FEVER is a live house in Setagaya where people walk barefoot and can’t be bothered to clap between songs. Besides the expensive entrance fee for their shows, the problem with FEVER is that nobody knows about FEVER. However underground this might sound, the place is too big for such small crowds. When you are paying more than two thousand yens for a show, you expect the place to be somewhat lively. The place was dead! About twenty people who wouldn’t dance to any of the pop/rock bands and a couple of fans timidly cheering right in front of the stage. Only a couple of guys could speak any English, and my friend getting extremely drunk and molesting the lead singer and making the singer’s band run to the backstage scared of him did not help my efforts to somehow make the night worth it and take something away from it.
They always advertise the event like “X yen (+1 drink)”, which misleads people into thinking one drink is included. Instead, it means you have to pay for a drink at the door; so add 500 yen to the original price, even if you book the tickets online. Pro tip: tell the guy at the door that you need to go to the convenience store to withdraw money because you want to buy more drinks inside (in English, so that he gives up and lets you do so and return), and then of course go to the convenience store to buy cheaper alcohol and smuggle it. This is one of the good things about being a foreigner in Japan, you can get away with it anywhere you go…
The most interesting band of the night was The Wemmer (homepage, youtube). I swear I would have bought their CD had the ticket for the show been any cheaper! They are three youngsters who have fun playing and want the audience to have fun along (which with a boring crowd like that day’s means going the extra mile!). The drummer plays almost naked, but is a really nice dude to chat with, and they sing both Japanese and English songs about living the moment, walking the unbeaten path and giving the finger to anyone who says they shouldn’t do that. The vocals are below average; specially on their less grunge-ish songs.
said (homepage, youtube) is the poorly-chosen name of another good band of the night. They play more mature tunes and get really experimental here and there, but sound really pop-ish here and there. Sounds like the songs they write limit their instrumental possibilities.
The singer who got talked and molested by my friend was the front woman of a pop band called ORIE (homepage). I would say they make the kind of music everyone outside Japan imagines when thinking about J-pop/rock. Their songs too much like a TV commercial for me, I am sorry. Thought I would share their link anyway. not simple wonders (soundcloud) were fun to listen too. I wish I knew why Japanese musicians pick such weird band names that, after all, are hard to find on youtube or google. The way they play with lower/uppercase and punctuation and unorthodox symbols to further stylize the name does not help at all.
I am not fluent in Japanese at this point, but I can definitely grasp the topic of any discussion, and easily identify any words that make reference to “foreigners” and “America”, specially when the guitar player stops playing and the lead singer is pointing a finger to me, and half the audience (which means 8 people in this case, but still…) turns around to look at me. I tried to find out later what was it all about, but I couldn’t find anyone with enough English skills to give me an answer, so I gave up. I suspect they were teasing us because we left for the toilet half-way through a certain band’s performance and they didn’t like it. FEVER’s toilets are really clean.
Bottom line, go check out FEVER if you live nearby, but don’t make it a priority if you live more than half an hour away by train.
Also, here is a set list in Japanese. I understand everyone knows how to draw in Japan because after mastering the calligraphy of thousands of kanjis in school, anything else is a joke.
- Gigs: Twitter , Facebook
- Address: 1 Chome-1-14 Hanegi, Setagaya-ku, Tokyo-to 156-0042 (〒156-0042 東京都世田谷区羽根木1-1-14 新代田ビル1F)
- Access: Get off at either Shindaita station (Keio Inokashira line), which is right next to the place, or at Setagaya-daita (Odakyu line) and walk 5 minutes northward.
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