mgmt at the shangri-la

I arrived at 19:07. The lobby was empty and there was no sound coming from the quilted velvet doors. Smugly assuming I was early I almost crossed the road to grab a bite to eat. Lucky I didn't, that would have been cocky! The concert had started, of course, at seven on the tit and I was not the first but literally the last to arrive. As I slipped through the padded doors I was confronted with the hundreds of backs and arses of a crowd already two songs in dammit! I couldn't believe I was stuck at the back of another concert! I wanted to let my elbows guide me to the front but alas Japan has made me too polite! Still, no biggie. The venue was tiny so even at the back you could see the writing on their Tshirts. The lead singer WhatisFucknosenberg or whatever is really really sexy in that way that ugly people manage to be only because they are really arrogant - which he was! I fell for him instantly. He is ugly because he is pale and scrawny and stooped. He also has the worst hair I have ever seen. Of course, its supposed to look that way and it says much about his innate deep sexiness that he still looks good under a long curly mullet with middle parting curtains to boot. Absolutely disgusting. And as he sweated bucketloads his mullet got longer and longer sticking to his neck and down his back.

The others were just hairy - not sexy at all. They looked like cave men or engineering students. The keyboard player, it seems had made some effort to look like...something, by wearing tacky plastic sunglasses. All in all their appearance was not overwhelming - they looked like a fun but kak South African band playing at Sunningdale hotel.

They played the whole of Oracular Spectacular - Kids being the highlight of course. Really fucking cool! Everyone went mad. Then 8pm had arrived and they had played the whole album and that was that. Lights up, roadies up to walk the guitars off. I went to the bar to get my one free drink and everyone else who had had their one free drink before curtain-up flocked out to buy the ugly tour thsirts. Three variants competed to be the ugliest tshirt design available, not just in the venue, but I suspect, on the whole island. As I stood in line amongst Osaka's horn rimmed uber-hip, clutching my free drink, I realised (as did the horn-rimmeds too I think, on some level) hang on, I dont want one of these ugly starchy t shirts in plastic packets from under a tressle table - I want the shirt the singer was wearing! Old and sweat drenched - it might have been blue or really old black - anyone's guess. I want that one! hmph. I bought one from the cardboard box under the tressle table. Design A. The black one with wizard purple bubble writing "mgmt" across the boobs, and a cutesy lion with purple paws. Sounds sif? It is. Better than T shirt B though, a clip-art hot dog drinking a beer or T shirt C which was lime green - I dont care if it had the best font, lime green is a crime. Like the hair, the shirts are dead ironic you see and I want to be as ironic at Whatis Fucknosenburg. I will sweat prodigiously into my new tshirt and make it old.

I had forgotten how heavy handed Japanese bar ladies can be with the hard tack - by the time I had downed it, bought my t shirt and been spat out into the street I was proper pissed. In the middle of Osaka. Where would I find a bed in the megalopolis? I was lucky that it was night time and I couldn't see quite how mega this lopolis really was, otherwise I might have cried.