Photos: The Cult, Studio Coast, Tokyo, 2010

On the 14th of May, 2010, the Cult played an extremely badly-lit gig at Studio Coast, a cavernous and half-filled venue, built on reclaimed land in Tokyo Bay.

The day was also singer Ian Astbury's 48th birthday! He didn't seem too happy, but put in a solid shift as usual. Billy Duffy also looked like a guy at the factory. The thing that stuck out for me, however, was the poor lighting as I was hoping to get some good shots. I've seen better lit coalmines.

Astbury trying hard in a show weak on visuals

Duffy churning out the iconic riffs

Photos: Colin Liddell

Revenge...?

Riff Raff was a legendary rock magazine based in London in the late 1980s and 1990s. Edited by the ultimate music biz insider, Mark Crampton, and employing such talents as Mark Blake, Jerry Ewing, Mike Harris, Paul Smith, Chris Collingwood, Alan McCrorie, Simon Robinson, Lyn Guy, Anna Marx, Nick Douglas, Marion Garden, Peter "Grunty" Grant, Joe "The Crow" Mackett, Billy "The Kluck" Kulke, and, lastest and mostest, the incredible Liddell Brothers, Mark (a.k.a. "El Perro") and Colin (a.k.a. "Der Fly"). Unfortunately, Riff Raff was just too R n' R for its own good. A genuine working class rock mag, written, edited, and translated into 16 European languages in a drug-N-Jack-D-fuelled haze, often on the back of motorbikes, with spell checking by our staff of attentive rock bimbos (chosen purely for their blondeness and big knockers), it soon fell behind more trainspotterly, nerdish, and politically correct publications like Q, Kerrang, Mojo, Metal Hammer, and Horse & Hound. This website is an archive and kind of shrine dedicated to the writing of its greatest writers, some of whom, luckily for the Rock Kosmos, still continue to write about music. This is the REVENGE of Riff Raff...Rock on!