SOUNDTRACK: JAPANESE BREAKFAST-Live at Philly Music Fest @Ardmore Music Hall, Philadelphia PA, September 25, 2020).
I saw Japanese Breakfast back in 2018 at Union Transfer. It was a really fun show. Since Michelle Zauner is from Philly she really made the show personal.
During the introduction to her set for Philly Music Fest, the announcer said that he’d been trying to get Japanese Breakfast to play this festival since it began. So one good thing about the pandemic was that the band was still in Philly and not world touring.
We got to watch the band come out from back stage, take up their instruments and start “Diving Woman.” This song has a wonderful, memorable bass line and a jamming guitar solo from her lead guitarist.
For this show she had the addition of Molly on violin. Molly added so much to the upbeat and poppy “In Heaven.”
Michelle put down the guitar for “The Woman That Loves You,” a shorter song that was followed by the funkier “Road Head.” This song is really catchy and has a very interesting slide sound from the bass.
It was funny to see her not playing the guitar because usually when she just had the microphone, she would interact with the crowd some. But she only had the video monitor to look at. Nevertheless, after the song she said “it feels great to feel like you have a purpose again.”
They played a new song–the first time the band played it together–called “Kokomo Indiana” which is from the perspective of a love-lorn 17 year-old boy whose girlfriend moved to Australia for a summer exchange program. It was a slower song with a slide guitar melody.
Michelle returned to the guitar for “Boyish” the catchy song from her old band Little Big League, with the chorus
I can’t get you off my mind
I can’t get you off in general
so here we are we’re just two losers
I want you and you want something more beautiful
Up next was “The Body is a Blade” with some slinky guitar lines. After the song, someone triggered a sample of a crowd cheering, which was fun to hear and made Michele laugh.
Michelle put the guitar down again for “Essentially,” with a dynamite bass line that runs through the song.
Then she sat at the keyboard for the next song. A new one called “Tactic.” This is the first time she’s sat at the keyboard, “I feel very professional.” Her guitarist also played keys for this slow song.
She commented that it was lovely to see The Districts play–they are rehearsal space buddies and she felt it was surreal hearing them practice for the same show that her band was.
Then it as time for an old classic, the bouncy “Heft,” with a really nifty guitar line after the chorus.
During the quarantine, Michelle made a quarantine music project with Ryan from Crying. The band is called BUMPER, and they released an EP called Pop Songs 2020. She did a countrified version of the song “Ballad O” which was a look at both perspectives from Kenny Roger’s “Don’t Take Your Love To Town.” Peter plays the slide guitar and the drummer sings the male parts.
She announced that her bass player Devon was going to get married (cue the fake cheers from the sampler) and so she was going to play a sing about marriage, “Til Death.” This is the first song I’d heard from Japanese Breakfast many years ago and it always sounds great live. The opening verse feels even more poignant today:
all our celebrities keep dying
while the cruel men continue to win
Then came a surprise cover: Tears for Fears’ “Head Over Heels.” Musically it sounded spot on and I enjoyed her vocal take on it–not unusual or weird, just very differed with her voice instead of Roland Orzabal’s. Then for the “da da da da” part at the end, three of The Districts came out (with masks on) to sing into one of the microphones. It was a wonderful moment of live spontaneity (or not, but still) that is what makes live shows so much fun.
They followed that with a ripping version of “Everybody Wants to Love You.” The drummer sang the backing vocals on this part to good effect.
Michelle took a moment before the last song to use her platform and say that of course “Black Lives Matter. Not just saying it, it means marching and fighting. Please vote. We must work to defund the police and invest in our communities.”
That’s another thing I’d missed about live shows–bonding over good causes.
They ended with a “goofy” cover of a “Taste of Ink” by The Used. I don’t know the song or the band, but it was a jangly bouncing song and the most rocking song of the night.
And then it was over. While it was nice not having to drive an hour to get home, I still would have preferred to be there (although maybe not right now).
Diving Woman [§]
In Heaven [¶]
The Woman That Loves You [¶]
Road Head [§]
Kokomo, Indiana [new]
Boyish [Little Big League song]
The Body is a Blade [§]
Essentially [newish]
Tactic [new]
Heft [¶]
Ballad 0 [BUMPER song]
Til Death [§]
Head Over Heels [Tears for Fears cover]
Everybody Wants to Love You [¶]
Taste of Ink [The Used cover]
[§] Soft Sounds from Another Planet (2017)
[¶] Psychopomp (2016)
[READ: September 24, 2020] “Sultana’s Dream”
During the COVID Quarantine, venerable publisher Hingston & Olsen created, under the editorship of Rebecca Romney, a gorgeous box of 12 stories. It has a die-cut opening to allow the top book’s central image to show through (each book’s center is different). You can get a copy here.
This is a collection of science fiction stories written from 1836 to 1998. Each story imagines the future–some further into the future than others.
As it says on the back of the box
Their future. Our present. From social reforms to climate change, video chat to the new face of fascism, Projections is a collection of 12 sci-fi stories that anticipated life in the present day.
About this story, Romney writes
I first learned about Muslim Bengalese feminist and writer Begum Rokeya through a massive landmark anthology: Ann and Jeff VanderMeer’s The Big Book of Science Fiction published in 2016. … The story was first published in The Indian Ladies Journal in 1905…. She simply switches the roles of men and women in her Muslim society. This may seem like a simple trick, but … writers of science fiction have long known that sometimes a switch on perspective is all it takes to illuminate truths that are otherwise obscure.
This story is pretty simple and straightforward. A woman, Sultana, falls asleep. She dreams (or is it real?) that a woman named Sister Sara has come to walk her through the streets of Darjeeling. (more…)
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When this show was announced, it sold out pretty quickly. We were bummed because we saw Japanese Breakfast on Halloween a couple of years ago when she said she’d be going to Korea for a year or so.
I Just Read About That... 