OLH is Back – The Melo Throwback Show

Posted On December 31, 2024

It’s been a quiet five years for Omokage Lucky Hole^[1]Now technically “Only Love Hurts,” but whatever. since their last show in 2019. Admittedly timing wasn’t great, as that aforementioned last performance just happened to immediately precede the onset of a pandemic. While they did manage to put out a killer manga collaboration in 2020, they were also forced to convey some sad news about the artist they collaborated with just two years later. By 2023 the band was completely silent, striking some unneeded fear into my heart. I will admit to jumping the gun on my predictions in that post, because looking back at the band’s history, they did have long intervals of inactivity from time to time. But I suppose in this age of social media, if someone isn’t posting constantly to make their existence known, they may as well be dead.

However, after prolonged radio silence, OLH started to make some curious movements in the back half of this year. They suddenly put out a search for their old band members on their Twitter account, then announced a vinyl re-release of their very first indies album Melo. Of these announcements, the release of Melo on vinyl was huge–the original CD is extremely rare, and the album itself is distinct from their professional releases for its far more rock-tinged sound, as well as having a couple tracks on it that never made it to their professional releases. Amongst this sudden burst of activity, the band also cryptically announced a date–September 11th, 2024.

Unfortunately for me, I did forget about September the 11th, and neglected to check the band’s Twitter account on the stated day. The next day, I opened up the internet and noticed that they had posted about a sold-out show–turns out this show was their big September 11th announcement. And as if to rub salt deeper into the wound, the big gimmick for this performance was that they would be putting on a live performance of the aforementioned Melo. 

Fuck.

There was no way I was going to miss OLH’s first show in 5 years, and especially one all about Melo. Tickets were being sold on the digital platform Tiget, a service which allows users to reserve a space at shows and pay on-site. As such, it was impossible to scalp tickets–my last resort for big artists like Sakamoto Shintaro, who typically sell out right as tickets go on sale. However, if someone happened to cancel their spot on Tiget, their slot would open up for someone else to reserve. And so, thanks to the wonders of remote work, for a week I propped my personal PC up next to my work PC, and downloaded a plugin to auto-reload the site until an opening popped up. Of course, the only time that I did notice reservations open up was when I was taking a break from watching Abunai Deka after work, and peered over to my PC to notice that a slot was available. It goes without saying that I snagged it in an instant. Luckily, more slots opened up as the day approached, and I managed to get some friends in on the show as well. So all in all, crisis averted!

With my head clearer, I went back to figure out why the band was even doing this. Turns out that back in August, Ozawa Kenji put on a concert performing his album “Life” on its 30th anniversary. OLH posted about this prior to their own concert announcement, noting that aCKy and Ozawa’s birthdays are only one day apart. When it came to getting the word out about the show, OLH completely hijacked the style of Ozawa’s announcement, right down to the imagery. In their promotion, the band was keen to note that their show was coming a hilariously half-assed 28 years after the release of Melo as opposed to Ozawa’s clean 30 years since Life, winking and nudging to us fans. Similarly, while Ozawa was promising a perfect reproduction of Life, OLH made a point to remark that their show would be an “approximate” reproduction of Melo, manically winking and aggressively nudging us even more.

Showtime 

During the pandemic, people coined the phrase “nature is healing.” You know, to indicate instances where certain parts of everyday life were coming back to normal. Well, that’s how it felt being in the basement of Tower Records Shibuya at their Cutup Studio concert venue. Unfortunately I dragged my feet and missed out on the awesome^[2]But unwearable. limited-edition t-shirt, but just arriving there and cracking open a highball while waiting for the show to start was probably the first time I felt as if the pandemic was truly behind me^[3]Of course, Covid is still around, but it’s certainly more manageable for many of us now.. The last time I saw these guys was exactly five years ago to the day, November 3rd, 2019– just one month prior to news breaking of an unknown virus spreading in China.

Since the show was a throwback to the band’s first release, they were not playing as “Only Love Hurts,” but as “Omokage Lucky Hole from 1996.” As a result, when waiting for the band to appear on stage, hit songs from 1996 were coming through the PA^[4]As observed by someone on Twitter.. You could tell things were getting real once the kayōkyoku number Mukashi no Namae de Deteimasu (Appearing Under my Old Name) by Kobayashi Akira came on, and it began stuttering on the lyric uttering the words “my old name.” The track then resumed, but quickly stuttered again once the song hit a lyric that used the word “omokage.” This was of course the band’s cue to bounce on stage and sing their old intro number, Konna Kakkoii Band Mita Koto Nai (You’ve Never Seen a Band as Cool as This), a loud rock piece in which they repeat the song’s name and the words “lucky hole,” before going into a call-and-response routine where the band pauses in perfect unison after yelling the word “LUCKY” to let the crowd yell “HOLE” before rocking out again. For a minute it didn’t feel like I was at an OLH show, as someone who has only been exposed to their current, smoother sound. I was certainly aware of this side of the band through old fuzzy video recordings on a rare-ass DVD they dropped years ago, but experiencing it live was a royal kick in the balls. 

aCKy was jumping all around the stage, presumably unleashing five years of pent-up energy. “We’re Omoshiro Lucky Strike!” he exclaimed, making fun of an old OLH cover band. “This year, I turned 28 years old,” he continued, immediately committing to the bit that was driving the show. After this energizing opening, the band hit us with Konya, Sugamo De (Tonight, in Sugamo), the first song on Melo. In true OLH fashion aCKy opened by screwing up the lyrics to Sugamo. He does this a lot, but I’ll let him off the hook this time because the lyrics in the Melo version of the song are a little different. Regardless, as is tradition, both him and the audience laughed it off. The number got people’s feet moving with its funky guitar backing, hitting my ears fresher than ever before. While I love hearing this song in all its brassy glory with the full horn section, this looser 1996 rendition was an extreme bop. 

The setlist covered all the songs on Melo, but they mixed up the order a bit. I definitely grooved deeper with the slower numbers, like my favorite Pillow Talk Tagalog Go (Pillow Talk in Tagalog) and Hitorigurashi no Hostess ga Hajimete Shinbun wo Totta (One Day a Hostesses Living on Her Own Started Reading the Newspaper), as well as some of the more extended hip-hoppy cuts like Kanarazu Onaji Tokoro De (Always Slipping up At the Same Place) and Annani Hantai Shiteta Otōsan ni Beer wo Tsugarete (Her Disapproving Father Poured My Beer).

Kanarazu was the second song after Sugamo, and aCKy was in top form busting out all the rhymes in its lyrics. This version of the song from Melo breaks in the middle, making way for a wispy flute backed up by a deep and spooky guitar that gave me the chills hearing it live. Meanwhile, aCKy delivered Beer in a convincingly strung out manner, with the guitar coming in to energize at the right moments, and screaming beautifully by the end. Both of those songs are around 8 minutes long on Melo, so it was a real treat getting lost in their dank hip-hop sound for so long in a live setting. 

It was also great to hear the band’s more wild rock-infused tracks that never made it to their professional albums, such as Honki tte Kaite Maji^[5]Sorry, this is impossible to translate. and Love Volunteer. Since I had never heard their fuzzier rock sound live before, I appreciated how these two songs came smashing through the speakers and straight into my ears. For this show, they managed to get Okumura Dai–AKA Dai-chan–in to take lead on the guitar. He was one of the group’s early members, and is credited on Melo as D.I.E. Not to diss the other members, but him aggressively snaking around the stage and solidly rocking out on his guitar for the entire runtime did lend a new energy to the OLH experience, alongside aCKy jumping around and screaming a lot. Meanwhile, the band’s second-generation saxophonist Iwa-chan was also called in for this show, delivering grungy sax backing for both of these red hot numbers. aCKy dished out his hip-hop chops again for Love Volunteer, dropping the track’s rhymes at lightspeed, something I had never seen him do before. It’s amazing how he was able to keep this song in his back pocket but still screw up on Sugamo!

When boiled down to their core elements, it’s clear that OLH still has the juice even with less personnel. This show was defined by its extremely deep and bassy sound, most likely thanks to bassist/band leader Sinner Yang^[6]Now known as Daizawa Goro., which was immensely satisfying, and a fresh change from their richer approach with more instruments. To drop an example, Pillow Talk, which typically comes with rich instrumental backing, managed to ooze its way through the audience and captivate with only its deep and engrossing bassline this time around.

Of course, no OLH show would be complete without goofy MC interludes from aCKy. Per the theme of the show, they went out of their way to recreate some routines from their old ‘90s performances. Breaking after Kanarazu Onaji Tokoro De, aCKy pulled out a giant fake pink telephone, and pretended to take a sudden call from a girl named “Maki”. The bit entails aCKy having a super bratty lover who calls him mid-performance, nagging him to pick up some very specific items on his way home. “So Maki-chan, you want Pino, Alfort and…a pink vibrator? Wait, and you don’t want the one from Don Quijote? …because they break easily? Well… at this time of night Donki is the only place open but… I’ll try!” In a proceeding segment, we then learned that Maki is a teenage girl that aCKy met using Dial Q², a premium rate telephone service from the era that was widely used for adult services. “I drop 100,000 yen on it in a month!” aCKy exclaims. He then moved onto a quirky anecdote about his time spent with Maki in love hotels talking about Doraemon. “I asked Maki which Doreamon gadget she wants, and she said she wanted the one ‘lets you start life over again.’ I didn’t think this actually existed in Doraemon… but turns out it does!” He capped off the bit by doing his best Doraemon impression^[7]A talent all Japanese people are born with..

Another fun bit came up during the extended instrumental break in Love Volunteer, where aCKy put on a one-man show acting as both a young woman and her father. The bit involved the woman introducing her father to her boyfriend, touching upon “controversial”^[8]Perhaps by ‘90s standards? I guess that’s the joke? topics like STDs and Zainichi Koreans. “Bokumoto-san? Oh, he’s Zainichi? Well that’s fine, we don’t discriminate by one’s homeland, or the color of their skin or eyes,” aCKy dramatized as the father, while quoting The Blue Hearts. “And what? He has syphilis and AIDS? Well that’s fine, when you fuck, just use a condom!” Near the end of the skit, the fictional dad that aCKy is portraying demanded that his wife prepare food for “Bokumoto-san”. “So Bokumoto-san, here’s some soy sauce for your fried eggs.” aCKy paused. “What do you mean you want ketchup?!?! Disgraceful! You put soy sauce on eggs! Or at the very least, use salt and pepper! I can never leave my precious daughter to someone who dresses their eggs in ketchup!”

Ahead of the encore, aCKy came out and addressed the audience in the most sincere way I have ever seen him do so. He opened by saying that they did their best to recreate their vibe from the 1990s, right down to the sorts of jokes cracked during the MC segments. He then went on to introduce the members, many of whom were different from the typical lineup, in reflection of their efforts to assemble their 1990s crew. Of note, aCKy mentioned that the band’s attempt to find chorus members “Kei-chan” and “Narumi-chan”, as well as percussionist “Mi-chan” were met with failure, but they did manage to find other members from the same period. A lady named Akemi was on percussion, and performed with the band at the same time as Mi-chan. Fumiko, who has been performing with the band since I started seeing them, acted as one half of the chorus duo alongside Fumie, who had been part of the band’s horn section on the trumpet in the late-90s.

The band then launched into the encore which consisted of Suki na Otoko no Namae Ude ni Compass no Hari de Kaita, Tokyo (Ja) Night Club (Wa) and Ore no Sei de Koshien ni Ikenakatta. Both Compass and Koshien are not on Melo, but it seems as if they did exist as songs in the band’s repertoire at around 1996 per old recordings of the band’s past performances. Meanwhile, Night Club appears on Melo as a dank Casio keyboard driven bonus track.

This was my first time hearing Compass led by the guitar, but it came through light and breezy, with a smooth solo from Dai. Night Club followed, completely upping the tempo and bringing some funky energy back into the room thanks to groovy work by the two guitarists and Sinner Yang on bass. For this number Kaori–the band’s old saxophonist who now lives in New York–made a surprise appearance, driving the song with punchy, powerful blows on her horn. Koshien brought us into the finale, boasting a rougher and fuzzy sound via Dai’s guitar, ending the show explosively.

The full setlist can be found below.

• Konna Kakkoii Band Mita Koto Nai (You’ve Never Seen a Band as Cool as This)
• Konya, Sugamo De (Tonight, in Sugamo)
• Kanarazu Onaji Tokoro De (Always Slipping up At the Same Place)
• Annani Hantai Shiteta Otōsan ni Beer wo Tsugarete (Her Disapproving Father Poured My Beer)
• Pillow Talk Tagalog Go (Pillow Talk in Tagalog)
• Hitorigurashi no Hostess ga Hajimete Shinbun wo Totta (One Day a Hostesses Living on Her Own Started Reading the Newspaper)
• Honki tte Kaite Maji
• Love Volunteer

Encore

• Suki na Otoko no Namae Ude ni Compass no Hari de Kaita (The Name of That Man Written on Her Arm with a Compass Needle)
• Tokyo (Ja) Night Club (Wa) (At The Tokyo Night Club)
• Ore no Sei de Koshien ni Ikenakatta (It’s All My Fault We Couldn’t Go to Koshien)

The venue, Cutup Studio, was cozy and clean, and thankfully dished out drinks by the can to cut down on any spilling incidents that result from standard issue live house plastic cups. However, despite being a small venue and in theory being a good distance from the stage, the stage was very low, so it was hard to see much of what the band members were doing. As such, I found myself glancing up at the monitors a few times to get a better look at what was going on. That said, I’m thankful for what height I have compared to some of the other audience members, because I’m sure the tiny old guy next to me couldn’t see anything at all. As such, I wish I had put some effort into making it to the show earlier and snagging a spot upfront.

Performance-wise, the band was on their a-game as always, but I did notice some weird audio level issues on certain instruments, which is more on the venue than anything else. Friends with me commented that the sax wasn’t on point, but I figure it fell victim to the same uneven audio mixing. That said, both of them have histories playing in bands while I don’t, so I invite you–who likely wasn’t even there–to come to your own conclusion. 

In the end, it was just great to see the band again. aCKy always makes a lot of jokes about how he hates performing live, but after half a decade, it seemed as if he had missed being on stage, and his enthusiasm was extremely palpable.  

Wax Melo

The record for Melo conveniently arrived on the day of the show, but I only got a chance to spin it just the other day^[9]Of course, I managed to drop the disc in tremendous fashion after this first play, scratching it lightly. Need to find some place to fix it up…. While quite embarrassing to read over a decade later, you can refer to my old review of Melo here to get a better idea of what the album is all about. As far as the quality of the record is concerned, it’s stellar. I haven’t gotten a chance to listen to the original CD on my stereo yet, but the transfer on this record sounds incredibly clear on my current system. I don’t know if they managed to get their hands on the original masters or something, but props to Tower Records for reproducing what was once quite a rare CD in stunning quality on wax for (perhaps?) new audiences. The iconic cover art looks great blown up for the record jacket, and the original CD booklet has been repurposed as a full-sized record insert.

Fans who preordered the record also received a CD that contained audio from one of the band’s shows from 1996, right around when Melo dropped. I’m not sure if they referred back to this recording to help them recreate their old sound for the concert, but I did get some déjà vu when listening to this the day after the show. This show back in 1996 opened with them spinning the 1970s folk classic Dare mo Inai Umi (The Ocean With No-one) by Toi et Moi, with the song conveniently stuttering on a lyric with the word “omokage” in it, at which point the band started rocking out. Sounds familiar, right? That said, this being a vintage recording, they do have an authentically young sound, with many of the songs performed at high tempos. Konna Kakkoii Band Mita Koto Nai has a Funkadelic-like flavor this time around, breaking down into a hilarious interlude from aCKy about someone wanting to go to the Okinawa Actors School^[10]Probably a hot topic at the time, as many of the 1990s J-pop acts came out of this institution. over wanting to be put into a trance, or go to a family restaurant. Don’t worry, it makes sense when you listen to it (or maybe it doesn’t). 

The recording contains performances of Sugamo, Maji, Love Volunteer along with a song I’ve never heard of called Warui Uwasa (Bad Rumor). I had at first assumed this song was a cover, but after listening through a couple of songs out there with the same title, it seems as if this may be an original. It’s a short and funky high-powered tune, and seems cut from the same cloth as many of the other funky rock songs they were dropping during this time. While I can’t say for sure if it is in fact an original, discovering old unreleased songs from the band is always fun, and makes me wonder if there’s more out there. I suppose only aCKy knows.

—

So, it seems the rumors–put forth by me and me alone–of OLH’s death have been greatly exaggerated. The energy levels during this most recent show were high, and there were no hints that the band plans to stop doing what they’re doing. Much like their show five years ago, aCKy closed out by wishing us all a happy new year, as if to signal that we’ll be seeing more of them in the future. And of course, I’m eager to see what they have in store for us.