The singer's name is Baba and he's the Japanese Iggy Pop -- when he was young and spritely. Baba's just smashed his head into a speaker, and blood from his nose splashes over the kids spilling onto the stage at a packed Shinjuku live house. In return, they offer him a similar rock 'n' roll sacrament -- half-spilled glasses of beers. He quaffs 'em down, tosses 'em aside and with a maniacal screech hurls himself into the crowd to be held aloft like some bloody messiah, which, for these kids is precisely what he is.
Behind him a guitarist, bassist and drummer unleash a primal psychedelic-punk noise that's like The Stooges and The Doors getting their heads bashed together by a soccer hooligan from Japanese media hell. It sounds and looks fantastic. It is Kubikarizoku -- Headhunters in English -- and they have the name, the look, the energy, and the raw rock 'n' roll sound that perfectly encapsulates garage-punk -- the "next big thing" in rock music.
Kubikarizoku and other Japanese garage bands (Gasoline, Minnesota Voodoo Men, 5,6,7,8's and 54 Nude Honeys, to name a few) have seen their audiences triple within the last 12 months -- from playing in front of 100 people to packing out Tokyo's 300-capacity live-house venues. But it's not just Japan's garage-punk underground scene that is thriving. From Detroit to London to Stockholm to Tokyo, just about any band with a retro sound and loud guitars seem to be attracting the kind of excitement usually reserved for a new David Beckham haircut.