Style Resume. Noriaki Onuki #4

2025.9.8

Text： Kenichi Aono

Edit： Suzuki Yusuke

Whether it's fashion, music, or sports, there is a style that only each person can express in any genre. "Style is Everything." That's right, someone once said that style is everything. "Style Resume" is a series of interviews with adults who, as the name suggests, have style. Updated every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, the 13th installment features music critic, radio DJ, and organizer of the DJ event "LONDON NITE," which will celebrate its 45th anniversary in 2025.

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04. My first experience of a GS live performance was when I was in high school.

I think it was The Beatles' visit to Japan that triggered this, but around 1967 bands started to become more prominent in Japan. Until then, it was an era where singers or vocal groups sang with backing bands, but the music industry saw that electric guitars and bands were the way to go, and they started to shift their focus. This was the so-called GS (Group Sounds) boom. When I was in my first or second year of high school, I had a classmate who was an expert on this genre, and I went to see my first GS live show with him.

The first live house I went to was "ACB (Ashibe)" at the south exit of Shinjuku Station. I went there as a regular customer, but then my friend told me, "There's a way to see a live show for free." It involved helping to unload the equipment from the equipment truck and set it up in the designated location, and for some reason my friend knew the band's roadies. So I decided to join in on the fun. However, I couldn't watch from the audience anymore, so I listened to the performance in the dressing room or in the hallway leading to the dressing room. At first, I went in my school uniform, but I thought it would be a bit inappropriate, so I started changing into my own clothes in the station bathroom.

We were good friends with a band called the Beavers. At the time, GS bands' live repertoire consisted mostly of covers of overseas songs, so we would ask them about the songs they played and the instruments they played.

He has been a music critic for over half a century. His 55th anniversary, "Onuki Kensho / HISTORY OF KENSHO ONUKI: Onuki Kensho Memoirs: Night Stories of Life," was published on New Year's Day, January 1, 2025. The 220-page book also includes little-known anecdotes about people who lived in the same era as Onuki, such as Yuya Uchida, Yumi Matsutoya, Yoichi Shibuya, Masanori Ito, and Kiyoshiro Imawano.

Profile

Noriaki Onuki (music critic and radio DJ)

Born in February 1951, Kenrocks began his career as a music critic while still a university student, and has been active for over half a century. He has a particularly deep knowledge of punk rock, and launched "LONDON NITE" at Tsubaki House in Shinjuku in June 1980, a DJ event that continues to this day and whose influence is immeasurable. In January 2025, he published "HISTORY OF KENSHO ONUKI: A Memoir." "Kenrocks Nite - Ver. 2" is currently broadcast every Friday from midnight on inter FM.

Instagram @kensho_onuki