This is a post I have been looking forward to for a long time, of my Arizona-sometimes-Tokyo pal Bryce Suzuki who I’m not entirely sure how I know or how far back our friendship goes. He, being an avid and very talented street photographer, tells me that our mutual friend and iconic photographer (and Tokyo Camera Style originator), John Sypal put me on his radar, however everytime I look at Bryce’s name or see his amazing Instagram feed, which I highly encourage you to check out and follow, I feel like we might go much, much further back, perhaps even […]
Tokyo Record Style
Dean
Friendly Dean from Christchurch via Osaka was up in Tokyo with Malin and Bastian from the previous post, shopping for records. Dean was rawking a VW Bus T-shirt which, having spent many years driving around America in my own, was speaking to me. Nobody probably cares about this but why don’t I just take a few a few lines to hip you to old VWs. Whereas “Beetle Bugs” are called “Type I”, “Vans”, “Combis” or “Microbuses” are called “Type II”. “Type III” are “IV”s are these sorta less interesting sedans. “Karmann Ghia” are “Type 14”, “34” or “145” depending on […]
Tokyo Record Style
Nori
Nori-san, pictured here, though the same age as me, knows more about music now than I could ever know even with 2 entire lifetimes. Though initially, we didn’t exchange so many words, I could sense by his attentive and discerning curiosity of me, a lightness but directness in his voice, along with a sensibly understated style, details of which were jumping out at me (tucked-in-to-slim-navy chinos, a “Tunnel Records Shirt San Francisco” Tee, western leather belt and eastern neighborhood sandals, distinctive eyeglass frames and an inconspicuous black-on-black Ralph Lauren cap) that there was probably much more to Nori that even […]
Tokyo Record Style
Makabe
I was listening to Pink Floyd’s heartstring-pulling tribute to their founder and lost-to-the-60’s friend, Syd Barret, “Shine on You Crazy Diamond” this morning in the car, wondering around my brain, thinking, “How many times have I heard this song? How many more times will I hear it in my life? How many songs are there to hear? Should I listen to this again? Could I be using this time more wisely to listen to a song that I haven’t already heard a thousand times? How many more hours do I have in my life to listen to music? 20 more […]
Tokyo Record Style
Michael Dada
This is DJ Ozone, AKA, Michael, who I met at Uptown Records in Koenji. Uptown had posted an event flyer with digital art-deco dreamscape graphics that really grabbed my attention, not to mention the words “Ozone” and “DADA”. The post mentioned that Michael was originally from San Francisco and had lived in China for 20 years, since 2003 (I’ve been in Tokyo since 2004, so that was an immediate parallel to me), going on to say that he’d been a Radio DJ (another parallel – I had been a pirate radio DJ), and that he started an event music series […]
Tokyo Record Style
Jim O’Connell
Somebody with many interests and creative pursuits is called a “Multipotentialite”. Somebody with knowledge that spans a substantial number of subjects is called a “Polymath”. Somebody who has wide interests and is an expert in several areas is called a “Renaissance Man.” Somebody who is competent in many endeavors, but excels in none of them is called a “Pantologist” or a “Jack of All Trades.” Jim is all of these things but also more than all of them. I’ve been searching for a way to describe one of my oldest, dearest, closest friends, the godfather of my first kid, my […]
Tokyo Record Style
Hideaki
Just as I was about to turn the last corner out of Shimokitazawa, right at the end of Ichibangai, I saw Hideaki rounding the corner carrying a Disk Union bag and I flipped on the Tokyo Record Style switch again. “Hi there! (Huge smile/non-threatenings stance) Are those records?” “Ummm, yeah?…” (slight suspicion) “Niiice, I collect records too! I’m also a cameraman” (point to camera bag) ”I do this project called Tokyo Record Style” (bust out on-the-ready phone) “where I make photos of people with their recently scored records” (scroll past a couple dozen portraits) “and your record bag caught my […]
Tokyo Record Style
Koyo
This cool cat is Koyo who I met through my friend Paramitha (Hi Mitha chan!) who I met through Photohoku and the other photography community projects I host. Paramitha is an Indonesian fashion designer whose most recent collection I photographed a few weeks back, during which Koyo was one of the models (notice Koyo’s striking good looks!) During the shoot, Mitha, being the bubbly spirit that is, talked up Tokyo Record Style quite a lot, and mentioned TRS Day, so here we are! The circle of friends grows bigger! The community photo projects I organizing (outside of this particular one) […]
Tokyo Record Style
Kelsey and Joseph
I was born in 1976. Not long after I bought my very first few LPs to play on the family turntable, I probably got the dream birthday or Christmas present of every MTV-watching pre-teen adolescent in ‘86 or ‘87 suburbia America, a Ghetto Blaster Boom Box, replete with double tape-deck for dubbing, am/fm radio and antennae, and probably a button for “Turbo Bass”. The Boom Box did several things for me. It gave me the ability to listen to music by myself, to tune into and to record to cassette Casey Kasem’s Top 40 every Sunday morning, listening to which […]
Tokyo Record Style
Kieron
I spotted Kieron in the corner of my eye digging around the 90’s Alternative/Grunge/Shoegazer at Coconuts in Kichijoji. I noticed he had some interesting range-finder form-factor camera slung around his neck which should have been more than enough reason to chat him up, but I must have been too preoccupied with the concentration required to dig through 7” singles while looking for a perfect, within-budget ¥300 score. Regrettably, I didn’t say hello or approach him for a photo. But about half an hour later, he caught my eye when I spotted him AGAIN at Disk Union in Parco, packing a […]
Tokyo Record Style
Tatsuo Fukutomi (bemsha)
Bemsha (AKA Tatsuo Fukutomi) left me with less than 100 characters. So I’ll just say, “One Love, Jah Rastafari!” Tat: “Here’s my answer to your question, ‘Why do you love records when you can stream it all?’” “I guess it’s because vinyl records appeal not only to our sense of sound, but to three others as well. One of my favourite genres of music is ambient. It’s supposed to be played at a volume so low that you can hear it only when you want to. It is music that becomes part of the environment – as a matter of […]
Tokyo Record Style
Jason Garcia
There are two sports that, despite being a student of neither, command my respect more than any others: Boxing and Skateboarding. Both demand enduring enormous physical pain, psychological distress, and emotional failure. No athletes get knocked down harder than these two. Yet, in the instances when defeat can be overcome when punches and landings are stuck square, it’s never the adrenaline, the force, the strategy, or the athleticism that impresses me, but rather the dogged determination, the unwillingness to fail, even if outmatched, the mental fortitude of facing fear. There’s a virtue, grace, and majesty to that that captivates me […]
Tokyo Record Style
Yamazaki
A Tokyo Record Style First! Traversing central Tokyo with just a bit more of Sunday morning to kill, and with a Disk Union that I rarely visit right on my route, how could I not at least pop by and see if anybody was walking around the adjacent plaza with recently purchased records? So I took the right Yushima Seido, the black 17th century Confucian Temple, crossed Kanda River, spotted the green copper roof of the Holy Resurrection Cathedral, and there coming down the stairs of the 2nd floor Disk Union was Yamazaki san carrying a 12×12” vinyl record store […]
Tokyo Record Style
Tetsuya Hoki
A late Sunday morning with kids off tied up in a school activity afforded me a visit to RECOfan, a record shop in Akihabara with a rather huge inventory. Despite digging through nearly everything there, nothing quite jumped out of the crates at me, so I left empty-handed, even without a ¥100 7inch. With a ride clear across Tokyo to get back home, a “Records shops around me” Google search lead me to Tohto Records & Books in Yushima where I discovered a quaint shop run by the friendly Tetsuya san, who as it turns out, prior to opening Tohto, […]
Tokyo Record Style
Saeka Shimida
A fellow photographer – Saeka! I caught up with her and a pal with a nice stash of records just scored from Jet Set which, a little like Big Love Records, keeps a highly curated inventory of mostly new-ish records, finds that for the more discerning listener. Maybe I’m imagining things, but walking around with records in a Jet Set bag says to the more basic (in that modern dismissive sense) listeners like me, “That gay/gal didn’t just score some records from Jet Set …that person IS A JETSETTER!” That could actually be true because when Saeka produced the records […]
Tokyo Record Style
Koji
I spotted Koji (and his GF, Yoshimi who battles the Pink Robots) on the streets of Shimokita. He had just scored this 1980 New Wave classic of Channel Good by Sheena & the Rokkets from Disc Union. I didn’t know the album but it looked really intriguing and just quite good. After photographing Koji I went home and immediately listened to this record, for the first time (follow link in bio), and as I had expected, it absolutely slays (with a killer version of Creedence’s Suzie Q). While listening to it, I learned about the Mentai Rock scene, the name […]
Tokyo Record Style
Naohiro
Anyway, I had no clue what records Naohiro was showing me, but I’ll check them out and give them a listen in the coming days (All the records photographed are listed on Discogs with info – link in bio). Despite not knowing industrial/goth/metal music well (nor the -waves / -cores), I mentioned that my neighbor (and father of my son’s best pal) is part of legendary industrial outfit, Skinny Puppy, and Naohiro was quite impressed to hear that. We also discussed The Cure’s (one of his favorite bands) recent re-release of “Wish”, which was one of the first CDs I […]