A few days ago I was changing trains in Shibuya and before I even got to the down escaltor from the Inogashira line I could hear raucous punk pop blasting out from somewhere, not unusual really for a city that brings a whole new meaning to the term noise polution, but this sounded different, not one of those god awful sound trucks advertising the next release from some sterile manufactured J-pop loser, more raw, more fun!
As I came down the escalator I could see an unusually large crowd of people gathered around the source of the music, so although usually I don’t stop, this time I thought I’d go take a look.
Turned out to be a good decision.
The band in question are called GEEKS, a power punk 4 piece, and despite not being my usual cup of tea music wise, they were bloody great, bursting with energy and personality and damn good musicians. Plus, you cant fail to love a band who play in front of a banner that says ‘Geek up your ass gently’ :-)
I hung around for a while taking some photos, actually pretty difficult as the large crowd seemed to contain quite a lot of hardcore GEEK fans, who weren’t very happy about me pushing in front of them to take pictures.
After they finished I spoke to the singer , Endo, in my best Japanese and he answered in flawless American English drawl.(turns out they had recently played at SXSW)
I gave him my card and said I was going to post something about them here.
They won’t be everyones cup of ocha but if you like power punk pop in a ‘Green Day’ vein then you will definitely enjoy GEEKS.
They are currently touring Japan promoting their first album ‘Magical Vox Paranoia’ details of which can be found on their myspace page:-
http://www.myspace.com/geeksjapan
