LYRICS // Second Hand Sunshine (2007)

'Second Hand Sunshine', a title that popped up one day in search of a song, was written as a global warming song. It's not a subject that seems to have been tackled a great deal yet by songwriters, so it seemed like a good opportunity to get one in early.

Many of the lyrics had been hanging around in various forms for years, as scraps that hadn't yet found the right song to end up in. I was glad to finally give them a home.

The first verse starts with, of all things, a reference to the infamous Conservative politician Enoch Powell, who was sacked from the government front bench in 1968 for his notoriously inflammatory 'Rivers of Blood' speech that raged against rising levels of immigration to the UK.

Naturally, I am fundamentally opposed to such views and see the world in an entirely different light. However, he did utter one truism (at another time) that stuck with me:

All political lives, unless they are cut off in midstream at a happy juncture, end in failure, because that is the nature of politics and of human affairs.

Understanding this helps to not place ultimate faith in political leaders as the ones that will provide the solutions to our world's problems. While they may play a part, they will ultimately fail in what they are trying to do - even when with the best of intentions - because that is 'the nature of politics'.

The opening of the song therefore is a plea for collective action against the status quo of the continuing pollution of our earth, rather than waiting for the people in power to make the changes needed.

The 'same old juice' of the second verse refers to the developed (and now developing) world's ongoing dependence on fossil fuels, with 'lizards' being the dinosaurs that turned into automobile juice over millennia underground.

While the use of these fuels may well have led to the rapid development of many nations and so have been a measure of human and economic progress in many ways, our ongoing dependence on them is leading to vicious resource wars, destruction of eco-systems and economic fragility. Ropes can also be used to good and bad ends, for rescuing somebody or hanging them, and is given here as a metaphor for fossil fuels.

Nevertheless, we are living through very interesting times as well as dangerous ones. Largely powered by the internet as an element of the digital revolution, the early 21st Century is a period of unprecedented technological progress.

It is possible that some of the solutions to humanity's most pressing problems can be found through technological innovations which enable us to better harness more natural sources of energy - such as solar power. Those who remain stuck in the older ways of thinking will be left behind, clinging on to outmoded means and watching slack-jawed as they are rapidly surpassed. This is the general thrust of the third verse.

The fourth verse alludes to the amount of information that is already available on the internet, which can point to different means of reducing ones personal carbon footprint or developing a more sustainable lifestyle. It's out there at our fingertips, but so many choose to ignore it.

The song itself appeared on the first Shelf Life album, 'Best Before End', and can be previewed or purchased as part of the whole album on .

Second Hand Sunshine

All our leaders in the end are claimed
By Old Man Blood River
Won't somebody turn the heat down?
It's an arrow too much for our quiver

We're still fixing up on the same old juice
The lizards died to give
A rope is a lifeline or it's a noose
The reptile way's too aggressive

Brave new ideas drop from your skies,
Like burned-out satellites.
You’ll fall to your knees watching people pass by,
And they follow their days with their nights.

Slip the URL into your browser.
You’ll find an answer on the other side.
If the decision makes you drowsier,
There’s no excuse to run away and hide.

Gimme some of that
Second Hand Sunshine
Power me up
And I'm on my way

Give us some of that
Second Hand Sunshine
Plug us in
And we'll be on our way

All our leaders in the end are claimed
By Old Man Blood River
Won't somebody turn the heat down?
It's an arrow too much for our quiver

We're still fixing up on the same old juice
The lizards died to give
A rope is a lifeline or it's a noose
The reptile way's too aggressive

Brave new ideas drop from your skies,
Like burned-out satellites.
You’ll fall to your knees watching people pass by,
And they follow their days with their nights.

Slip the URL into your browser.
You’ll find an answer on the other side.
If the decision makes you drowsier,
There’s no excuse to run away and hide.

Gimme some of that
Second Hand Sunshine
Power me up
And I'm on my way

Give us some of that
Second Hand Sunshine
Plug us in
And we'll be on our way

LYRICS // Ghosts (2007)

I was born in Brighton, a seaside town on the South coast of England. Despite this beginning and several later visits to then-still-resident grandparents, I grew up getting to know an entirely different place - Cardiff, the city I got my schooling in.

As soon as the opportunity presented itself, in the form of a college place, I found my way back to Brighton - delighted to get out of Wales and having a fixed idea in my head of Brighton as some kind of escapist oasis amidst all the mundanity of the rest of Britain.

It was there that I wiled away my twenties. I somehow made it through my University years and racked up over a decade back in the place of my birth, wading through loves and losses, rock 'n' roll bands that came and went, and all matter of limits explored. It's the kind of place that people escape to from whatever is getting them down in their own part of the country and then reinvent themselves as something new. It can also become a certain kind of trap - a great place to explore an idea but rarely to make a success of it.

After about 15 years of trying, my musical ambitions reached a certain zenith point when The Zamora had their moment in the national spotlight. To my surprise, just as the band's star was in ascent, I was rather unceremoniously booted out of the line-up.

I had to come to terms with the fact that the future I'd spent years carving out for myself had been taken out of my hands. Given that I wasn't really going anywhere career-wise either and with an ultimately disastrous relationship topping off my seaside downfall, my time in my 'home town' drew to a natural end.

Although it took a while to come to the decision, I ultimately decided that I wasn't going to wallow in misery but would do something about it instead - as big and radical a challenge as I could give myself - and throw myself into somewhere as crazy and far away as Tokyo to see what happened.

By the time I left Brighton, I was seeing ghosts of my former past all over the city. Ex-flames with new beaus, those I'd once rocked with, workplaces I'd had to put up with in the absence of something better, on every street corner. This song began as an expression of that feeling and was originally written in the present tense - the place that was haunting me. The melody came naturally with the words - a kind of melancholy waltz-y feel - and has changed little since being written.

Songwriting is often an exorcism in itself. Once I wrote the song, I felt a little better about things, that was that. I didn't really expect to see it ending up recorded and released on an album, least of all produced in Japan. However, when it came to writing the material for 'Best Before End', this was a natural to pull out of the bag.

Of course, by the time it was exhumed, the feelings had changed and the ghosts I'd spoken of belonged to another very distant world. I'd also become more reflective about Brighton and what I'd actually gained from my time there, so the song was adapted slightly with a change of tense suggesting that my haunting was over and I'd learned from the experience.

Telling the above tale explains most of the song, but there is just a little more imagery in it that might require some background.

Woody Allen, when asked why all his films were set in Manhattan, once commented something along the lines that as the whole world was there, it provided all the inspiration he needed to make movies. Unwilling to leave the town for many years for related reasons - my whole world was there - I felt the same about Brighton at one time. In time however, my perspective on it changed and I realised that there was a whole world outside of my seaside shelter. Woody Allen now also makes films in locations other than Manhattan - a natural progression, I feel.

'All India Radio' came to me from Salman Rushdie's Booker-winning novel 'Midnight's Children', one of my favourite works of fiction. Along with many of the other characters in the book, Saleem Sinai (the protagonist) is born with a certain set of special powers. All children that are born on or after the stroke of midnight on the moment that India is declared independent from British rule are endowed with certain powers and the closer they were born to the striking of the clock, the stronger their powers. Saleem is born as the clock hits 12:00, so his unique abilities are that much more pronounced.

Each gift that the children have been endowed with is unique to them, with the protagonist's being a telepathic ability. As this develops and as he ages throughout the novel, this ability becomes very useful to the rest of the children, who convene in great conferences in Saleem's head. Rushdie had his character comparing the feeling of all these competing voices in one space to All India Radio, the nation's radio broadcaster and home to the hundreds of languages contained within the country.

Prior to the point of my departure from Brighton, I found myself juggling a profusion of multiple identities drawn from the various activities I'd engaged in during my time there - rock singer, teacher, student, manager, unemployed, hedonist, shop assistant, lover, loser, volunteer, bus driver, the list goes on. All these different voices, different versions of myself vying for attention, began to drown each other out, leading to a feeling of like listening to All India Radio.

The song was recorded and released by Shelf Life, staying as a slow-paced and reflective tune. At the time of writing, it doesn't appear on the band's MySpace page but is available for purchase from .

Ghosts

That city’s streets,
And all its heartbeats,
Got me wherever I turned.

The riffs and the pages,
The loves through the ages,
Hit me like children and burned.

But when I stopped to think for a minute,
Of how much I had grown,
And used the eyes in the back of my head,
To look at what that city’d shown – me.

I laid dem all to rest.
Yeah, I laid dem all to rest.

There was a time,
When that place was mine,
Like Woody Allen’s Manhattan.

Now it’s just a shell,
A lingering smell,
I’d done all I could have done.

But when I stopped to think for a minute,
Of how much I had grown,
And used the eyes in the back of my head,
To look at what that city’d shown – me.

I laid dem all to rest.
Yeah, I laid dem all to rest.

Voices went round in my head.
Games once played out, now dead.
It felt like All India Radio.

Bodies piled up on the floor.
Couldn’t take it no more,
It felt like All India Radio.

But when I stopped to think for a minute,
Of how much I had grown,
And used the eyes in the back of my head,
To look at what that city’d shown – me.

I laid dem all to rest.
Yeah, I laid dem all to rest.

LYRICS // The Tokyoite (2007)

Living in Tokyo for almost five years was a major and transformative period in my life. The city inspired me in so many ways and, perhaps bizarrely for a place that is considered so impenetrable for most non-Japanese people, opened many doors for me that I'd never dreamt I would one day walk through. Naturally, it ended up as the subject for a song.

The Western pop canon is littered with songs about London ('London Calling'), Paris ('I Love Paris'), New York ('New York, New York') or LA ('Under The Bridge'). However, there are very few well known songs about Tokyo.

A cursory search of the internet turns up a few such odes and being someone who lived as an insider (yet always still being 'a foreigner'), it is fascinating to see the perspective that Western artists have had of Tokyo. It seems to broadly fit into two camps - those who view it from afar as part of the 'mysterious East' and those artists who have passed through on some world tour or other and been bowled over by the entire 'fish out of water' sensations that they experienced. Many male writers seem to have focused on some groupie fling that they obviously had, where the woman in question seemed other-worldly and unattainable, other than for a fleeting moment, and she symbolises the city for them.

Heavy metal was happy to take up the 'mysterious' angle. W.A.S.P. in 'Tokyo's On Fire' spoke of 'Big mondo fun, the land of the rising sun, A monster rising in my eyes' going for obvious imagery and Godzilla shtick, while Saxon 'had a dream about the mighty Shogun...Faded visions of the Samurai' in 'Walking Through Tokyo'. At the end of the song 'the Geisha gives on dying pleasure' too, so they get the girl as well as the mystic past. In 'Woman From Tokyo', Deep Purple got hooked on that which got Saxon. The singer 'Talk(s) about her like a Queen, Dancing in an Eastern Dream'.

Bryan Ferry's 'Tokyo Joe' was bitten by the same bug - 'My girl friday she no square, she like Lotus blossom in her hair...Geisha girl show you she adore you, Two oriental eyes implore you'. Judging by the rest of the song, if he made it out there at all, it doesn't look like he got much further than Roppongi. The Bee Gees might not have even made it out of the hotel in their 'Tokyo Nights' - 'Well she took me away by saving life, I was down in the rising sun...Well I came for the moment and stayed till the end.'

Female artists have been just as overawed, even by Tokyo women, but of course in different ways to the boy rockers. In 'Tokyo Girl', Ace Of Base (a band I could never have imagined ever finding a reason to write about when I began this blog, although the same comment could equally apply for Saxon) thought their subject 'had got the moves to rule the world, that cute inscrutability' which went on to rhyme 'Tokyo Girl, you're a mystery'. Gwen Stefani was 'fascinated by the Japanese fashion scene' and 'just an American girl in the Tokyo streets' in 'Harajuku Girls'. Although it's not clear that she had a fling herself, Donna Summer in 'Tokyo' 'met this stranger there, so...was feeling somewhat scared...but all the ladies there were nice, the gentlemen politely out of line'.

Canadian songwriter Bruce Cockburn managed to resist the temptations that seemed to sway the other male writers that passed though, but was still pretty freaked out by the place, particularly after witnessing a car being pulled from a river. Stefani might have captured the flavour of Harajuku pretty well, but Cockburn got the urban sprawl feeling, mentioning 'Pachinko jingle and space torpedo beams, Comic book violence and escaping steam'. He put 'Tokyo' out in 1979, so he would have had a taste of things before the extravagances of the Bubble era. Elvis Costello barely mentions anything to do with Japan in 'Tokyo Storm Warning'. He could have been in a Tokyo hotel in the first verse, but then wanders off to talk about dead Italian tourists and the 'Costa Del Malvinas'.

I might not have had a musical career comparable to any of the above artists, but I probably got to know Japan's capital rather better.

To me, the city that ended up feeling more like home than any other place I've lived (Brighton aside) was a very finely tuned machine that functioned so well and smoothly largely because its residents consented so willingly to the part they played in the whole picture - a form of 'consensual citizenship' missing from most Western cities. I've tried to convey a sense of that in this song.

The first verse ticks off some of the sights of the cityscape. The second one refers to the devotion that many workers (mostly male) have to their companies, particularly the globe straddling electronics giants like Sony and Toshiba. After the destruction of the city during the Second World War, it was the army-like discipline of these workers that provided the workforce that enabled Japan's 'economic miracle' during the 80's and 90's. 'Salaryman' is equivalent to 'breadwinner' in English, but is obviously more gender specific.

Even in the less prestigious jobs, many people at least give the impression of being dedicated to their work. When McDonalds opened their first branches in Japan, new staff apparently proudly talked about how they were 'working for an American company', and thus perhaps looked a little more internationalised than the generation of their more inward looking parents. Hostess bars appear to the outsider to be little more than gaudy, neon clad brothels, when most of them are actually rather different. Although sexual activity may be part of them, they are more like a modern equivalent of the old geisha tea houses, where beautiful young women are essentially on hand to flatter visiting male luminaries and the like. Many of Japan's businessmen are more conversationally open with the 'hostesses' they visit than their own wives, as many of them feel unable to talk about the strains of work at home.

The fourth verse refers to the blend of deeply traditional and hyper modern that one finds in Tokyo. Japanese houses are still measured in terms of the number of tatami mats that can be fitted on the floor. On the street, one can find an ancient looking wooden shrine with a deep attention to aesthetics right next to some vast concrete tower block with all the wires on the outside.

The bridge ('From the top of the mountain, to the waters of the ocean') is a reference to the scale of the city, which feels like it stretches from Mount Fuji far off in the distance right down to Tokyo Bay. There is actually a significant amount of countryside between Fuji and the outer limits of the city's edges, but it remains a totemic presence over the skyline on a clear day, visible from many of Tokyo's higher vantage points. Fuji makes for a calming and commanding sight beyond the visual clutter of the cityscape.

'Commuters pouring in through arteries' is about the complex network of train lines, jam packed to fill even the smallest bit of breathing space in the early morning, that all feed into the centre of the city. To me, those office workers were the blood that kept the heart beating and the train lines the veins that delivered them. 'Robots bow', even in cartoon form on train station ticket machines, as automated apologies to an imaginary inconvenience. The volume of advertising is so much higher than anywhere else I've been, and all they seem to depict beautiful people and perfect lives - a kind of futuristic Asian version of 50's picket fence America - thus 'pretty faces tease'.

'Lose myself in my headphone world' - across the city, it seems like most people have a set of headphones in their ears. On those cramped trains, personal space is at a premium, so immersing oneself in an iPod or similar gadget is a way of creating distance between yourself and the person breathing down your neck.

'Hold my breath for the quake thunder' - having once been devastated by earthquake and living in region with the highest amount of seismic activity on the planet, it is very common to hear talk of 'the next Big One' - the next quake that will destroy the city yet again. Living with earthquakes does take quite some getting used to, but seeing that the Japanese don't tend to panic during one, you learn to live with it after a while.

I've not written a great deal of ballads in my time, but it seemed to me that Tokyo was deserving of one. The song appeared on the Shelf Life album 'Best Before End' and can be heard on our MySpace page and purchased from .

The Tokyoite

On bullet trains and in pod hotels
The neon lights and elevator bells
Skyscraper high and in parallel
This machine and it's heart beat on

Salaryman as foot soldier
Corporate beasts with a great hunger
It made me feel a little older
This machine and it's heart beat on

I call it home – and it's so alive
I'll store it away – in my archive of times

In hostess bars and hamburger chains
A rat race graft where no-one abstains
Business symphonies to loss and gain
This machine and it's heart beat on

In public baths and on tatami floors
Wooden shrines and concrete eyesores
I made my chances, how about yours?
This machine and it's heart beat on

I call it home – and it's so alive
I'll store it away – in my archive of times

From the top of the mountain
To the waters of the ocean
A monument in superlative
The pinnacle of these islands

Commuters pouring in through arteries
Robots bow and pretty faces tease
'Thanks for your custom, come again please'
This machine and it's heart beat on

Lose myself in my headphone world
A soundtrack for this city absurd
And hold my breath for the quake thunder
This machine and it's heart beat on

I call it home – and it's so alive
I'll store it away – in my archive of times

From the top of the mountain
To the waters of the ocean
A monument in superlative
The pinnacle of these islands

LYRICS // She's Coming Home (2007)

The best way to get from the heart of Tokyo to the main international airport is by the Narita Express, the smooth-as-glass train that glides through the concrete cityscape to break into the open countryside and paddy fields of Chiba prefecture, where Narita Airport is set. I made several journeys to and from Narita on this train, and although it is a slightly more expensive ride than the other options for getting there, it is by far the most comfortable and allows time and space for a nice doze before arrival.

One such journey on the Narita Express was to meet my sweetheart when she returned from a business trip to Hong Kong. I arrived in ample time, bouquet in hand, only to get a message on my phone that her flight was going to be delayed by several hours. There was nothing for it but to camp out in the cavernous expanse of the airport and wait it out. I helped myself to a good Thai meal and killed an hour feeding coins into a massage chair I came across. After a while of wandering and vainly glancing up at the arrivals board for a glimmer of news, lines of verse started coming to me.

When Shelf Life started writing the material for our debut album ('Best Before End'), I turned to my notebooks for salvageable scraps that could make their way into songs. What had originally been written as a waiting poem turned out to be the basis for this song.

After many years of trying to be clever and wordy in my songwriting, I made a conscious decision to try and go for something simple and direct. Given the story above, they are fairly self explanatory. There is a little nod to The Beatles (unsurprisingly) in it, inverting the Sgt. Pepper ballad of a daughter running away from 'She's Leaving Home' to...

The song itself was often used to open our shows with and is a positive-looking, rolling Stonesy blast. It can be heard on our MySpace page and purchased from .

She's Coming Home

I speed through rice fields
And bamboo clusters
This is how it feels
Waiting for her return

The train moves smoothly
Like water down glass
I drift and slumber
And dream of lucky stars

Departure lounge blues
Held up on the arrival board
If you could be in my shoes
Sweet landing such reward

It's a new feeling
I never had before
From floor to ceiling
What I was waiting for

Yes, she's coming home
I've been living alone
For so many years
At last I'm in the zone

Departure lounge blues
Held up on the arrival board
If you could be in my shoes
Sweet landing such reward

Hong Kong's only
A few hours away
She's coming home
It's gonna be a better day

Hong Kong's only
A few hours away
She's coming home
It's gonna be a better day

INTERVIEWS // First Cutlery's Deepest (2007)

Tokyo Pinsalocks (l-r Reiko, Hisayo, Naoko)

The first interview I ever did for publication was with David Gedge of The Wedding Present, one of my favourite guitar bands when I was a teenager. It was exciting to meet with one of my musical heroes at the time and I was pleased that he was such an approachable subject. Gedge gave me a long interview and I committed the whole thing to cassette tape.

When it came down to getting an article out of it for the magazine I was writing for at the time, I spent literally hours in the college library, rewinding the tape again and again with headphones clamped to my ears as I transcribed the entire interview. This made the man hours quite considerable and the prospect of going through this process every time I interviewed somebody less than tempting to say the least.

Many years later, interviewing actors at the Canadian Embassy in Tokyo about a play I had just watched them perform, the task was made much easier with the interview having been recorded on a MiniDisc player - the ease of the digital age making my writing job that much faster.

In 2007, I became a staff writer for the now-defunct Asia Player magazine. In what turned out to be my last piece for their final issue, I interviewed another musician and stumbled across the grail of making an interviewer's life even easier. Holding down a writing gig in Tokyo with a handful of other committments at the same time left me with very little space in my life to get more than a few hours sleep a night, so I was grateful for any shortcut that came my way.

The answer? Email your questions to your subject and then just edit their responses into a nice clean looking piece - the trick is that the person being interviewed actually does the work for you and gets their words as they want them in the bargain.

The subject for this piece was Reiko Kaiyoh, drummer with Japanese electro-pop queens Tokyo Pinsalocks. Having written about them already in my column for the magazine, Reiko asked me to give them some coverage on an upcoming event that the band was organising - a female focused arts event that they had called Spoon Market. The resulting interview can be found below.

Unfortunately, I never made it to the show due to there simply not being enough time in my life to squeeze in everything that Tokyo threw at me. It sounded like a really fun gig, but in a place with as much going on all the time as Tokyo has, you simply can't say yes to everything.

Still, I did manage to take my interviewing technique discovery away from the experience, so I got that and Reiko got her coverage - everyone's happy!

First cutlery's deepest

In the rush of a busy life in the city, we take the clutter and bustle of our daily lives for granted. There's always cutlery or chopsticks in the kitchen, and the vending machines will always have tea. Take the humble spoon. Use it to shovel in the cereal, soup or fried rice, wash it up and forget about it till hunger hits again, right?

Think again – there are those for whom it holds a much deeper meaning, and not just as something for Michael Jackson's metal bending friends to show off with.

The Dan of West Africa have mastered the art of carving large spoons into impressive works of sculpture. The spoon's owner is given the title of 'wa ke de', a high distinction given to the most hospitable woman of the village. The custom of the men of Wales giving love spoons to their sweethearts dates back hundreds of years. Even Freud himself has gotten in on the act, giving the spoon the female role in the knife/fork/spoon dinner table trio.

Tokyo Pinsalocks, Japan's leading purveyors of all-girl electro-pop have taken the spoon as metaphor for themselves. Singer Naoko once described the band that way, being both cute and tough – feminine curves tempered with a metallic steel. To extend the metaphor further, they've organised not only an event but an entirely new scene named after the object – September's upcoming 'Spoon Market' at Ebisu Milk.

The event is set to be an extravaganza of all things female from this fair city, and features bands, DJs, VJs, art exhibitions, shops, stalls and food. The music is ladled on thick, with appearances from the Pinsalocks crew themselves, along with Noodles, Motocompo, Falsies On Heat and Kate Sikora, amongst others. Spoonfuls of style will come from the fashion goods, accessories and jewellery on sale, with further treats served up in the way of paintings, photography and short films. It's all stirred up with fine food from the likes of Patisserie Potager and Tacostar.

Asia Player managed to grab a few moments between courses with Pinsalocks drummer and co-organiser Reiko Kayoh to find out a little more about what's cooking down at Milk.

Where did the idea come from?

We wanted to create an atmosphere where we would be excited to perform our music, and an ideal place to go out to have fun. We play music as a way of expressing ourselves, which is very similar to that of other artforms – film making, fashion designing, and food making. When we create our music, we get inspired by all these things, not only from listening to other music.

We couldn't find a place like that, so we decided to make one.

What makes it different from other events in Tokyo?

There are events which have live performances, and art exhibitions together, but usually the art is secondary to the 'main' live show. At Spoon Market, all the art, shops, food, and music are given equal status.

Ebisu Milk is known as a venue/club, but we are proud to offer it as a gallery/cafe-bar/shopping market too that night.

What are you hoping to achieve with it?

To stimulate people's everyday lives and make them a little happier by attending to this event. Also to establish a scene of female artists by combining these different fields, hopefully all getting inspired by each other.

What are you most looking forward to at 'Spoon Market'?

For Milk to become one big market. All the artists we chose are awesome, but what's important is to join them all together and make the whole place into one world, one market. From entering the door to the end of the basement floor, we want the audience to feel 'what a cute and cool place!'

What are your expectations for it?

As far as we know there are no other events like it, but we are sure there are many people who would want to come to a place like this.

We expect more artists will become interested in Spoon Market culture. We want to join people who usually work in different fields together and create a scene.

We will be sure of our success when we hear people describing someone's artwork as 'that's very Spoon Market-ish!'

Who do you hope to attract to the event?

The target will be people like us! That means women our age (late 20's to early 30's) who are interested in music, fashion, art, like going to cafes, want to make their own style and are looking for something that inspires them. However, people from different generations, genders, or cultural backgrounds are just as welcome.

What's in it for boys attending?

Boys and girls might feel the same way about something but express themselves in a different way. They can definitely enjoy the similarities and differences in the art styles. Maybe they'll be able to understand their girlfriend's taste a little better too!!!

Is this going to be a one-off or a regular event?

A regular event hopefully, but we'll see how it goes after the first one. We want to see if this is the right place to have this event, the right number of artists, etc. We definitely will continue the Spoon Market with the same concept, but don't know when and where yet. So, watch this space.

What's your message to the audience?

If you like one artist, you'll definitely love the rest. For people who want a good night out in Tokyo, for people who're looking for inspiration, for people who just want to enjoy music or to relax, see you at the Spoon Market!


EVENT INFO

VENUE: Ebisu Milk
DATE: 21 September (Friday) 20:00 – 04:00
TICKETS: Advance - 3,000 yen (inc. one drink) / Door - 3,500 yen (inc. one drink)
Available from Ticket PIA
WEB: www.pinsalocks.com/spoon
PHONE: 03-3413-9331 (Heaven's Door)

TRAVEL // A Sunshine State Of Mind (2007)

Japan is not the first country I lived in other than my place of birth. Way back in the comparative calm of the early Clinton era, a few years after the end of the Cold War and before the Monica Lewinsky incident, I spent a few barmy months living in Florida. A toe in the waters of expatriation, if you like.

I'd carried a chip on my shoulder about the US throughout most of my youth, derived in part from my father's attitude to the place and partly through my own observations and concern about factors like Ronald Reagan. Britain does tend to have mixed attitudes towards America anyway. Some people love the place, whereas others loathe it.

However, I'm not the kind of guy that really likes carrying chips on his shoulder, especially now out of the sprinted rush of teenhood and into the marathon run of adulthood. I had to put these ideas I had to the test, and so I tried living in America for a while. Lo and behold, I discovered that just like anywhere, there are some really good people in America. Just like everywhere else too, it also has its fair share of not-so-good people, but it was the good ones that turned my prejudices around and made me look at 'that place across the pond' in a different light.

Early on in 2007, I stumbled across a chance to write something that could end up in a book. A couple of Brits living in Denmark had come up with a home-made book project about 'moving away from home', named Being Abroad. Having written extensively about my experiences of living in Japan, I decided that I should exhume another story from the memory banks instead and tell my American tale.

In the end, my piece didn't make the final cut. I don't know what it is but I often don't seem to have a lot of luck in getting anywhere with UK-related ventures! Perhaps I am forever bound to remain on the outside, looking in.

Rather than let my long tale of youthful adventure under the Floridian sunshine languish on my hard drive, it is instead presented here. Although it's a lengthy tale, it is somewhat edited down from the original size.

'A Sunshine State Of Mind', then - the tale of three plucky young British men and the scrapes that pulled them apart out West.

A Sunshine State Of Mind

Remember fearing a nuclear winter? Remember Ronnie and Maggie? Perhaps, perhaps not. We've all interacted with the big beast in different ways and at different times, and while it comes in many guises, none of us can really ignore it. As a kid, I grew up with a fear and loathing of America. My perspective on the world was reasonably narrow, being an island boy at heart. The US was the big beast across the pond, the playground bully in the world schoolyard. A place stacked to the back teeth with intercontinental missiles, where the police not only had guns but used them too. And in Reagan, a man with his finger on the apocalypse button who seemed to have no clue of the implications of that.

It is also, however, laden with contradictions. The musical pioneers and outlaws, such as the old blues guys, the jazzers and the hippy crowd had great essences of cool and looked much hipper than any home-grown heroes. And somewhere that produced the likes of Martin Luther King and Jack Kerouac had to have something going for it. Yet my overall impression was negative – the perfect, white-toothed fake smiles and 'have a nice day' platitudes, the plasticity of Mickey and the Golden Arches and the camera-toting tourists who thought cultural relics were 'cute'.

When the sign went up on the university notice board for an exchange trip to the US, I laughed it off. Why on earth would I actually want to go there? Somehow though, the opportunity seemed to stick in my mind. After stages of denial about taking the opportunity up, I finally settled on the idea that if I was going to carry this prejudice around with me, I might as well actually put it to the test.

Applied, got it, so where to go in that vast land? From the options, I decided to ignore the apparent backwaters of Arizona and South Carolina, plumping instead for America at its boldest, brashest and most plastic – Florida. After all, if you can make it in your most challenging point of a destination, you should be able to make it anywhere, right?

Two of my college friends had taken the same decision to head for the Sunshine State, and I'll call them Matt and Richard here. We approached the situation as three cocky young Englishmen bent on plunder and adventure, heading West to take on America. In those days, there wasn't a smoking ban on trans-Atlantic flights. We stocked up on cheap fags, then spent the 14 hour flight adding to the cabin fug and competing over who would be the first one of us to pull an American girl.

Landing in Orlando, the first thing that hit us was warmth. Coming from the wintry gloom of England in early January, it was a damned good start. First challenge, make it through the long lines of serious looking customs officials, second challenge, find a car rental place and the next one, drive an hour to Tampa. The Pet Shops Boys were singing about West End Girls on the radio in the rental joint, sounding utterly out of place but somehow comforting at the same time.

I was the passenger in the back, under glass and staring out at all this alien newness. The highway was so wide and the streets so utterly uncramped. Such a change from the terraced, identikit streets I was used to walking that wore their age on the outside. The neon-flanked highway flashed by, as huge billboards and brightly coloured fast food drive-in signs rose and fell.

We arrived in the early morning at a vast green campus and made our way to the international dorm that was set to be our home. I don't recall it as that culturally diverse, but it was almost certainly the first time I'd met people with Mexican or Native-American blood. Matt and Richard were sharing a room while to my great luck, my American roommate spent most of his life at his girl's place.

January 1994, and America was still basking in the relative calm of Clinton's early days. The twelve long years of Republican rule in the White House had finally come to an end. It might have been before the dot-com bubble, but it was also before Monica Lewinsky, Columbine, Tim McVeigh, Al-Qaeda and the bombs dropped in Afghanistan and Bosnia left their own stains on the man's tenure. There was an optimism around that you could scent in the air. I remember one American student carrying around a cuddly Clinton toy. Try as I did, I couldn't imagine our then unesteemed premier being treated in the same way.

In an early meeting, we had the house rules of the dorm laid out to us. No smoking inside. No drinking outside. No opening the windows. It seemed that the Land of the Free insisted on treating its young adults like kids for as long as it could. The dour greyness of England began to look a little more libertarian than I'd previously given it credit for. We were also told that as the American academic semester was longer than a British term, we wouldn't be able to get any grades to send back home anyway and therefore it didn't actually matter if we didn't attend every class.

I tried. Made all my classes in the first week. Pictured some sort of 'Breakfast Club' kind of set-up – the cool kids, the pretty ones, the dorks and the misfits, all sitting on chairs in rows with an armrest attached to write on – and it was pretty much like that too. I had good intentions for going again in my second week, but it never quite happened. And that was it – I never took another class there. I dropped out of college, soaked up the Florida sunshine, grew my first beard, let my hair grow long, and took three months off from my life.

I won't pretend that it wasn't a hell of a lot of fun, at least at first. Once you figure out how to break someone else's rules without getting caught, you can largely maintain a lifestyle you're used to. Being a Brit in the States had its advantages too. That 'cute accent' can open doors otherwise closed to someone who's just a part of the crowd. Whilst trying to open a bank account, the teller had me repeat the stalwart British word 'bloody' a number of times, as it sounded cool to her. I'd grown up feeling apart from the crowd, but this was the first time that I'd actually felt 'exotic'! Despite the plunder committed in the name of Queen and Country, the pioneering imperial swashbucklers that carved out a quarter of the globe for Britain established the reputation of the Englishman as a gentleman. It might not always be true, but sometimes it's beneficial not to shatter someone's preconception of you.

There were other noticeable differences too. Nobody actually walked anywhere. If the convenience store was 15 minutes away on foot, hop in the pick-up when you need to go. Even just a short trip across campus was done by car. With the cafeteria, you bought a monthly pass, then could stock your tray up with as much food as you liked. My first time in there, with eyes bigger than my belly and essentially a free banquet in front of me, I piled it high and gorged myself till could fit nothing else inside – and this was only lunchtime. But it was too much to keep up, so I imposed some sense of moderation on what I lined my stomach with.

Of the three of us, I was the first to land an American girlfriend. I'll call her Dionne. We met at some club or other and the British accent did the trick again. Back at the dorm, stood under a lamppost and with no-one else around, we got to know each other better. At some point, out of the corner of my eye I noticed a scrawny kid approaching. He turned his head as he passed us, and then realised that his girlfriend was locked in an embrace with another. He ran off, screaming and threatening suicide and she ran after him. I was left standing there.

Matt came by, having been out in pursuit of his own quarry. I told him what'd gone on and he commended me, as if the situation were a badge of honour. I'd earned my first plunder stripes.

After that, I had no particular desire to get any further involved. Over the course of a week, notes got passed, meetings hooked up and the next thing I knew I was in a relationship. A nice girl at first, the disturbed streak didn't really surface until a little later on, by which time it was a little too late. A stranger in a strange land, I'd fallen back on a local to be my compass and guidebook, not quite the bold and intrepid explorer I'd imagined on the flight over.

Despite the challenges of this alien landscape and the undercurrent of a relationship on the edge running through my days, life was pretty good. The weather was knockout. I was a young man stuck in an adventure with a lot of partying to do.

Contrary to my youthful expectations of Americans, I met some fantastic folks there. As warm as the sun on my head, genuinely friendly and peaceful people who also liked having a good time. I discovered people who were just like me, yet lived on the other side of the vast ocean that divided us and were just brought up with different TV shows and cultural reference points. We fell in with a like-minded crowd pretty swiftly, and before long I located the musicians amongst them and joined up as one of their singers. We almost even made it to a show once, were even packed into the van, instruments at the ready. Never quite got there though.

Being so far away from home offered a unique perspective on the life I led and the kind of person I was back in England. It was as if I'd put that person on pause and could assess him from a distance. The vexations that had troubled the soul of that young British boy smoothed themselves out in the Floridian sun. Fairly early on in my stay, it dawned on me that I had made peace with myself and my past.

Of course, to find a silver lining you also need the clouds. In any environment, new or old, you can always find downers to piss on your parade, some circumstantial and some that you carry with you. No matter how far you run, you always bring yourself with you. I was funding my trip with a meagre Student Loan. Matt and Richard tripped off to New Orleans for their own Mardi Gras adventures, sleeping rough on the banks of the Mississippi in the process. As close as I got to steeping myself in classic Americana was sitting on the dock of a bay whistling Otis refrains.

The keg parties at friends apartments were good-time affairs but they'd be countered by others that got completely out of hand. We ended up at a frat house party once, with far too much testosterone on display for my liking. A gang of the house frat rats chugged back whatever was fuelling them and decided to throw a large couch onto the fire. Naturally, the police arrived. Not wanting to be implicated, we made a sharp exit when word got out that someone had taken it upon themselves to steal the car the cops had arrived in.

Adding to the element of danger, there were a couple of shootings near the dorm, one on the campus itself and another in the parking lot of the convenience store we used. The entire place usually seemed to be crawling with cops. As the only one in the gang over 21, I was often called upon to be the guy that went to the liquor store. I didn't particularly mind, but I didn't want to get deported if I was caught. The amount of rules and restrictions on the freedom of the individual made England's nanny state look like a negligent babysitter in comparison.

One road trip near the end of the stay left me with a tale I still tell. The Grateful Dead had a tribe of followers that would throw parties and festivals across the country in the spirit of the original 60's cultural explosions. Florida's own Rainbow Gathering that year was to take place deep in the heart of the Ocala State Forest. I and another English pal decided to go and hang out in the woods with the hippies for the weekend and convinced a couple of girls to give us a ride. I picked up the goods at the liquor store on the way.

Dionne had warned me about the state law on not having open bottles of alcohol in a car. My friend Tim however, was much more carefree and as soon as we were on the highway, he opened his first bottle of Mickey's Malt Liquor. We were looking forward to a little hedonism in a natural environment.

We exited the highway at our turning and headed down a dirt track surrounded by deep forest. A mile in, we were stopped by a police road block. An officer approached and gestured to us to wind the window down. We did as we were bade and he asked in an officious tone whether we had any drugs, liquor or weapons in the vehicle. Another officer had begun snooping around the back of the car with a torch. Naturally, we replied that we didn't have anything. He asked a second time and we replied with the same answer. He then asked all four of us to step out of the car.

Jail? Deportation? Four kids, breaking the law with an American cop in the post-Rodney King era. It called for some quick thinking and my instincts kicked in with a solution. I was going to have to take the rap for Tim's open bottle to prevent us all getting into even hotter water.

Having spent much of my time there changing my vocabulary and slightly Americanising my accent to be better understood, I suddenly switched to 'genteel and naïve Englishman' mode.

'Well officer, now you mention it, I do have a bottle of beer.'

He asked me to step over to his car and bring the quart of Mickey's with me. I did as I was told and he informed me about the state law on open liquor bottles in cars.

Ramping up the 'gentleman abroad' act, I replied something along the lines of:

'I see, officer. I was unaware of that, but I'm awfully grateful to you for having alerted me to it. We don't have such laws in my country, you see. I hope I haven't caused you any inconvenience.'

'You realise that you could have gone to jail for this, son?'

'Could I really? I'm terribly sorry. Would you like me to put my hands on the bonnet?'

'That won't be necessary. Please dispose of the liquor by the side of the road.'

I emptied the bottle out next to the car and got a $25 fine. We were all a little shaken by the experience but they were very grateful that I'd stepped in and saved everyone's skins. Best of all, it had taken attention away from the further seven litres of red wine we had stashed in the boot.

On another weekend, I trekked down to the Everglades with Dionne to meet the folks. Despite the pleasant warmth and subtropical feel of the place, there was more than a hint of retirement village about it. 'So this is where rich old Americans go to die, slowly', I thought to myself. Mom was nice and friendly. Pop was strict and keen that I kept to his house rules, but welcomed me anyway. After arriving, we took a trip to the beach. I lounged in the waters of the Gulf of Mexico, basking in the glory of being somewhere so exotic sounding. Occasionally, I'd keep my head down to avoid the gaze of the beach police, who had laws to uphold even that stretch of sand. Nevertheless, watching pelicans fly past backdropped by a Mexican Gulf sunset made for a remarkable contrast to the scavenging English seagulls that tried to grab at your fish and chips on Brighton seafront.

As we rolled into the campus parking lot back in Tampa, Tom was standing in her space, awaiting our return. Before the car had stopped, he began kicking the fender and smacking the windows. Clearly, I was going to have to deal with the situation.

The following day, I agreed to meet with him. I found him under a tree. Sitting down, I told him that I was in a relationship with her and that he had to give up on what he was holding on to. He was broken by this news, but appreciated my directness and honesty in coming clean to him. After that, he slunk away. I sought Dionne out to bring her the good news. To my surprise, she flew off the handle and disappeared. Unbeknownst to me, she went to seek solace in the arms of Matt, my fellow explorer.

In the weeks that followed, what should have been a turnaround in our fortunes turned to shit instead. I stepped into Tom's newly vacated shoes as the spurned and paranoid lover, trying to find out where she was. My mood spiralled downwards. Confused and dejected, I eventually wrote her a letter with my suspicions – no reply.

It finally dawned on me that my American fling was over. I sat on the bench outside the dorm, broken-hearted. Once again, I was alone, a stranger in a strange land, and I wanted to go home. Broke and on a heavy downer, my father was in the US at the time and wired me some cash to bring my flight forward. I said my goodbyes to the good guys, packed my things and got out.

A friend from LA offered me a ride from Tampa to Orlando. Out on the open highway, my mood began to lift as I left the life I'd led behind me. We reminisced about the times we'd had and my experience of expatriation. As every road trip needs a soundtrack, we switched on the radio. I flipped through the channels in search of something good.

'...sitting in a railway station, got a ticket for my destination...'

Simon & Garfunkel's 'Homeward Bound' drifted out of the speakers and hit me. Sometimes a song has an uncanny way of jumping on you unannounced and perfectly summing up your moment. I was going back, homeward bound, my American dream tried, tested and put to rest.

Reflecting on it all once the jetlag had worn off and I was used to narrow streets and bad weather again, I knew that I no longer hated America as I'd done as a child. I actually rather liked it, even loved some parts of it. I'd learnt more about myself, the country I'd visited and my own one too, and by extension I'd learned more about the world itself.

One thing to be said for expatriation though. Once you've tried it, you've opened a door and there's no looking back. Your country will seem that much smaller than it used to and you develop a taste for exploration. In 2003, I did the same thing. I said goodbye to the good guys in Brighton, packed up my things and got out of Britain.

I've been living in Tokyo ever since. But that's another story.