As good as clammbon’s studio albums are, their live performances seem to be on an entirely different level: the word that keeps coming to mind as I watch or listen to their concerts is chemistry. Each member of the band, the music itself, and the audience are involved in a big, profuse positive-feedback loop that precipitates happiness.

3 peace ~live at 百年蔵~

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It’s not common for a non-comedy music album to make me laugh out loud while I listen to it. But the way the members of the band and the audience crack each other up makes me want to laugh along with them. At the beginning of “Gaishutsu-chuu”:

Mito starts making weird, rhythmic mouth noises that aren’t in the studio version

Ikuko: “Wait a second…!?”

Mito: “Uh, I was trying to sound kind of hip-hop, but it ended up sounding like a male adult-video actor…”

Audience member: “I wouldn’t want to see an adult video like that!”

Everyone laughs

This all happens during the song. Several audience members call out jokes, comments, and exclamations during and between the songs. One guy in particular quite annoyed me for a while, until I realized that the band was dealing with him in the most graceful way possible: not darkening the atmosphere of the show by complaining, but playing along, dubbing him the voice of God, and telling their own jokes back at him.

The show is a record of how close and friendly the band is with their fans. Through the antics in their music videos, their encouragement of tape-trading, the tone of their live shows, even the whimsical designs of their album packages, the band has always been saying, hey, let’s be friends.

3peace at c-b e-b

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When I first heard that the next clammbon album was going to be comprised of covers, I was a little disappointed. I had been hoping for some new original material. But I faithfully ordered it and waited for it to arrive. When I started listening to it, it was the middle of summer 2006 and I had just moved to a new apartment closer to work, so I was having a couple of nice walks through the city every day.

So, this album will always summon up images of summer in Seattle. It turned out to be nearly as satisfying as a real new clammbon album; some of the songs like “Summer Nude” by Magokoro Brothers and “Kahlua Milk” by Okamura Yasuyuki have really stuck with me strongly. And so far, the album has helped me discover at least one excellent band, Magokoro Brothers, to listen to.

LOVER ALBUM

Clammbon

Also, you can’t beat that album art. :D

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When this album came out, I was living in Seattle, getting used to my new job. I checked with the folks at the local Kinokuniya about whether they’d have the album, and they said they would. Moving to Seattle meant having physical access to stores where I could buy the music, comics, and video games I’d come to love in Tokyo. It’s nice to be able to walk the aisles, looking at what’s new and popular right now. At the same time, the atmosphere is just a facsimile of the various nichey shops that I frequented in Japan, so it’s kind of like trying to sate an appetite for sushi by buying a prewrapped box at the grocery store.

Anyway, the Kinokuniya turned out to be lying; they weren’t getting the CD in stock. So I went on iChat and talked to my roommate from when I lived in Nakano: “Can you pick up a CD for me?” Half an hour later, he came back online, “got it.” I wanted to ask him to rip the CD and send me the files, but he’d done enough for me already. I had to wait.

「てん、」

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If you add up listens between the two differently-mastered discs, this is strongly my most-listened-to album of the past three years. The music is even more experimental, the lyrics are even more introspective, and the execution is even more direct and unrefined. The subtlety is there, but the main message is right out front: We want to rock out together. We want to emit positivity. We want to hold on to our impressions and memories.

Here’s ten, at my site.

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When this album came out, I was back in the USA, living in a house in Green Bay with my coworkers Jon and Ben. I had a weird nocturnal lifestyle, getting up at 16:00, working 19:00 to 7:30, then coming home to eat breakfast before going to bed at 9:00. I had started pouring a lot of money into Japanese import sites such as YesAsia and Play-Asia, to support the game and music buying habits I’d developed in that land. Now I live in this strange state where the way I discover and acquire the items I treasure most is by clicking tiny images on a glowing screen and waiting for the physical objects to show up at my door a couple of weeks later.

imagination

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The first listening of imagination is highlighted in my mind: when the package came in the mail, I opened it excitedly and put it on Ben’s stereo in the living room. Jon, The Lady, and I listened to it together as I perused the liner notes. The high quality of Ben’s stereo, in contrast to the cheap headphones I usually use, made the music seem more realistic than what I was used to. I liked the album immediately, which is kind of rare for me.

These days, I still tend to use “tourist on the mirai’n” as a good introduction to show people what makes clammbon so special.

imagination at clamm-bon eigo-ban

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At the end of August 2002, water started pouring from the ceiling of my apartment in Nakano, Tokyo. My roommate was gone, having just set off on his month-long butterfly-catching trip in Burma. I called his parents, who own the building, and they advised me to wait it out until a repair guy could come by in the morning.

I had a ticket to see clammbon the next day. In retrospect, I have no idea how I managed to secure it; even now I’m not confident that I could properly purchase a concert ticket by myself in Japan. But somehow I did the online research, found the nearest venue, went into the convenience store, located the ticket machine, pushed the right buttons, talked to the staff person on the little phone, and successfully bought my ticket. I was going to be in the same room as clammbon!

The next day, I got calls from the repair guy every few hours, telling me that he’d be later and later. Eventually it got to the moment that I knew I should be making the walk to Shinjuku to get to the show on time. I called my rommate’s mom for guidance. She told me to forget about the repair guy and get to the show.

I made it to the venue, on the 7th floor of a big old building, halfway through clammbon’s one-hour set. It took me several minutes to realize that I was dumbly wandering around the place missing the show, because there were so many people milling around outside the main performance area, and the doors blocked out the noise so well, that I didn’t even know the band was playing. I rushed in there, took my place at the back of the crowd, and sang along as best I could.

I bought a clammbon shirt to show my loyalty: teal, with Dramatickers written on it in gold, fancy cursive writing, it was my most prized article of clothing for years. Somehow, it has disappeared somewhere between Tokyo, Green Bay, Chicago, and Seattle. I also filled out the survey card at the show in my awful Japanese handwriting, trying desperately to get across how much I adore the band. Maybe they read it.

Between songs, Mito announced that they would release a new album soon. That album turned out to be id. This one, recorded in the USA, produced by a USAmerican guy, has such an unusual personality. It starts with two quiet, thoughtful songs, then bursts into one of the most rocking and memorable clammbon songs ever (“Adolescence”), then keeps alternating back and forth between loud rockingness and quiet reflection for the rest of the album. Come to think of it, this album kind of is clammbon’s adolescence. The songs move further away from topics of cuteness and childhood, and start being weird, artsy experiments.

id

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The strongest memories of this album are of listening to it as I rode my tiny bike around Nakano.

Here's id at clamm-bon eigo-ban.

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When this album came out, they had a listening station set up at the store. I listened, but I guess I wasn’t comfortable enough with it, because I didn’t even buy it until about a year ago, four years after it came out. It has grown on me since then, with a playful and experimental atmosphere that seems mainly for the enjoyment of the band and the friends they invited to perform with them. Some songs, like “Re-Hanakaoru” and “Re-Zansho” have even become five-star tracks for me.

Re clammbon

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Also, it has one of my favorite album covers of all time. It seems like something I would have photographed and put in the photo-journal I started shortly before this album came out.

Re-clammbon at clamm-bon eigo-ban

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The third time I came to Japan, it was to stay. In March of 2002, I moved in with my friend’s parents and started my exchange program at Sophia University in Tokyo. This album had been out for a while, and I went out to get it at my first opportunity.

This album has strong memories associated with it; until Vapor Trails came out, this was what I listened to on my two-walk, three-train commute to class every day. To me, it’s the surrounding sound of coming to live in that discombobulating town.

ドラマチック

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What still makes me pause and shiver is the way each song segues perfectly into the next one (between “Rainbow” and “Koiwazurai” gets me every time). The whole album fits together like a long, perfect meal, where every dish is perfect, the conversation is crackling, and you get espresso at the end.

Here’s Dramatic at my fan site.

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On my second trip to Japan, this album had already been out for a while. Back then, we didn’t have Yesasia and Play-Asia and all these fancy importy onliney shops. Traveling to Japan meant I could get things that I just couldn’t get at home. I made a point of getting to the music store as quickly as possible to pick up the CD.

まちわび まちさび

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Buying it doubled the volume of my clammbon world, expanded it into the epic pop territory that they have since explored more and more deeply. I’m actually kind of surprised that “epic pop” is not an existing accepted genre; anyway, that’s my favorite way of describing their music these days.

Here’s this album on my little site.

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During my first semeser of college, in 2000, my roommate’s friend for some reason invited me to come stay at his house in Japan for a couple of weeks in the summer. I knew next to no Japanese, and my knowledge of the culture was limited to what I saw in anime and what scraps I could glean from sitting in on smoky all-night mah-jongg sessions with their little group. But I went. The story of the trip is long, but I’ll retell part of it here.

It’s easy to visit a foreign place and discover its famous landmarks, the cuisine it’s most proud of, and its silly quirks. Sure, I found this stuff. But what brought me back year after year was the everyday stuff: the way people act when they’re sitting around the house, the way they play with the dog, the snacks they buy when they’re waiting for their friends at the train station. So we did a fair amount of sitting around the house, watching the television. This commercial kept coming on for a new single from some band. It kind of intrigued me, hey, that’s a nice voice. That’s a good looking video. But, jeez, I didn’t know any Japanese, so heck if I could read the title, and my host always seemed not to be around when it came on. By the time my trip was coming to an end, I was determined to find the band.

We visited the CD store without knowing the name of the band, the title of the song, or anything, really. All I had was a memory of what the commercial looked and sounded like. We scoured the shop for clues: a CD jacket that resembled the video, a magazine article that featured a still frame, anything. After 20 minutes we had nothing. I resigned myself to never finding it, and headed for the elevator. Then, waiting for the ding, I heard the voice. I said something loudly and probably flapped my arms around a bit. Right there by the elevators was a display with a TV playing the video on repeat and stacks of the band’s CDs.

JP

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The band was called “clammbon”. I used real-life Japanese Yens to buy their one existing album, JP, and the single I’d seen advertised, “Kimi wa Boku no Mono”. I brought them back to the little house and recorded them into my new shiny-white MD player. My super-geeky Japanese life had begun.

For the next year I listened to that MD probably more than any other. I remember, on the airplane back to the USA, falling asleep to the weird electronic noises of the song “GLAMMBON”. I remember, back at school, stepping across 4th Street in the Wisconsin cold, listening, thinking that wow, this band is really onto something—-this is music I could listen to for the rest of my life.

So that’s how I found clammbon. That’s the straight luck of bumping into them so randomly, the sentiment of doing so on my first trip to Japan, and the thrill of bringing them back to my home.

Here’s JP at clamm-bon eigo-ban, my little fan-site.

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I’m lucky enough that both Rush and clammbon have new albums this month. So I get to perform my ritual again, this time for the Japanese band that has rivaled Rush as my favorite musicians for the past few years.

くじらむぼん

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This is the first substantial recording clammbon ever released, but it’s one of the last few for me to get my hands on. Back when it was still plentiful in shops, I didn’t care enough about clammbon to be buying EPs. By the time I started caring very much, because clammbon became pretty central to my life and operating a fan-site made me want to collect everything, it was nowhere to be found. I spent a couple of years scouring used CD shops for it every time I came to Japan. Finally, this past January, for some reason there was a brand-new copy sitting on the shelf at Tower Records in Shinjuku. I bought it up and left the store like I’d just gotten away with murder.

It’s a perfectly logical lead-up to their first album, and really quite impressive for how early in the band’s career it was made, fresh out of school. “ちいさなふたりのかくれんぼ” is one of my favorite clammbon songs now, aye, one of my favorite songs by anyone.

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