Japan: What happened next?

by Jon Wilks Posted on August 29, 2011
Get the answer in Delayed Gratification

The answer to this question isn’t easily come by, of course, but I’ve given it a decent bash in the latest edition of Delayed Gratification, a very new and very handsome quarterly that proudly boasts being “last to the news”. As you’d expect from a project with such a future-minded manifesto, they don’t have much by way of an online presence, and there’s certainly no OS app in the offing. However, I’d urge anyone in the UK to pick up a copy. DG, as it’s known to its friends and admirers, is a gorgeous and lovingly-put-together journal. And besides, delayed gratification is often the very best kind.

Posted in Bits and blogs, Featured articles | Tagged , , , , | 3 Comments

Yoko Ono interview

by Jon Wilks Posted on August 27, 2011
Yoko Ono. Y'know, John Ono's wife

This was the first interview I ever did with someone of note, and even though it was a phoner, I was terrified. Yoko Ono has something of a reputation as a ‘difficult artist’, and I was well aware that she’d probably spent most of her life being asked about her former husband than her own art – getting the balance right was extremely important to me.

She turned out to be a delight, of course. I remember describing the experience afterwards as not dissimilar to chatting with a high level Japanese student of English, only one who kept throwing disarming comments into the conversation. At one point after the interview was over, she asked me why I was in Japan. I told her I was married to a Japanese woman, to which she replied, “Oh, that’s sweet! My husband was from England, too…”

Continue reading →

Posted in Featured articles, Interviews | Tagged , , , | 4 Comments

Bob Geldof interview

by Jon Wilks Posted on August 26, 2011
Angry Bob, not so angry after all

This was one of the first interviews I did working for Time Out. Jeremy Lawrence, the editor of Time Out Dubai at the time, popped his head up over the computer screen and asked nonchalantly if I fancied interviewing Bob Geldof in, oooh, an hour? Cue 50 minutes of frenzied research on African policy, all of which led to nothing at all when it turned out he just fancied talking about his time as a music journalist.

I remember him being a bit curmudgeonly, but generally fairly gentle with me, perhaps sensing how green I was. I also recall that he left the conversation mid-sentence, pretty much hanging up the phone without even rounding off what he was saying. He was talking about Bono’s music taste at the time, though, so I didn’t feel I missed out on much.

Continue reading →

Posted in Featured articles, Interviews | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Strange facts and useless lists

by Jon Wilks Posted on August 25, 2011
Tokyo - Strange facts and useless lists

How many Tokyoites can you squeeze into a Mini Cooper? How many times has Godzilla attacked Tokyo? Why was Paul McCartney banned from having bananas?

All the questions you never had about Japan’s great capital, answered here before you’d ever thought of them…

Continue reading →

Posted in Featured articles, Travel writing | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Japan March 11 earthquake, as it happened

by Jon Wilks Posted on August 20, 2011

March 11 started fairly normally. An editorial meeting, a longish Friday afternoon lunch, a comfortable run in to the weekend. And then capital shook, the sea swallowed Tohoku, and Japan changed for good. Almost 6 months later, the country is preparing itself for a rice harvest that many expect to be dangerously contaminated, and the inept government has just accepted the resignation of the 6th prime minister in 5 years.

Millions of column inches have been filled contemplating the catastrophic effect the Great East Japan Earthquake has had on the country, but – given that we blogged through the first major aftershock, minutes after the initial quake – Time Out Tokyo‘s response must have been one of the first. Not that we predicted the financial and political fallout, of course, but we did what we could to help the confused foreigners stranded in Tokyo at the time, an effort that ultimately landed us a Time Out International award.

Continue reading →

Posted in Bits and blogs, Featured articles | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Tim Robbins interview

by Jon Wilks Posted on August 15, 2011

My interview with Tim Robbins was always going to be a peculiar one. The actor-turned singer was in Japan for a week of concerts at the Blue Note Tokyo, supporting his 2010 album Tim Robbins & The Rogues Gallery Band, but I was warned beforehand not to mention any of his movies – a tough ask considering that the Oscar winner has been part of the Hollywood furniture for more than two decades – and it was politely suggested that he’d only want to talk about his music. No Susan Sarandon, then. I duly set about studying the man’s only album, and the music that might have inspired it.

I needn’t have been so meticulous. Tim Robbins is a walking encyclopaedia of musical minutiae (seriously, next time you find yourself in a lift with him, ask him about punk, folk, lo-fi…you get the impression he commits it all to memory like words from a script). And so I sat with him for 30 learned minutes, bouncing between family memories (his father was an admired folk singer) and his experiences of fame (‘It’s all in your head’), hearing about how he won’t be ‘going Indonesian’ on his next album, and the Robbins secret to ‘living free’. A wide-ranging interview, then, to say the least, and possibly his first since 1994 (I’m kinda proud to say) not to use the word ‘Shawkshank’…

Continue reading →

Posted in Featured articles, Interviews | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Alan McGee interview

by Jon Wilks Posted on June 22, 2011

No Alan McGee, no Oasis. How you respond to this simple equation is entirely down to you. But no Jesus and Mary Chain, no Primal Scream – you start to realise we’re talking about a man who howled with nascent indie in its cradle, was present at its birth, and probably severed its umbilical chord with his gnashing teeth.

Continue reading →

Posted in Featured articles, Interviews | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Cibo Matto interview

by Jon Wilks Posted on April 3, 2011

One of the larger charity events to have taken place in the wake of the March 11 disaster was the Japan Benefit Concert at New York’s Columbia University, held on March 27. On a bill that included Yoko Ono, John Zorn, Sonic Youth and Mike Patton, the reunion of Cibo Matto – the influential J-girl duo that grew out of the NYC art scene in the early ’90s – gave punters an extra reason to dig into their pockets. A couple of days later, Yoko Ono pulled together a second event, this time featuring the Plastic Ono Band, Patti Smith and, again, Cibo Matto.

The following week, an email appeared in my Facebook inbox. It was from a delighted Miho Hatori, and read: ‘We raised 71,103 dollars on Tuesday. Amazing!’

Continue reading →

Posted in Featured articles, Interviews | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

Hatsune Miku: ‘live’ in concert

by Jon Wilks Posted on March 9, 2011
Hatsune Miku, live in concert

Before you read on, I should clear something up. I’m not the kind of person you’d expect to find at a Hatsune Miku concert. I don’t own any kind of games console, and I spent most of the journey to Zepp Tokyo reading the recent Keith Richards autobiography. I stepped onto the platform at Tokyo Teleport wearing rolled up blue jeans, desert boots, a parka and a Fred Perry bag. I’m the kind of person you’d expect to find on a London street corner circa 1964; the kind of person who would dismiss the idea of a hologram concert as futuristic witchcraft.

Continue reading →

Posted in Bits and blogs | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Johnsons Motorcar

by Jon Wilks Posted on January 31, 2011

‘Blacko,’ barks the intense slab of face from behind the trestle table; ‘Who’re you shootin’ for?’ It takes a second to realise that the first statement is the face’s name, and the second is aimed at the camera hanging around my neck (which I forgot about when I thought the intensity might escalate into vehemence).

I’m at Marz to shoot a different band, but Blacko has an urgency about him that I think would be unwise to ignore. He implores me to stick around to see the last band, his band, and I agree quickly and prudently. ‘Its Irish music’, he promises in an equally intense Dublin accent, ‘but with a difference.’

Continue reading →

Posted in Bits and blogs | Tagged , | 4 Comments