to me: I get injured. I
broke here, here, here...(points to wrist, leg, ribs.) This (the rib)
still gives me trouble! I think the Japanese scene is really good, but
the venues are small, they're a little tight to allow crazy guys. When
I went to America, my booking agent (Panache) had so many legal
problems. They'd have shows in a church, people's houses, and the
audience would go crazy and destroy things. I asked them if I'd be OK,
they said compared to that, I'd be no problem! I was very impressed!
(laughs)
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| Ryuichi Watanabe |
JR: How did the first tour go?
SM: I think it was around 2000. No problems. I got a very bad fever,
though, in Portland.
JR: When did you move to Osaka?
SM: Three or four years ago. I was living in Tokyo for fifteen or
sixteen years. It's a good city, it's good here, but playing music...I
realized it's not so good to live here. There's too much information. I
couldn't focus on myself, I couldn't focus on important things. In a
smaller town than Tokyo, people are nice, it's calmer.
JR: When you say too much information, do you mean in the music scene?
Is it easier to be noticed in Osaka?
SM: Yeah, I think so. There are so many bands here! For example, my
friends might tell me about a band called...uh...(points to the plate
in the middle of the table) "My Cucumber," or something like that. "The
Peas" are very good, etc. Then I'd hear The Cucumbers weren't so good,
so I'd to check them out to see for myself, then I'd think...it takes
about two weeks to really check out a band...there's so much
information. Go this show! No, go to this show, come to my show! If I
do go to a show, there are people telling me to go to a show AFTER this
one. No way! Too much chaos...just before, I was just standing in front
of the UFO Club, some young people came up to me, this is my CD, please
listen. Too many CDs!
JR: So Tokyo is too chaotic...interesting, considering how chaotic your
band is! What attracts you to energetic music?
SM: Hmmm…I don't really see any separation between the
energy and sound, whether you have violent sound like rock, or quieter
sounds like pre-War blues...regardless of what music might appear to be
on the surface, whatever genre, there's a spirit that can be very
aggressive. Before there were bands, there was music, but before even
the music there's the sound. The sound comes first, then there's what's
inside the sound.
In the 20s and 30s, even then, between grooves and the scratches on the
record...the recording quality is pretty bad, but if you listen
closely, you can hear them struggling to create a new sound. With
aggressive and especially loud music, that kind of separation isn't
there. It's more direct. Of course, explaining the relationship between
music, sound and energy is difficult...
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| Shinji Wada |
JR: Relating to the chaos of Tokyo...it seems to me that many of the
more aggressive artists could be reacting to the oppressiveness of the
city.
SM: Hmm...yes and no. Certainly, there's a benefit to having aggressive
music as a means to express the feelings living here can
create...people live in small spaces, there's a lot of traffic.
Combined with the overload of information we were discussing earlier...
...but that's not the main cause. A lot of people want to be the same,
be similar to someone else...but among musicians, at least among my
friends, people want to stick out in some way. Then it becomes a
situation where one persons gets one step ahead, then another person
gets one step ahead of them...but it's not competitive. It's more of a
mutual influence. It's a process of mutual influence and evolution that
pushes these things forward.
Style is very important in Japan, there's a lot of emphasis on taking
great care with it. In order to make aggressive music, you kind of have
to do it in a certain style, in tandem with a certain image. That goes
too far. That's my opinion, anyway.
JR: Many musicians here have expressed frustration at the copying that
goes on in the Japanese music scene, in terms of aping ideas from the
west. Do you feel any responsibility, as a Japanese man, to express a
specifically Japanese identity in your music?
SM: Basically, I'm interested in sound. Words, not so much. So far as
influences in sound, you'll have American music, Brazilian music,
British music...but each will have it's own sound, independent of the
context of where it came from. But my position as a Japanese
musician...it's hard to say, really.
Now that I've been overseas, to the US...I think there's not
necessarily much point in keeping that identity. It's not necessary.
JR: Do you think there's too much copying here?
SM: Kind of, certainly in the major (mainstream) scene. Some of the
underground also. My top priority is always my thing! (laughs) So I
don't think too much about it.
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| Dynamite Masters Blues Quartet (Debut, 1995) |
JR: Do you feel rock is too serious in Japan?
SM: In some music scenes, yes. Well, we don't belong to any particular
scene...DMBQ is pretty independent. We have a lot of friends, but no
specific scene.
JR: That certainly is reflected in your lineup...there are personnel
connections in DMBQ for everyone from The Boredoms to Shonen Knife...
SM: (thinks) I was talking with eYe (of the Boredoms,) and we were
discussing the late 80s/early 90s. One of the reasons the idea of
playing overseas was so appealing was that the audiences seem to get it
a little more, maybe have a better sense of what we're trying to do
than audiences here.
In America, in the 90s, you had bands like Big Black, the Butthole
Surfers...these bands were getting recognition, getting audiences who
understood them. There would be actual scenes, people who would work
together and start from the ground up. I'm a little jealous of that, I
wish we could get something like that here.
In America, listeners tend to choose a bit more carefully, and more
independently, rather than going with what's in vogue. They'll choose
individual bands they like, rather than follow.
JR: Is the scene more closely knit in Osaka?
SM: (nods) Yeah, I think so. I think bands are more willing to stand
up, take a stand as a specific band...there's a lot more of that in
Osaka than in Tokyo. There's a lot of bands of the same generation,
they're all friends...but it's not like they specifically band together
to form a scene. Nobody thinks that way. They're going for it on their
own, even when they have similar attitudes.
JR: For DMBQ...when you play live, do you stick with newer material, or
do you draw from your past catalog?
SM: We'll play old songs, but there's a lot of improvisation...we'll
start from an older song but take it somewhere new. Especially when we
play overseas, that's a good way to connect with an audience, rather
than rely on songs they may or may not know. In Japan, we'll play an
old song and go into improv...then after the show, people will come up
to us and say "Hey, that was different than the CD! Did you make a
mistake?" (laughs) Overseas, it's easier, no one thinks twice about
that.
JR: The reason I ask that is many bands seem very conscious about their
image, they'll have a very specific aesthetic they're shooting for, and
the studio recordings are often a big part of that, like there's a sort
of canon.
SM: We never had any ideas like that. We're a pretty stable lineup
right now, there's four definite members, and we're pretty set. The
band has been going pretty solid for about ten years, and we're going
to go further. But initially...this was a band made up of people who
couldn't really fit into other bands...nobody else would play with us!
(laughs) But now, DMBQ is a strong unit, we're set.
JR: Did you listen to Japanese rock music growing up?
SM: Yeah, old Japanese rock. Flower Travellin' Band, Zuno Keisatsu,
some of the Group Sounds bands. I was interested in the old rock scene
here.
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| Esoteric Black Hair (2004) |
The thing about Japanese rock...there wasn't really that much good
stuff! (laughs) There's good stuff out there, but it's relatively
scarce. There are tons of records, lots of garbage. Sometimes I'll hear
something from the past rock scene, and I can't help but wonder: what
were they thinking? (laughs) What was going through their minds when
they did this stuff?
I've been curious about it since I was a student, but...there's not
much in the way of reference material, or anything that would tell you
about this stuff. So it's still a bit of a mystery.
JR: Back to the band...where do you see DMBQ going?
SM: We've been around for a long time...we're not so young anymore.
Really, we just want to keep going.
On one hand, you want to do the music you want to do, on the other
hand...two years from now, will people still be listening to us? The
way music distribution works these days...people are still buying LPs
and CDs. but you also have MP3s, MySpace, downloads, people exchanging
stuff. Now, it's hard to become interested in record labels, because
everything is decentralized.
It's nice to make money off the music, and maybe even living from that.
It would be nice if these changes resulted in a change in how people
made music. This idea of becoming a professional musician, making music
explicitly for profit...it would be nice if that went away as a result
of these changes. All these extra-musical elements...are they selling,
are they famous, what label are they on, do they have a buzz...that
needs to disappear.
Even now, we're seeing some of this. People who don't pay so much
attention to the traditional media. They'll take the music they
like...not necessarily music they make...but they'll put it up on their
homepage, offer it for download, share it with their friends. That's
not necessarily a bad thing.
The listener has always been the ultimate decision maker, but that's
true now more than ever, It's more listener driven. I think listeners
also have a stronger sense of their importance in the process. It's not
just passive acceptance.
JR: Do all these changes influence your music? All artists get feedback
from their audience, of course, but have all these changes caused DMBQ
to feed off this energy in an expanded way?
SM: We get a lot of energy from the audience at shows...it's the best
part of playing live. We've been going for so long...
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| The Essential Sounds from the Far East (2005) |
One thing that's interesting about recorded music...we've put out a lot
of albums, and when you put a song on a release, it's locked in. It's
stuck. You have to think about what songs to put on, how to sequence
them, the packaging, and when all that's done, it's fixed. It's set.
When you're listening to music at home, someone else's music, it's
great. You can sit back and enjoy it. But when you're listening to your
own, all of a sudden, you feel the need to take responsibility for it.
I always have this feeling that I should be apologetic: "sorry,
everybody, this is all I can give you!" (laughs) I took something, I
think it's pretty good, I made it, but...that's the end.
We have all these albums from our past. If someone heard one of them
today, hearing DMBQ for the first time, what they're hearing is really
just history. But, that said, I don't think about it too much.
JR: Would you keep making music if you had no audience?
SM: I think so, yes. It's impossible to deny the influence of the music
from the West, so there is some small element of copying. But I'm doing
what I want to do, naturally. It is what it is.
Imagine your father's from Texas. He's going to grow up with a Texas
accent, of course, that's normal. That's how people communicate where
he's from. It's the same with music. We all grew up listening to this
music, it's part of who we are as musicians.
Music is a means of expression. There are a lot of people all over the
world who can't communicate through speech or personal communication,
so they use music. That's the best thing music can do, whether it's
commercial or not. What's important is to understand that your music is
you being yourself, and even if people don't "get" you, what's
important is that you understand that this music comes from you, and
that somehow, somewhere, it can connect with someone. That's my belief.
