The world gets smaller through music. The first contact I made with friendly, photographer / skateboarder / developer / record-store owner, Antti from Finland was in May of last year. He wrote to me saying he found me out on the intertubes somewhere, here or there, and that he had just returned home to Jyväskylä after a trip to Japan, so invigorated by his stay, that he was already planning his next trip. We kept an exchange going and about half a year later in December, I got a message from Antti with an update that he was in Sydney […]
Tokyo Record Style
Cristina Marie Deane
“Cristina! What the hell are you doing here?” “Just picking up Björk’s Homogenic on wax.” “Wait… you’re just picking up Björk’s Homogenic ..at Tower …for yourself?” “Yeah, you gotta problem with that?” “No, but why?” “Cuz it’s a great fucking album. One of my favorites.” “No, I mean why have we known and worked with each other for years and years and this is the first time I’m hearing of you collecting records?” “Cuz there’s a lotta shit you don’t know about me, Brian. Now can I go enjoy my record?” “Yes, Yes! …by all means! Go enjoy!” Well, it […]
Tokyo Record Style
Eero Kovisto
My career as a creative in Japan has afforded me the chance to meet some very luminary characters across the projects I do. Swedish architect and designer, Eero Koivisto, best known as one-third of Claesson Koivisto Rune (CKR), the Stockholm-based studio he co-founded with Mårten Claesson and Ola Rune in 1995 is one such character. The few times I’ve met Eero, have all be in professional contexts; Japan has been inviting him here since the 90s where he’s both studied on scholarships and worked for some incredible clients on some awe-inspiring design, from the Sfera Building in Kyoto to the […]
Tokyo Record Style
David Hughes
Being the oldest of 5 kids, I never had any older brothers or sisters who turned me onto Led Zeppelin or The Who, or who took me to a Dead show or hipped me to Dylan, or who pontificated on the sophistication of Rush or Genesis. Sure, music was on in the car always, and my parents allegedly saw Hendrix and Deep Purple and loved Motown and the Beatles, but music was not exactly “in the air” in my house growing up. I always had to rely on my Casey Kasem on my radio walkman, Sam Goody at the mall, […]
Tokyo Record Style
Doc Martin
“Music is a celebration of life.” I had the great privilege to tap into dance party culture in the late 90s and early 00s via Unity Gain (if you know, you know.) It was through IVY, Psychonaut, and Liondub that I got hip to techno, house, dub and dancehall, and there was a chapter where concerts and live gigs gave way to raves and house parties, a trend I brought with me to Tokyo back when we’d dance till noon at Yellow, Womb, Ageha, Air, and Unit. Though I didn’t go miles deep into all the names and players on […]
Tokyo Record Style
Asada
Asada and I were rushing past each other in opposite directions somewhere in the middle of Shibuya Station’s massive redevelopment project when I spotted him with an Ultra Shibuya Record Store Bag. I “Oh Oh Oh’d” him and proceeded to give him the pitch and asked hat he thought about sharing a couple of minutes with me and talking about the records that he scored. As I recall his girlfriend wasn’t all too pleased about the proposition, and I wondered as I took his photo, if he was more concerned about disappointing me or her. Asada didn’t “give” me much […]
Tokyo Record Style
Elmi and Sasha
Writing can be so easy. And it can be so hard. Sometimes writing requires absolutely nothing but a clear moment, a clear sheet of paper, a simple breath. Sometimes it requires more than anything and everything in the world, taking every fiber in your body, ignoring every excuse you know to just respond with one single word to that clear sheet of paper. It’s not exactly easy. And yet it is… I’ll leave it at that and you can gather what you will knowing that these photos of Sasha and Elmi were made nearly a year ago, in the LAST […]
Tokyo Record Style
Kokoe (and Kouki)
Meet Kokoe (and Kouki)! I actually met them last year at Replace Records in Nishiogikubo last year and it’s only now I’m getting around to sharing our encounter! Kokoe was a victim of being in the wrong place at the right time, or the right place at the wrong time, you decide. Days before I had spotted, at Replace, a rare and coveted, first Japanese pressing of Rocket to Russia by the Ramones, with a lovely Obi that really made the cover pop, posted the image I took of it maybe on my Instagram, soon after which Tony from the […]
Tokyo Record Style
Tony – Celebrated Summer Records
Tony is the real deal. Last summer I got a message from a stranger saying he had discovered my YouTube channel, and that he owned a record shop in Baltimore, Maryland and that he’s been making frequent record shopping trip to Japan over the last 20 or so years. He said his name was Tony and his record shop was called “Celebrated Summer Records” …(thinks to self, “Where I have I heard that name before, “Celebrated Summer”? Isn’t that a Hüske Dü tune?) Soon enough I was pursuing Tony’s online photos and getting a few glimpses of his Record Shop, […]
Tokyo Record Style
Mio
Dead middle of August, possibly the hottest weekend of the year. By 10am the heat was oppressive, the humidity was inescapable, it was like being in an oven. Despite being just a stone’s throw from Tokyo Bay, not so much as a light breeze would help take the edge off. And there we were, a family of four, walking back and forth, a kilometer or two, between stadium and convention center at Chiba’s Makuhari Messe, to see the bands of the Summer Sonic Music Festival, most of whom I admittedly did not know. It was to be an adventure for […]
Tokyo Record Style
Tom Tom
I had the great fortune of working in a diner in the 90s and early 00s where people sat at the counter for hours, drinking coffee refills and doing the crosswords. Not unlike bartending, it was a kind of hard knocks education in human nature, and not just want made people tick, but what made YOU tick. Could you maintain an ongoing conversation with a regular or navigate a conversation with a (read: “every”) stranger. I never remember a time in life lacking “people” skill but my few years at the diner honed my gift gab. And it proved handy […]
Tokyo Record Style
Thijs and Victoria
Niekerk, Netherlands, Buenos Aires, Argentina, Miami FLA, Boulder and Denver, Colorado, Tokyo, Japan! These two song birds have a love story that goes around the world. YouTube homie (soundofminder), Thijs and Lovely Victoria are owed a special kind of Tokyo Record Style award for two of the most patiently waiting subjects the project has known. So much time had passed from the time of our initial encounter at Shibuya’s infamous Tower Records and the FIRST time that followed up with them (in hopes they they could help me make sense of my chicken-scratch notes), however if you compare it to […]
Tokyo Record Style
Michael and Jessika
Michael and Jessika Ok, here we go again… Sincere apologies to all that it’s taken me a full half year and change to get back on this horse. It got moved to the back burner while I fully throttled the Tokyo Record Style YouTube channel (which has actually become NEARLY as equally rewarding a type of storytelling – please follow), but photos and prose are in my blood, and now it’s time to bring this back to the front burner. My only hope is that the next sabbatical isn’t nearly as long. But hey, these things have their own way, […]
Tokyo Record Style
Tian Tian
Meet sweet Tian Tian from Hangzhou, near Shanghai visiting Tokyo for the first time, on a 15-day tour of Japan where she is making up her itinerary on a day-by-day basis. This is almost exactly how I started my life in Japan, it was just meant to be a short 2 week stay, but it has turned out to be much more permanent than I ever imagined, actually 20 years exactly in 4 days. Tian Tian spoke in such perfect American English and just had a sorta California vibe about her that I suspected that she may have spent some […]
Tokyo Record Style
Kotaro
Nice to meet you Kotaro, who I caught up with at Organic Music as our Tokyo Record Style Day Volume 9 event wound down and as the main affair (OM’s 5th Anniversary) began. Kotaro was among the line-up of DJs who would be spinning records from 5pm and onwards and likely late into the evening. His unique, funky, and cool look caught attention and we had a nice chat outside the shop before his set, where I began to notice a few more details of his ensemble, including his gold wire rimmed Lennon glasses, matching gold ring and watch, an […]
Tokyo Record Style
Yusya
Despite only brandishing a sticker from the event that Tokyo Record Style Day Vol. 9 piggy-backed on, Physical Store (Organic Music + Planet Baby)’s 5th Anniversary and neighbor Bar Otonari’s 1st Anniversary, it’s great to see long-time support friend of Tokyo Record Style (and other related photography projects), ex Disk Union staff, and reggae music aficionado Yusya (AKA bangsadali) from Indonesia and Illinois back on the on the stream! As much as we’d all like to, we can’t score record EVERY time we go to the record store; sometimes you strike out. But considering everybody CAME out, proving that Tokyo […]
Tokyo Record Style
Marcus and Maki
Supremely cool Marcus showed up at Tokyo Record Style Day Volume 9 with his lovely Maki san, who I had never met before. Are these two just not coolest? I mean, both dressed in all black, Marcus with a fashionably utilitarian jacket, perhaps a black version of street fashion photographer Bill Cunningham’s iconic blue French workers jacket, coupled with some finely pressed high-voltage SLACKS, pink coral-colored (but subtle) geometric-patterned silk(?) socks, replete with some chunky black tasseled loafers. As for accessories, all understated, the sublimely unassuming Minolta CLE (a Toyota Crown Super Deluxe exterior and interior, but with a Porsche […]
Tokyo Record Style / Uncategorized
Hinata and Kaho
Hello Hinata and Kaho! Another couple who claimed not to be a couple (yet?) but who were out on what looked very much like a record-shopping date. This got me thinking back to, well, slightly dangerous territory to venture into, but …loves of yore, all the music I’ve shared with past girlfriends …and just the notion of music in a relationship, and how personal music is, and how unlikely it probably is to genuinely share music tastes with a partner. Some know that I met my wife in a band. I played piano and she played drums. I also play […]
Tokyo Record Style
Ksniea
Did you know that, according to research, the average person meets about 80,000 people in their lifetime? As a rather outgoing person myself, I was guessing I’d fall somewhere on the high end of that curve, that was until I started to crunch the numbers. If you live to be 80, that’s 1000 people a year, every year of your life, which is about 3 people a day on average. You’d think the only way to keep that high average would be by joining occasions like parties, classes, or gatherings where you meet a lot of people at once …but […]
Tokyo Record Style
Miori, Ayaka, and Uta
Tokyo Record Style started as a confluence of several things. The first and foremost is an amalgamation of the past several decades of working as a writer and a photographer, primarily portraiture, and all the experiences that have come along with that. The 2nd inspiration, which can’t be understated, is my dear and talented friend John Sypal’s brilliant project, Tokyo Camera Style, where he essentially documents (read: celebrates) the state of photography in Tokyo (and really around the world considering how Tokyo is a sorta Mecca for photography lovers) by way of photographing the cameras of people he meets on […]
Tokyo Record Style
Onigiri and Nao
“TOOOKKKYYYOOORRRKKKKRRRRDDS!!!” (inaudible) “Honey, I think that gaijin over there on the motorcycle with the crooked smile and camera around his neck is motioning to us” “I don’t think so. Just ignore him, he must be mistaken, and something is not quite right about that disheveled beard, those sunglasses, and that ratty bike. I’m sure he’s motioning to somebody else.” “No, I think he’s definitely pointing us, it seems he’s interested in your record bag” “RRRKKKKRRRRDDDSSSSHLOOOOOWAAAIIII” (inaudible) “Oh my goodness, Dear, he’s quite animated. There is something rather harmless about him. Should we check to make sure he’s not lost or […]
Tokyo Record Style
George
Hey Tokyo Record Style Friends! I doubt anybody has noticed, but I had to pause TRS for a bit (seems about 20 days since my last post) to work on other priorities, some of which I’ll be excited to share with you very soon. Though I couldn’t seem to carve out the time to write much, I did not stop meeting record-loving people, jotting down their stories in my notebook, and photographing their smiling faces with their recent record store scores. Something that maybe is coming to light to me as a …beat(?) writer, as it were, is that the […]
Tokyo Record Style
Tokyo Record Style Day Vol. 1 – Shimokitazawa
Record collecting friends!!! I’m starting a new project called “Tokyo Record Style Day” where I am going to try to gather some pals together on a Sunday afternoon once a month and hit a small cluster of record stores in one local neighborhood of Tokyo, and photograph you all with your records, starting with a dig through Shimokitazawa! Shimokita has over dozen record stores and I can suggest a path to visit a few of my favorites, or we can choose our own. Let’s meet at the legendary Flash Disk Ranch, and end at Disk Union, and maybe hit General, […]
Tokyo Record Style
Eric Jacobsen
Little did I know when I was chatting up Itaru (from the previous post) about Leon Russel, there was Tokyo Institution standing right behind me patiently waiting for me to finish rambling to say hello. If you have had kids in the last 30 years, you probably are familiar with the very famous TV show Eigo de Asobo – Let’s Play English, which like Sesame Street has a bit of a rotating cast of characters with a few major mainstays, and the person featured here has been THE mainstay of this series, and beyond, for a long as I’ve known […]
Tokyo Record Style
Itaru
What are the odds! I caught up with Itaru coming up the street pushing a bicycle and a tote bag on his shoulder and asked him if he might want to pose for Tokyo Record Style. With a warm smile he agrees, reaches into his bag and pulls out, much to my amazement, lo-and-behold, Tulsa hometown hero, Leon Russel, who, as legend has it (according to my parents) had a girlfriend who lived across from my first childhood home, and who used to come around and play with me when I was just a wee kid. I only became aware […]
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 […]
Tokyo Record Style
Yukiko
I take my kids back and forth everyday to Japanese cram school and I pass right by Coconuts Record Shop. I’ve mentioned it here a few times already and will probably be mentioning it a bunch more. Since starting this project, I can’t seem to drive past it without starting to scan the area for people who maybe have just scored some records. Though the vinyl bags are quite cool, they’re quite subtle but I can still easily spot from across the street, which was the case for the one Yukiko was carrying. I stopped her and chatted her up. […]
Tokyo Record Style
Yuji
Stopped by a Tokyo institution the other night, Big Love Records, an independent record shop located in a nondescript apartment building in the backstreets of très chic Harajuku. Big Love Records is more than a record shop, it’s a gallery, an underground label, it’s a fashion brand, a cafe and bar that serves premium coffee and beer-on-tap to patrons and provides Tokyo not only with an amazing curation of new music but with events, art, fashion, pop-ups and tie-ups, and just cool lifestyle. It’s beyond a central cultural resource for Tokyo, but also for the world. So it’s no surprise […]
Tokyo Record Style
Sota
After I walked back to my bike after meeting Tets in the car park under the tracks, I bumped into Sota who had just scored 3 soul and funk records from HMV (where I had spotted him earlier) and Coconuts in Kichijoji. He asked me where I was from and told me the records would have probably been 1/10th of the price or less if he could score them in the American. He told me he got his taste for Soul and Funk from his father who used to bring them back from the States. Sota told me he is […]
Tokyo Record Style
Tets Igeta
I met Tets on the streets of Kichijoji with Matty Fresh (from the previous post). He hadn’t any records with him in that moment so I didn’t really think to make his photo. But it was nice to meet him. It was even nicer to run into him again about 15 minutes later at HMV digging through the jazz records, and chat him up a bit more. He mentioned knowing Matty from his days in Brisbane and we got to talking about DJing and he pulls out an image from his phone of 2 face-to-face dueling DJ decks, 4 turntables […]
