Brad Spurgeon's Blog

NAGOYA, Japan – It was not the first time, and I hope it is not the last time, that I get to play at the Plastic Factory, in Nagoya. After discovering this wonderful venue in the Imaike neighborhood of Nagoya two years ago, I got to take part in a concert night last year with a bunch of other musicians, and this year I was invited at the last minute to play a brief set in the gig of a duo that call themselves Zengo Kankai.

The only catch was that it was a night of 80s music, as these guys specialize in that sound, complete with synthesizer and vocals, and if I was going to fit in anywhere, it had to be with 1980s songs. So it was that I did a little bit of quick research and discovered much to my own surprise that three of the songs I sing regularly are from the 1980s: “Mad World,” “Wicked Game” and “I Won’t Back down.”

So I got invited to play and sing, and the band very kindly opened the stage to me for the beginning of the second set. In the meantime, I had met an Irishman who, it turned out, loves the song “Only Our Rivers Run Free.” I love to take any chance I can find to sing that song, so after singing the first two of my 80s songs, I decided to be a bit of a shit disturber, and I sang first, a song that I myself wrote in the 1980s – in 1980, to be exact – and then I finished my four-song set with “Only Our Rivers Run Free,” from 1966.

Yeah, well, what the heck.

The Plastic Factory is a wonderful venue that I recommend to anyone visiting or living in Nagoya, and it can have some amazing theme nights as well as open mics, and some more quiet affairs that are still worth absorbing the atmosphere over. It’s also a great chance to go out into a little quiet neighborhood of Nagoya where you might not otherwise think of setting foot. But it’s close enough to the downtown area to make it possible to walk back to a central hotel even if you stay all night at the Plastic Factory and miss a metro….