It's Aug. 28, 1979, and the audience dutifully files into the old Shinjuku Loft livehouse to take their places, seated on the floor in preparation for another night of quiet musical appreciation. This time, however, something strange starts to happen. People keep coming in, the audience have to shuffle forward, it starts to get tighter, a few people stand up. Soon, for the first time in Japan, a packed crowd of 300 people are standing to watch leading lights of the Japanese punk scene like Friction, Lizard and The Star Club blaze a trail out of the 1970s and into the uncertain world of the new decade.
The event was called Drive to '80s, and over six consecutive days around 2,500 people passed through the doors of Loft. It was such a legendary event that 20 years later the organizers reprised the concept with Drive to 2000 at the new Loft in Shinjuku's Kabukicho district, and now again, as Japanese punk turns 30, with Drive to 2010.
"The '70s underground rock culture and the '60s revolutionary ideals had almost died," explains Yuichi Jibiki, one of the organizers of Drive to '80s and its children, "but a lot of those bands were assimilated by the new punk influence from New York."