“Mackie, let’s go!”
Right after the Stray Cats tour was announced, the phone rang.
It was a classmate from high school, one of the guys I used to play in a Stray Cats cover band with back then.
“Mackie, let’s go!”
To be honest, I hesitated. I couldn’t really afford it… and I have work. “Let’s wait until the Japan tour is decided, and go then!” I replied. Then he said:
“If the Japan tour gets decided, you can go to that one too. For us, this might be the first and last chance.”
The one band I still haven’t seen
Brian Setzer Orchestra, Rockabilly Riot. I’ve seen Brian Setzer many times. I’ve seen winter sonic, where he joined up with Slim Jim Phantom. I’ve even been to a show with Hotei-san.
But the Stray Cats, the band I’ve admired since long ago, are the one act I still haven’t seen.
My classmate’s burning passion, and my own past. Looking back at both, I made up my mind to book the ticket.
The seat I got was front row, center.
At that moment, my heart was already in Las Vegas!
On a night when a typhoon was approaching
About five months later, with a typhoon closing in, I held a strategy meeting with my close friends. There was only one topic: how do we get across our wish for them to “come to Miyakojima!”
We really came up with all sorts of ideas. Brian has come as far as mainland Okinawa once before. So maybe we should wear something Okinawan and eye-catching. But then again, we had no idea how strict the checks at the entrance would be…
What we finally settled on was writing the message on two face towels and joining them together after we got to our seats.
The message: short and straight
Once we’d come this far, we were going all in. The next day, I asked a senior of mine who is fluent in English what we should write. This was the first message we settled on.
Thanks to dreamin’ Rock a Billy Music!
from okinawa miyako island!
come over rockabilly king my island!
6120.jp
It may be a little cheeky. But if it weren’t, it wouldn’t catch their eye. That was the plan.
With this idea in hand, I went to talk to a classmate who runs a shop making promotional goods. What came back was this: “Even if you print a long message on a towel, no one will be able to read it.”
So what he suggested was nobori banner fabric. The size is flexible, and it can be folded up. We decided to cut the message down as short as we possibly could.
And this is the line that was born.
STRAY CATS! COME ROCK MIYAKO ISLAND! OKINAWA 6120.jp
This one apparently also has a bit of an imperative tone. Honestly, we were out of time by then. But you can tell at a glance what it says.
A domain that slept for 20 years
As for the real message, I could build a website on the domain “6120.jp”, which I registered about 20 years ago, and say it all there. And I could put an email address on it, just in case. That’s what I thought.
6120 is a name that every guitarist in the world, and anyone who loves rockabilly and rock’n’roll, knows. Surely, sooner or later, by some chance, they’d visit. I was confident of that.
Ever since I got the domain, I’d wanted to make a gallery gathering 6120s from all over the world. Something I had let sleep for about 20 years has finally started to move, thanks to the Stray Cats.
