Being a fan of The Students isn't a hobby, it's a full-time occupation. They are a band who demand your adoration and for whom no half-measures are acceptable. They stick a new opening onto "Noroma Na Roller" every time you see them, just to fuck with you, and "Zundoko Hyorohyoro" gains more false endings with every passing gig, and you know what happens? We love them more and more as each moment goes by. Tonight they are on fire, with every song a glorious mess of weird arrangements, incomprehensible vocals and amps cranked just beyond maximum, all desperately straining for a grail-like vision of what they think a pop song might sound like and in the process creating something both fearsomely original and gloriously accessible. Atsushi is in the finest rock and roll form we've seen for a long time, his collar stabbing ruggedly northwards, his legs planted apart at precisely the most provocative angle, and his dancing just on the right side of spastic. The atmosphere created by the handful of lunatics clapping and screaming at the front is infectious and there is no more glorious sight than that of a group of confused bystanders being won over and at least one new admittance into their increasingly weird cult of fans.

Ghost Town Magazine are a bit of a let-down after this. Their bass player is cool, with the nattiest threads in the band, and a mysterious smile on his face, like Meg White thinking about what she had for breakfast, but the music ain't so hot. It's all frightfully Shimo-Kitazawa, which is a patronizing way of saying pointless, thrashy, emo-wank. Next!

Oh, God, no! Grab It do not grab me at all, except in that unpleasant way that a tramp grabs you on the street and shouts something incomprehensible into your face amid a cloud of stinking beer-breath. More uninvolving, uninspired emo, enlivened by some occasional slinky disco drumming and a bassist who intermittently slips into something that might be a groove, but they take these moments of promise nowhere and leave the rapidly dwindling audience desperate for salvation.

Salvation can come in many forms but tonight we are looking for it in the form of The Glam. Like The Students, a lot of what makes them so lovable is in the way that they refuse to conform to a conventional rock formula. However, where you get the impression that The Students couldn't write a conventional pop record if they tried, The Glam are such skilled, well rehearsed musicians that you get the feeling that they could be anything they wanted to be. Tonight though, things start out shaky. They sleepwalk gloomily through the first few songs, and while it's still brilliant, there's a nagging feeling of dissatisfaction among the band. Drummer Kyoujyu can't hold onto his sticks, perhaps blinded by the gigantic blonde wig he's wearing, and the normally metronomically accurate Misaki-C notches up more than her fair share of mistakes and then vanishes to sort out her guitar, leaving bassist Tomonii to fill the uncomfortable pause. But The Glam are not a talking band, and soon enough they're back, fired up with a righteous punk anger that sets a course for Jupiter and blazes skyward. Who gives a fuck about a couple of missed notes? The vocals scream frustration, the guitar howls with rage, the bass growls with menace and the drums crash with fearsome rock and roll fury. It's a ragged kind of salvation but it's just what we needed. Thanks. -Ian Martin, Sep.04.04.