The more I think about butoh, the more I think of how it may have influenced Japanese shock-rock band Dir En Grey. Not so much musically, Dir En Grey is far from an avant-garde band and more of a typical metal band (think Slipknot on meth; they will be touring the US this summer as part of Korn's "Family Values Tour" and Jonathan Davis describes them as "crazy Japanese guys doing fucked-up things"; for the record, I don't like Slipknot and Korn), but more how their music videos are created and how the lyrics are written. Lots of blood and guts, lots of disturbing disjunctions in images, lots of odd movements. I think their videos to "Obscure," "mazohyst of decadence," "ZAN" and "MASK" could be considered butoh performances to a heavy metal soundtrack.

I know Kyo, Dir En Grey's frontman, has two books of poetry out that are insanely popular in Japan. I hear it's very similar to his song lyrics, which is probably why I haven't checked them out. I am usually wary of singers/songwriters books of poetry (Jewel, Billy Corgan, Serj Tankian, Mike Doughty, ...) and Kyo's lyrics are not that interesting. Although I might give it a look if someone scans me a couple of pages.

Before I write about butoh, maybe I should write about noh, kabuki and bunraku first. Novelist William T. Vollman had a pretty interesting essay on noh in a recent issue of Tin House.