The thing about garage rock bands in Tokyo is that they only ever play with other garage rock bands and the only people who ever see them are garage rock fans. Great for the atmosphere, but not doing them any favours as far as relevance is concerned. As a result, the friendly and cosy Musashi-Sakai Statto is crammed to the gills tonight with mod suits, short skirts, overenthusiastic eyelashes and beehives. One woman, possibly a hippy, has brought a small child in, and the toddler seems very much at home grooving along to the breezy girl-group delights of FlowerMulu. Like all these kinds of groups, the clothes and the hair relegate the musicianship and the tunes to third and fourth place in terms of importance, but that said, they're tighter than they at first looked, and the music is a lot of fun.

With the arrival of The Acetones, the speed with which the toddler's mother sweeps her offspring into her arms and out of the room is at the very least impressive. They provide the evening's first genuine "Nuggets" moment by opening with a heavier-than-fuck cover of "Baby Please Don't Go", taking the Amboy Dukes version and stripping it down to just the bassline, the riff, and a bit of screaming. Their own songs, thankfully, continue in a similar vein, sitting well next to the covers, and the evening has well and truly started.

The Madame Cats are a weird collection of people. The drummer seems to be locked in a battle with Ronnie Vannucci from The Killers for the title "Happiest Sticksman In Rock" and the bass player rocks from side to side like Phoebe from Friends on industrial strength prozac. The guitarist just kind of stands there and does her thing, while the vocalist is stretched out on the floor, one of her legs in the air, giving everyone a flash of her stockings as she screams blue murder into the mic. Oh, and they cover "Wooly Bully" at the end.

The Shagwells are a rather more straightforward proposition. They play all their instruments as fast as they can, at the loudest possible volume, for thirty minutes and then finish. The songs have titles like "Pretty Girl" and "She's A Mod", and they close with a screaming, stuttering, jerky dancing cover of "Sorry" by The Easybeats. Their demo is on transparent seven-inch vinyl only and I would review it if I actually had a record player.

Maybe I'm drunk (and as the girl who I accidentally elbowed in the face with my spastic mod dancing will tell you, this is almost certainly the case), but The Mookees get better with every passing gig. Eriko's confidence and ability has grown in leaps and bounds since we first saw them back in May, and her guitar is now the driving force of the band. She twists and writhes, throwing jerky little shapes and squeezing squeals and yelps from it that would have been all but impossible five months ago. The obligatory "Nuggets" cover, "Hey Joe", is monumental and contains one of the coolest bass solos ever, but it's their own songs that really leap out and scream in your face. "I Miss You" is still the sharpest, best dressed, piece of garage primitivism this side of "Wild Thing", and they blow the roof off with an incoherent closing rendition of "Summertime Blues". Yeah. -Ian Martin, Sep.12.04.