life 25th anniversary flyer

Indian Ink on Paper - 420x297mm - 2016

This is a flyer for the Tokyo crust band Life, 2016 is the year they’re celebrating the 25th anniversary of the band. The story behind this flyer goes over a few years. I got distracted telling the story, there were a lot of little moments that I wanted to include in the story that happened please forgive me for the massive write up.

I first came into contact with Nori the bass player of Life back in 2014 during my first trip to Japan. I took my friend Ryota to the Robot Restaurant in Shinjuku as a thank you gift for all he had done for me during my first adventure in his country. In one of the photos I uploaded to Facebook a random friend of Ryota tagged Nori as one of the robots. I didn’t know who Nori was and he explained the mutual friend tagged Nori as a joke. A little later in the year Life were playing at the Varning Festival in Montreal. I briefly met Nori and a few other Life dudes, but I’m a shy kind of person and couldn’t think of anything to say and quickly scuttled off.

I also hung out with some of the guys from Life in 2015 when I went to the Kawakami forever shows. I made friends with their new drummer Kenta over Instagram. Nori uploaded a photo of him wearing an Effigy t-shirt that I had never seen before, Kenta was kind enough to send me another photo of it. I always figure the best way to make friends in punk is through wearing good t-shirts. I think I saw Life play 4 times in 3 weeks, they’re a hardworking band, also a drunk band, and I am consistently impressed by how well they play given how they drink beforehand – with the exception of Taka, one of the guitarist, who doesn’t seem to drink before shows, Abe the other guitarist on the other hand, is properly drunk every time I see him. I love the contrast between the two.

Every member of Life is an incredibly friendly and nice person, and fucken hell they put on a good show. See Life play live if you ever have the chance.

In 2016 I saw Life play about 3-5 times. I’m not really sure. I mentioned to Nori I was going to go to the Kawakami Forever show in Kochi and he invited me to come along in the Life tour van. I was pretty stoked, it was my first time getting to go in a tour van! A few weeks before that they were playing a gig with a new band called Skymars (ex-Age members). I like Age so I wanted to check out Skymars. As I was going through the entrance Nori was there and comes up to me with a sense of urgency saying that we needed to talk. My first thought was that I had unintentionally disrespected some Japanese punk while drunk and was in trouble. Turns out Life wanted me to draw the flyer for their 25th anniversary show. I was super stoked on this because Parasytes from Montreal are going to be playing the show as well, I became friends with some of the members in Parasytes during my first trip to Montreal, again a band full of really lovely people who put on awesome live shows.

There were a few problems with timing though, Life wanted me to draw the flyer while I was in Japan because they needed it two months in advance of the show (the 25th anniversary show is in August and I was in Japan during May and a little of June). I also hadn’t drawn in about 2 months due to working for money for the Japan adventure, I didn’t have any of my inks or brushes and finally I’m nearly always drinking, chain smoking and generally in poor health while in Japan. My schedule was pretty tight with all the gigs I planned on seeing (I ended up going to around 15 shows in 6 weeks, including a 3 day festival). The Life flyer would be my second ever flyer, the first being one I made for my exhibition a few months previous, so really it’s my first proper gig flyer (I did a drawing for the band Digraphia for a flyer but they put in all the event details whereas for this I planned on drawing all the event details). I knew the drawing would only take me 2-3 days to do but finding the time was problematic.

I did a sketch at a friend’s house show, its 5 trees for the members of Life and 5 bugs for the members of Parasytes around a peace sign. A symbol of their friendship. I thought it was cheesy but it was all I could come up with at the time. I showed the dudes from Life and they liked it so I went said I would ink a larger version of it while I stayed in Kochi. To avoid confusion, I visited Kochi twice during my 2016 adventure. The first was to see the band Zay play, the second was for the Kawakami Forever show.

I asked my friends Dana and Hiro (I was stayed with at their apartment in Kochi) if I could please stay a few extra days to draw the flyer as hostels aren’t a great place to draw. They are wonderful people and said yes. When I draw I have to be well rested, sober, eat healthy and exercise. All this helps me get into the right head space to do the best drawings I can. I wasn’t doing anything on that list while in Japan. Quite the opposite in fact, my body was wrecked. The plan was to see Zay play on Saturday, rest Sunday, draw Monday and Tuesday. My schedule after the Tuesday would turn into drunken chaos. I ended up getting horribly sick on the Sunday and spent Sunday and Monday stuck in bed, barely able to move except to go unleash hellish diarrhea upon my poor hosts’ toilet. I was feeling better on the Tuesday, not before waking up to realise I had pooped my pants in my sleep, to top it off there was no time to finish the flyer.

A little over a week after my little poopathon, it was time for the road trip for my second visit to Kochi. On the day we left I had woken up after about 4 hours sleep, taken my Australian friends, who were in Tokyo, around record shopping (a full day of walking around) then met up with the Life guys at 10:30pm. I’m usually pretty shy and not talkative around a group of people, I’m almost a mute when I’m tired. All the guys from Life were friendly as usual. I previously had told Nori I would make a playlist for the 10-12hours road trip, he responded saying something about J-pop and I was a little confused. It turns out that the Life guys pretty much only listen to J-pop in the tour van, they’re not opposed to other music, they just seem to really love J-pop.

I didn’t sleep at all during the entire road trip to Kochi. I took some valium but that just put me in a sleepy haze made it really difficult to walk to smoking areas at rest stops. When we arrived at Kochi (around 10-11am) I discovered via Facebook that my friends from Australia didn’t have any money for the show in Kochi, I was frantically trying to convince them to still come, also at the time I really needed to take a piss. Those two factors mixed with my sleep deprivation led me to wandering off by myself. I realised that I had no clue where the Life guys were. I eventually found them, they wanted to get some beers and food while they waited for the venue. The venue would open at midday so they could drop off their stuff. We went to the local food market and ate the best raw fish I’ve ever had in my life. Holy shit it was delicious. We also drank beers. I struggled to keep up with the amount of beer the guys from Life were drinking.

We then headed to the venue where they dropped off their stuff and did sound check. After sound check it we were off to a local izakaya for more beers and food. We were barely into the afternoon and I had already drunk enough beer to match a regular night out. We left the izakaya and while walking around Kochi we bumped into Hiro who was showing around a Canadian named Phil. Hiro excited said ‘Oh Xabier! Translation!’ pointing at himself and Phil. The majority of my Japanese punk friends don’t speak a lot of English so I suppose I’ve gotten pretty good at speaking broken English (in that I know what few words the majority of them understand) and understanding Japanese accents. Which has kind of made me lazy when it comes to learning Japanese, I still feel really shitty about not knowing more Japanese beyond a few basic words. Phil ended up being a fucken cool dude who also lives in Melbourne.

I was happy to escape the beer storm that is Life. I really needed to sober up a bit because the actual show was still about 3 hours before the Kawakami Forever show even started. Hiro, Phil, Abe and me all headed to the food court. Hiro was mentioning something about meeting up with someone. It turns out it was Masuda. The last time I saw Masuda was the day prior to my first visit to Kochi, and he annihilated me with sake. It was the one and only time I had to say to someone in Japan I cannot drink anymore. My hopes of sobering up fell down into a dark pit of despair upon the sight of the Takamatsu Sake Demon. We all hung out, made jokes and drank beer. Good times!

I somehow made it through a very fun night filled with great bands, beer, hanging out with friends, meeting some new friends, finding out my nickname in Kochi is diarrhea boy after my previous visit. I was explaining to Phil my poop story when Nori told me that Japanese word for diarrhea and informed me, pointing at two punks that I didn’t know, ‘they said oh there’s diarrhea boy’. Masuda and his girlfriend Namiko were also slapping their butts sing/chanting diarrhea boy at me outside of the venue, I wanted to take a video of it but I was laughing too hard to function. It was both disheartening and hilarious to have a dude from my favourite band slapping his ass in the middle of the street making fun of how I crapped my pants, alas, it is a fate I deserved. Masuda had given me an original G.I.S.M. t-shirt as a gift in thanks for me drawing artwork for his band Ulcer. A very big gift indeed. I probably should have mentioned that the artwork I did for his band was thanks for all the gifts he had given me in previous years, but whatever. In retaliation to his chanting I said I was going to give the t-shirt to my dog Buddy, he didn’t seem very impressed. Namiko was loving the idea though. Those two are such a cheeky couple!

I also tried to get revenge on Masuda for the sake annihilation by drinking sake with him, but that just resulted in me hurting myself as I forgot that even though he is half my size, he is a drinking monster, it’s unbelievable how well he can put away booze.

All the bands that played were killer. Aggression (Hiro’s band) had a pretty short set because their usual drummer was in hospital and had to be replaced on short notice. They stilled rocked though. SPEED! NOISE! HELL! I had seen for the first time in the previous Kochi visit, I was happy to see them play a second time. Wall of Trash was nuts, the vocalist is tough as fuck, way tougher than I could ever pretend to be. I thought it was a bit not cool when members of the local audience were basically throwing her from one side of the live house to the other, but it turns out that is how she rolls. She gets thrown to the ground and gets up with a smile ready for more. Reality Crisis were tough as ever and Life played probably the best show I’d ever seen them do. I’m not sure if it was the small personal nature of the live house or the event but they fucken rocked.

When I finally slept, it was about 2am and I knocked out as soon as I hit the floor. I woke up to Dana saying that everyone is about to go to Kawakami’s grave and I should get ready. I quickly pulled myself together and we jumped into the Life tour van and away we went. I had visit Kawakami’s mother’s house last year and she was super awesome and gave me heaps of gifts, it was more of a friendly drop in from a stranger. This year there were heaps of people and there was even a priest – I’m assuming Buddhist – that conducted a ceremony. Everyone sat in front of Kawakami’s shine and one by one we went up to some incense and sprinkled some dust on it. In hindsight, I really should have asked what the significance of the act was, in my defense I was hung over and barely had the energy to talk.

After the ceremony as a big feast of beer and food. The band Akka was playing for the Sunday Kawakami forever show in Kochi (there were two Kawakami Forever shows in Kochi, one on Saturday and one on Sunday). Akka was also present at the ceremony and feast, one of the members made the comment ‘sugoi’ about my use of hashi (chopsticks). Given her expression I think she was impressed with it, I talked about how Habi-sensei (drummer from Gloom) had taught me how to use hashi during my first adventure to Japan. I started talking to the vocalist of Akka (I forgot her name sorry) who turns out to be the wife of Hiroshi (Zay guitarist). Hiroshi I had met previously in Nagoya at the Grind Bastards gig and in Kochi and he certainly seemed like a wild one, a friendly and energetic dude, I imagine he would be quite the party hell raiser back in his youth. The Akka vocalist sighed and kept apologising to me about Hiroshi which gave me layers of what the history behind Hiroshi might be like.

We then all went Kawakami’s grave and paid our respects and got lots of photos. After visiting the grave, it was time for life to head back to Tokyo. Hiro asked me if I was staying in Kochi for the second show and I said no, I had to return with Life (it would have been super expensive to go back via train). Hiro then joking yelled ‘good because you’re not welcome!’ – he was referring to staying at his apartment, which is an acceptable response given a did poop my pants there only a week earlier. I should point out that Hiro is one of the kindest souls you’ll ever meet and I hope every punk making the journey to Kochi gets to hang out with him in the morning as he listens to awesome groove tunes and does some shirtless cooking. I was bummed I didn’t get to hang out with him properly in Kochi because I was too sick. I’m glad I got to visit Kochi a second time if nothing else than to spend more time with my friend Hiro.

Driving through Shikoku (the island Kochi is on) is fucken awesome. Beautiful green mountains everywhere, it’s such a lush sight. I never really hear the island of Shikoku mentioned in general tourist stuff. It’s mostly people talking about Kyoto or Tokyo or going snowboarding. Fuck all that, go to Kochi and see some kickass mountains along the way and get shitfaced with the wonderful people there.

On the journey back to Tokyo I got to be DJ. I don’t know why but I only played 80’s metal, mostly thrash. Taka seemed to enjoy it the most. Taka was the only member of Life I never talked to until I saw him outside of a show and he was wearing a Bathory Hammerheart t-shirt. As fate would have it I had brought along my Hammerheart t-shirt to Japan, I instantly started talking to him about how it was my favourite Bathory album. I had sensed we would have heaps of music in common, turns out my instincts were right. I wore my Hammerheart t-shirt especially for the road trip so we could bro down. All the guys from Life are fantastic human beings but I felt the biggest connection to Taka, he seemed like a quiet nerd like me.

It was a long drive back and we stopped at a rest stop for a few hours so the driver could get some sleep. The driver has heaps of respect from me, he drove from Tokyo to Kochi with the only breaks being at rest stops, so nearly 10hours non-stop driving. On the way back it was nearly 8 hours of driving non-stop until he needed to rest. The 2 hour stop gave me a chance to properly hang out with Hiro (Life singer, not to be confused with Hiro from Kochi) and Abe, and find out about each other so it was quite nice. I also didn’t sleep during the trip back except for maybe an hour – but that was more falling in and out of consciousness from exhaustion than sleep.

We arrived at Koenji station around 6am, I gave my goodbyes and hugs and rushed off to the hostel my Australian friends were staying at so I could guide them to Narita airport. We worked our way through rush hour and I got them to the train station they needed to be at to get to Narita then I said my goodbye. It was about 8am now and I was waiting for money from my father to be transferred into my account so I could check into my hostel. I spent the last of my money in Kochi. Junkichi happened to be in Tokyo on the day so I went to meet up with him at 11am to have lunch and have a final goodbye, which worked out nice because I didn’t get to do so when I left Osaka the week previous. He also bought me a delicious pasta and I really did need a good meal at this point in time. Thanks again Junkichi! I’ve lost count of how many times Junkichi has looked after me, especially when it comes to feeding me, a truly generous soul. I always feel the words ‘thank you’ are never enough to convey how much I appreciate everything that man has done for me.

The money finally came through at about 1pm and I checked into the hostel, after telling the hostel dude about what I got up to on the weekend he laughed and said ‘I think you should sleep’. And sleep I did.

On my final day in Tokyo I went to the punk Diskunion in Shinjuku to buy some last records. I got some good cheap scores and told myself no more record shopping. On the way back to the hostel I went past the metal Diskunion and laughed in my head how funny it would be if I found Bolt Thrower – …For Victory there when I had no money. …For Victory is my favourite Bolt Thrower album and I was hoping to find it while in Tokyo. It was there. Fuck. I quickly checked my bank account to discover that I had just enough money in case of emergencies stashed. I got the record. I had enough money left over for my train ticket to Narita and for breakfast.

Later that night I was hanging out at the hostel drinking with some of the people that worked there and a guest. Eventually they all rounded up and headed out of the lounge area, I was invited along. It turns out they were all going to broadcast a radio show. I couldn’t understand anything due to everyone speaking in Japanese, I was included in a few conversations which was nice of them considering I didn’t speak the language of the audience. Throughout the broadcast, I kept leaving to go grab beer from a convenience store, digging into my breakfast money. As everyone was saying their sign off goodbyes for the show, I got to leave a goodbye message of ‘every smile is important’. Nearly everyone cringed and howled at the cheesiness. But hostel dude also gave his goodbye and repeated what I had said, I burst out laughing and promptly gave him a fist bump.

After the broadcast we all went to a Korean restaurant. I had no money for food or even beer. They were nice enough to buy me a beer and some Korean rice wine, at least that’s what I think it was. It was milky, warm, alcoholic and delicious, whatever it was. The food looked incredible but I didn’t want to rude and eat food I had no money to pay for. I wasn’t above finishing off all their scraps though. It was 4am and I was drunk and starving. I headed off and was explaining to a new friend about how I had to wake up at 6:30am in order to avoid the morning rush hour on my way to Narita. She asked if I would actually wake up, I responded proudly that I always wake up for my alarm.

I woke up at 8am and freaked the fuck out. My flight was at midday. As soon as I opened my eyes and felt slightly well rested I knew I was in deep shit. I didn’t wake once for my alarm. I quickly looked up the fastest way possible to get to Narita. Smoked a cigarette. Realised I didn’t have enough time to finish my smoke, threw it away. Packed all my stuff into where it would fit and hauled fucken ass to the train station. My body is feebly weak after a month and a half of partying in Japan, I ran for about a minute down the street hauling my 30kg luggage case full of records and gifts when my body was like ‘fuck you, no’. I instead opted to hastily stroll. This was not the relaxing journey to Narita I had planned for myself. I was also still drunk from the night before… and really hungry.

When I got to the train station one of platform dudes (I think it’s their job to direct the human traffic) looked at me and all my luggage and had an expression of ‘is this fucken idiot serious?’. The first train that came to the platform was completely packed, no chance of me squeezing in. I noticed a bit down the platform some people managed to get on the train so I headed that way. The next train came, passengers left the train to let the people behind them get out, I made my move and crammed in before everyone could pile back in. I felt bad I was in a desperate situation.

I was so late waking up that I couldn’t catch the cheap slow train from Nippori station to Narita, I had to get the expensive fast one. The problem with that is I had enough money, but the money was divided between my bank card and cash I had on me. I was frantically messaging any friend in Australia I could with the same bank as me to send me money in the event I needed it. My housemate sent me a $100.

I got to Nippori station and the train ticket dude said that I can’t pay with a mix of cash and card, there was an ATM in the station, so he let me through so I could use it. I could see the $100 my housemate sent me in my account, but I couldn’t access it. Fuck. I had 1000yen on my travel card which is what I needed to afford my ticket, the ATM wouldn’t let me withdraw the money because there wasn’t enough on the card to cover the international withdraw fee. I check my bank accounts again and I still have $2 in Canadian money on my travel card as well as $3 in an account that I never use anymore and left it there out of sheer laziness. I transferred the money into Japanese yen on my travel card and withdrew the money I needed. I then made it to my flight and everything was fine. I was really really hungry during the whole ordeal. Totally worth it for my original Bolt Thrower …For Victory.

I got back to Australia on a Wednesday night, rested Thursday, then Friday I started work on the flyer. I felt bad that Life had been waiting for it for so long by that point in time, I wanted to finish it as quickly as possible. I sent them some practice sketches to show them that I was actually doing work on the flyer. I quickly received feedback that Life would like me to do a different design. The date of the gig is on the anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima and it’s a celebration of the 25th anniversary of Life, so wanted me to focus on those things, and include anti-nuke imagery. My original idea sucked anyways.

I smoked a cigarette panicking because I had no idea what to do, then the thought of drawing 25 skulls in a mushroom cloud popped into my head. I did a quick sketch of it and sent to Life who approved. Hiro (Life vocalist) also requested I include the A-Dome from Hiroshima, the peace statue from Nagasaki and also the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant. He said I could draw simplified silhouettes of those subjects – good news indeed. I’m rubbish at realistic drawings.

I did the pencil sketch on Saturday, started inking on Sunday, mostly finished inking on Monday, the only thing I didn’t finish was the venue and supporting band details. I had to start working a regular job on the Tuesday. I got about 2 hours sleep before my first day working, finished the work day, had a nap when I got home, worked until the wee hours on Wednesday night, finished the flyer only to realise I had scanned it in at a low resolution, re-scanned the image and redid all the retouching.

When I was drawing the flyer, I kept telling myself how shit the drawing was, nothing felt natural while creating it. This is due entirely to not having drawn for 3 months and also because the ink I was using was fresh – a new vial of ink doesn’t flow how I want it to for some reason, it’s too light and watery. As soon as I started inking the first skull I realised how out of practice I was, I couldn’t find my usual flow during the entire process. The skull mushroom cloud didn’t turn out at all how I wanted it to.

I learned long ago that when someone looks at my drawing, they don’t see what I see. I muscled through the drawing in the hope that maybe Life will like it. They were stoked on it, which made me happy. After all, it was a drawing for them, not for me. A lot of people had very nice things to say about the drawing which further alleviated any misgivings I had about it. I think all my drawings a crap when I am in the process of making them as well as immediately after. It takes a long while before I can look at a drawing I’ve done and not hate everything about it.

Sorry this was all so long but I wanted to point out that a lot of those fun times and cherished memories were due to Life taking me on a road trip. Nori also recommended the hostel I stayed at which added to the fun I had before leaving. Thanks guys! Thank you to Kenta for recommending that I do the drawing.

Thank you for reading if you managed to get this far. A lot of the little side stories I felt were all connected to the flyer and they’re all happy memories. Except for the diarrhea. Fuck diarrhea. I feel I’d be remiss if I didn’t share all the little things that added up to the end result of the drawing.