Interview: Big Ben
*Please note - I tried to do this in Japanese. And I tried to group info into little themes. Whenever this is vague, confusing, or otherwise unpleasant to read, it’s due to my shortcomings. Apologies to Big Ben if I misrepresent him. I could’ve used a computer translation but, have you seen the nonsense that comes up when you computer translate Japanese to English?
You could call Big Ben a friend of a friend. One of my co-workers knew him and was really into the music he and his group, stillichimiya, were putting out. They had a new EP out, 2009’s 天照一宮, so it was a good time to start listening to them.
After they released 2014’s full-length 死んだらどうなる I saw stillichimiya live at the Nakamura Keith Haring Museum in Kobuchizawa. I finally got to meet Big Ben when I visited his store, Big Flat - then in Kuribata, Yamanashi-shi, now just a short walk north from Yamanashi-shi Station. Since then I’ve seen him time and again at festivals and events, sometimes as a merchant, as a DJ, as a performer. While the two stillichimiya releases mentioned above are hip-hop, when I’ve seen Big Ben perform recently, he did something a bit different, playing the acoustic guitar and also a taishogoto. Maybe it was just Yamanashi music? (You can seen video of the Nakamura Keith Haring Museum performance and of a Juju performance on PeelingPaintKofu Instagram.)
There’s one more reason for Big Ben’s ubiquity in my life. As MCs have a penchant for calling out their own names, his has been in my head since I first listened to ズンドコ節 (probably my favorite stillichimiya song)
準備 OK junbi OK
鳴く烏骨鶏 naku ukokkei
ひどく滑稽 hidoku kokkei
ビッグべんです! Big Ben desu!
Big Flat Records in Yamanashi-shi
Interview
Are you from Yamanashi?
Yes, from Fuefuki City. But when I was growing up it was Ichinomiya. A merger made it a part of Fuefuki-City in 2004. (But the members wanted to maintain their Ichinomiya identity so, still ichinomiya —> stillichimiya.)
When you were in high school, what was your best subject, your after-school activity? Are they relevant to what you do now?
I was good at English and math. And geography. Actually, those classes are good for what I do now. The math is important for running the store, making a budget, how many CDs to stock…. and I deal with a lot of foreign records, I need to know the English to understand the song names. And geography is important to when listening to the lyrics. To understand them you need to know about the weather and culture of these places that are different from Japan.
At first, I didn’t go to a high school club, I had a part-time job and just listened to records. I liked basketball but there was too much practicing. Then I was in the ぺん習字 (pen-shuji; pen, not brush calligraphy) club because they only met a few times a year - you’d write something and hand it in.
Where did you hang out with friends?
In my last year of high school, we went to Laid Back (a record store, formerly just northeast of Okajima, now in a new location) and Birdland.*
*Birdland was a shop, also a bit northeast of Okajima. Unfortunately, it’s been closed for quite a while now. I remember it always jammed with used CDs, used records, old magazines, posters, and people. I bought a few great 12” singles, CDs that I never saw in US stores, and a VHS tape of a Beck concert. Just a great, great store that has really vanished. Big Ben says it might now be a parking lot. Though I’ve talked to a lot of people who remember it fondly, I haven’t been able to find much about it - old photos and such - online. Just this memorial on a fire hose case.
バードランド (Birdland) Forever One Love
How often do you (did you used to) go to Tokyo?
Pretty often. Sometimes by car but not to central Tokyo. It’s for work but it’s also fun. To look for records in secondhand stores, like Hard-Off, in places like Hachioji, and in Saitama, like Kawagoe and Iruma. The suburbs. Not central Tokyo. Shops in central Tokyo have already been cleaned out. I do go to places like Shinjuku and Kichijoji, by train, to hear live music. And then I get records at places like Disk Union.
Yamako Department store, near Kofu Station, has been empty for a while now. What would you like to see in that building?
Rent would be pretty high, right? If rent weren’t an issue, then maybe not franchises. Stores runs by local owners instead.
If Kofu got a baseball team, what should the team name be? The Kofu _____?
I like birds so…but Yakult is already the Swallows…the bears. The Kofu Bears.
What’s your best karaoke song? Do you ever do stillichimiya songs?
I don’t often go to karaoke. But often after performances and events, there’s an uchi-age (after-party.) We have dinner and drinks with the other performers and the venue staff. And then there’s an after-after-party, and people like to go to karaoke. I sing Atsuki Kokoro Ni by Kobayashi Akira. It was composed and written by Otaki Eiichi. So I sing karaoke at those parties but usually I don’t go. I don’t do stillichimiya at karaoke.
I wanted to talk more about stillichimiya. So I showed him some photos of Pharrell and Nigo, Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, Run DMC, and NWA and asked if stillichimiya ever followed the fashions of American rap groups.
Young G (another member of stillichimiya) is into Adidas. He has the special Run-DMC edition sneakers. I had Adidas Superstars. I like the Grandmaster Flash style, it’s cool, but…
Sometimes for videos we would follow the director’s vision and wear matching clothes. But for live performances and working in the studio we never had any kind of dress code. Actually, we did shows in Tokyo with 田我流 (Dengaryu) where we all wore the same colored tops so people would associate us as a group.
In addition to MC-ing, DJ-ing is an element of hip-hop. I’ve seen Big Ben DJ at the annual Yamanashi Ignition Festival. This is a snowboarding and skateboarding festival.
In Japan, is hip-hop tied to skateboarding?
I think a lot of skateboarders are into rap music. About five years ago, I skateboarded. I went to the Battery Skate Shop in Yamanashi-shi.
Yamanashi Ignition
Another element of hip-hop is graffiti. I don’t see much graffiti or street art in Kofu but there is a painting done on an alley wall downtown. The art was done by HIT0TZUKI and this making-of video features music (using a taishogoto!) made by Omiyuki CHANNEL (Big Ben and Young G.)
To finish off this post, Big Ben’s video for いったりきたりBLUES. In addition to great music, it shows off some what I love about Yamanashi - fields and cozy restaurants, bamboo groves and abandoned alleys, rural and urban ruins.
Links
stillichimiya’s video for Hell Train
For more on Atsuki Kokoro Ni, Kobayashi Akira, and Otaki Eiichi, check out this amazing blog Kayo Kyoku Plus. Be careful. You may spend the rest of your day checking out all the great content.