So on March 27th, Yoshimi P-We of Boredoms fame returned to LA to play a show in the all-female band OOIOO (pronounced oh-oh-eye-oh-oh). But before I headed to the concert, I stopped by Little Tokyo to get some ramen. It seemed like that wasn’t a smart choice, as my stomach somehow ended up being in pain throughout the opening act, Neung Phak.

Neung Phak consisted of a bunch of weirdos aspiring to be performance artists. I can’t say that it wasn’t entertaining (at one point they pulled American flags out of their pants while yelling in pain), but towards the end of their set I started to get pretty sick of them. It didn’t help that my stomach was getting more upset the more they played. But I knew that a delicious serving of OOIOO was coming up soon, and I was aware of their magical revitalizing power since I’ve seen them play live before. I figured this show would be the true test to see whether or not they really had this power or if it was just something in my head.

They started their set with the tribal beats and chants of “UMA,” the opener for TAIGA, their latest album. Although I don’t have the album, I’ve seen the music video for the song multiple times (it’s easily found on YouTube) and enjoyed it. The song seemed to also please my stomach, so I was happy. Since I don’t know too many songs out of OOIOO’s discography, it seemed like a lot of their songs blended into one another over the course of their set. This was actually happening though, as I soon realized they were meshing and merging tunes once they played only 2 minutes of my favorite song of theirs, “mountain book” (which is a usually a seven minute song).

That taste of pure awesome really made my stomach feel better, and for the rest of the show my stomach was completely fine. It was somewhere in the middle of “On Mani,” the final song before the obligatory encore, that I accepted as fact that OOIOO really do have some kind of magical revitalizing power. It’s hard to explain, but there’s just something that happens in their presence that makes the audience as a whole feel really good. OOIOO cured me, and for that I thank them.

OOIOO was the first Japanese band I got into. I missed their show in NYC because no one wanted to go with me.

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