Photos: The Drums After the Earthquake

On 18th May, 2011, The Drums played a gig at Shibuya Quattro. This was a couple of months after the Great Tohoku Earthquake that rocked most of Eastern Japan and killed tens of thousands of people. The band made a point of debuting a new song to raise money for the quake victims. I was there with my lens and press pass to take a few snaps. Lighting was abysmal to shit! I was just lucky there weren't any bats in the way.

Of course, The Drums is one man, Jonathan Pierce, and a cast of other temporary musicians. Here he is with Connor Hanwick on the jangly guitar!

In crappy lighting go for silhouette shots. Here is Myles Matheny, a touring member of the band from 2011 to 2012 on bass and guitar.

A snap of the set list, as I wanted to knock off a quick live review afterwards.

Being in a band is about toeing the line and taking cues.

Zooming in on Hanwick...

Hanwick has a slug of a Japanese "lady drink" during a talkie bit

Metheny again.

Jacob Graham on keys

Pierce all sweated out, ready to crash.

Colin Liddell
Revenge of Riff Raff
31st August, 2023

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!