Bill Laswell stands in the lobby outside the Shinjuku Pit Inn, where on April 27 and 28 he played to packed houses with drummer Hideo Yamaki and saxophonist Yasuaki Shimizu. He's just set up his bass rig and is wondering where to sit for our interview.
"Should we check this funky little place out?" he asks, smirking over his shoulder, already heading for a bar at the far end of the lobby. A reddish glow seeps through the cracks in its entrance.
Laswell has a hulking frame and looks like Che Guevara might have had he reached middle age (a characteristic enhanced by his habit of wearing a beret and fatigues in public). As he ambles across the threshold, the all-male clientele inside the narrow little bar does a double-take. Laswell coolly observes the row of TV monitors above the bar on which buff men express their ardor for one another as best they can under Japan's stiff obscenity laws.