The Roppongi I’ve come to know is a cultural mishmash of low class street thugs, pimps and your upper echelon of Boss wearing coke head stockbrokers. Where the only differences lie skin deep in their blackened souls. It’s the place where expats go to die and are reborn into Bosch’s hell in “Garden of Earthly Delightsâ€. It’s the place Dante wrote about. It’s the place your mother warned you about. If it were up to me the place should be lit up with street signs warning all who approach, “Don’t take your soul into Roppongi or you’ll leave without one.†A hedonistic heaven where all your twisted nightmares come to life.
Forgive the cliché, but Roppongi’s Ace takes a step back into the good ol’days, before Roppongi turned to a single shade of darkness. They don’t belong in the now, their time was the time of before, it’s the times of sentimental past, so far back you hardly remember. A time when time didn’t exist, when your soul was whole and the blurred dreams you now have were clear and crisp as youth itself. They are the remaining light, the remaining hope in a lightless world that has become Roppongi. Their music shines through the drudge of everyday life and tears through you with an energy and exuberance that rocks you to the core. They are the hard-roader’s, when musicians took the difficult path and never settled for the easier road to fame and fortune. Their sacrifice, is the perfection we hear when they rise to the stage. The only darkness that remains in Roppongi’s Ace is the black stage of anticipation before they rock your world!
-Joe McCunney
