THE SUNDAY CORRESPONDENTS

It was with great sadness that I read early in the New Year that Mick Karn had succumbed to cancer.

I first saw Japan on the 28th April 1978 supporting Blue Oyster Cult on my one and only visit to Glasgow’s legendary Apollo Theatre. It was my first visit to a real concert, I had previously bought a ticket to see Steve Harley and Cockney Rebel at Edinburgh’s Playhouse Theatre, years before, but I hadn’t been allowed to go by my “bastard” of a father, who thought I was too young to be allowed to travel to Edinburgh on a school night from Kirkcaldy.

I’d been to lots of other local gigs in and around my home town but never to a real big concert venue.

You may be saying to yourselves BLUE OYSTER CULT!!???

Aye well!!

Three nights before, I was in a pub in St Andrews where I had recently moved having left home to work at the University, It was the Dunvegan pub and some folk I hadnt long known and with who I was becoming friendly said one of their groyp had pulled out of going to the gig in Glasgow and asked if would I like to go. Now while I’d never heard of Blue Oyster Cult I said yes

Part of this was down to really wanting to go to a gig after recent shenanigans had seen me miss a concert on at Dundee University......

Graham Parker and the Rumour were playing at the student union in Dundee and I was offered the chance to go by a student who lived in the university residence that I worked and lived in. The guy who took my money for the gig was a small weedy wide-boy cockney prick who told me to be outside the St Andrew’s union building at 6.30 pm, ready for the bus to depart. I arrived at 25 past 6 to be told the bus was full at 6.15 and had left!!!! I was fuming.....

So on Saturday 28th April 1978, I was picked up at Halbeath roundabout just off the M90 and taken through to Glasgow.

The day is so vivid in my mind and I was picked up at this particular location as it was close to where I’d been to the last game of the football season watching Raith Rovers beat Dunfermline 2-0 at East End Park, having won promotion to the Scottish First Division the previous Tuesday with a 1-0 win at Clyde!!

I’m sorry to say I can’t remember the guy and his girlfriend who drove me to the gig, but I do remember Andy Harrow (whom my goldfish at the time was named after) scored the winner at Clyde and the first at East End Park.

It was with great excitement that I entered the Apollo Theatre with its 3,500 seated capacity, for my first BIG gig.

First to take to the stage were Japan, on every seat there was a flyer pronouncing their new album, Adolescent Sex.

They came on looking like The New York Dolls wee brothers and got the worst reception I’ve ever seen at any concert even in the subsequent 30 years. Drinks were thrown on the stage and I have to say I found it quite funny to watch the band members dodge the bottles, cans and an air force of flyers made into paper planes that rained down on the stage.

The sound they made was a very harsh mixture of glam and heavy rock and I’m sure they retreated from the stage without playing their full set.

It was a few years later that I next heard Japan and their sound was very different. I was at Bentley’s nightclub in Kirkcaldy and I heard Life in Tokyo a Giorgio Moroder produced piece of synth/dance music with a European feel. (Featured recently by JC)

Kirkcaldy had two nightclubs Bentley’s and Jackie “O’s”, Bentley’s played the better music, a good mixture of current disco tracks with a huge amount of electronic dance 12” singles, Simple Minds, Soft Cell and Killing Joke and the like.

There was certainly a huge change in Japan’s sound from their guitar based early days to an electronic feel that fitted in well with other bands of that early “new romantic” period.

At the heart of that new sound was Mick Karn’s distinctive fretless bass.

The albums Gentlemen Take Polaroids and Tin Drum brought the band commercial success but common with a lot of groups this seemed to produce conflict within the band, which came to a head when Karn’s girlfriend left him to move in with lead singer David Sylvian.

I did see Japan play once more before they split up, at Edinburgh’s Playhouse in October 1982. As JC explained in his posting that was the month Life in Tokyo was released for the third time and made its highest ever chart position, 28.

The tour was to promote Tin Drum and they were a different band to one that I’d seen in Glasgow. The only thing that annoyed me was the amount of Duran Duran fans at the gig screaming at every movement of David Sylvian and I do remember seeing a John Taylor look-alike posing about outside before the gig. But musically they were first class.

Two months after seeing them in Edinburgh they played their last ever gig in Nagoya, Japan.

Sylvian released a few collaborations with Ryuichi Sakamoto including Forbidden Colours the theme to Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence (which incidentally was the film I went to see on my first date with my wife Alison).

In 1984 his wonderful first album Brilliant Trees was released, which included the single Red Guitar (again as featured by JC recently). So far Sylvian has released 22 solo albums.

Karn worked with Bauhaus singer Pete Murphy and released one album as Dali's Car; he released over a dozen solo albums and contributed his unique style of bass playing to many people’s albums.

David Sylvian, Mick Karn, Steve Jansen and Rich Barbieri reformed to make an album under the name of Rain Tree Crow, before going their separate ways again.

Mick Karn (real name Andonis Michaelides) died at home in London on 4 January 2011, he was 52 years old.

Just for the record, I never got my money back from that “cockney prick”, never did see Graham Parker and never have seen Steve Harley. Oh and Andy Harrow (the goldfish) got flushed down the toilet), Andy Harrow (the footballer) got sold to Luton Town for £90,000 and my dad is still an old bastard !!!

mp3 : Japan - Adolescent Sex
mp3 : Japan - Gentlemen Take Polaroids
mp3 : Rain Tree Crow - Blackwater
mp3 : Mick Karn - Sensitive

John Greer, Sunday 27 March 2011