Ohayo gozaimasu! Hajimemashite. Watashi wa tato~uatisuto Johnny Dorobo desu,... nihongo ga sukoshi wakarimasu, demo mata jozu ja arimasen,... so I'll stick to English, and tell you about the trip I took to the eight islands of Nihon, my Japanese trip last December.
Being Seppuku Tattoo, all things Japanese permeate our daily lives, from art, manga, anime, tattoos, movies, fashion, motorcycles, culture, food, drink, and ethics. It was only natural that I would want to visit and delve into as many of the Japanese cultures as I could, from sampling their world famous cuisine to getting traditional irezumi from the most honorable horishi.
I can't say enough about my tour guide, Crystal Morey. Originally from Austin, Crystal has lived in Japan since the 90's, and is the owner of Gomineko Books, exporting rare historical periodicals to the tattoo community globally. She has an undying love for her adopted country and all of its timeless traditions. She is also heavily tattooed, has befriended many of the most prominent tattooists, and runs tours specifically designed for gaigin tattooers like myself to see Japan as only we can. She acts as interpreter, tour guide, history buff, manners coach, and if you're not careful, will also drink you under the table or kick your ass at a karaoke showdown. She does a number of tours during the year, with a maximum roster of fifteen, and in a number of cities, from Tokyo, Osaka, and Kyoto. If you want to see a side of Japan that very few tourists ever will, or have always wanted to collect the tattoo work of some of the best artists on the planet, by all means, book a Gomineko tour. I would have been one lost and clueless otaku without her. I only wish there was a Crystal for every country I want to visit. Crystal Morey: http://www.gominekobooks.com/
The video below shadows my trip eerily. Its filmed by renown traditional old school master Marcus Kuhn, & is just one of this installments of the Gypsy Gentlemen tattoo travel series he's been producing. Take a look, both the tattoo studios I was tattooed at are represented. (Stop the film at 8:16 and see my poster collection I brought as omiyage in Horiyoshi 3's studio!) I believe he was there just a week after I was. This video is reposted with his permission, domo arigato gozaimasu Marcus San!
I'm including a number of links to sites, videos, and photo galleries to give you more of a feel for all the amazing sites we explored.
• We stayed in Shinjuku, the famous red light district, down the block from the Japanese version of CBGB's, Antilock.
• We learned to navigate the extensive subway system, and visited Harajuku, Shibuya, Yokohama, Kamakura, and a number of seaside towns.
• We partook in cleansing and money washing (zeniarai) rituals at Shinto shrines, viewed traditional weddings of samurai families at the Meiji Shrine, and climbed into the mountains to visit the Nikko National Park, a world heritage site.
• We climbed inside the largest buddha statue in Japan at the Kotokuin Temple.
• We visited a ukiyo-e woodblock print museum. • We burned incense at the gravesite of the Forty Seven Ronin.
• We went underground in the Benten-kutsu Caves at the Hasedera Temple.
• We climbed through hundreds of torii to the Sasuke Inari Shrine.
• We turned into children at the Studio Ghibli Museum.
• We rode a bullet train to the Gunma prefecture, where we painted at a daruma factory, and watched Steve experience tebori at the hands of sensei Horimasa.
• We ate at fantastic restaurants, izakaya, ramen houses, famuresu, Indian, sushi bars, manga kissu, and a host of bars, watering holes, and karaoke rooms. We ate at a theme restaurant called the Lock Up, where your hostess handcuffs one of your party and escorts them to a prison cell to eat.
• We drank at a west coast styled bar called Tombstone, on the night that visitors from France, Germany, the Netherlands, and California were celebrating after the Moon Eyes 21st Yokohama Custom Car Show.
• We crossed Shibuya's famous scramble crossing in front of the statue of Hachikō.
• We ended up at David Lynch's Musuem Exhibit at the Laforet in Harajuku.
• We sang karaoke with tebori master, sensei Horimyo, who blew me out of the water.
• And, of course, I got tattooed.
Horiyoshi 3 is the godfather of Japanese tattooing, an apprentice of the second Horiyoshi, who's master was practicing ancient tebori (Japanese hand tattooing) before World War 1. He is considered to be not only one of the most skilled tattooists on the planet, but a living lifeline to tattooing's prehistoric past. In the book, 'Bushido: The Legacy of Japanese Tattoo', Horiyoshi 3 explains a series of ideals and ethics that we at Seppuku have used as the cornerstone of our careers and how we treat our customers. Just one examples is the fact that sensei Horiyoshi 3 hasn't raised his prices in decades, despite the fact that droves of people are continually making pilgrimages from across the globe to his humble Yokohama studio to sit at the feet of the grand master. His outlook is that people are making a sacrifice of pain, endurance and money to wear his art and carry it to the grave, so he honors their dedication and makes himself available to everyone, including those of humble means. (Not price gouging gullible star fuckers like some tattoo reality TV stars we could name.) I've dreamt about meeting honorable Horiyoshi 3 ever since I put on my first tattoo in 2000, and to sit in the same studio featured in the books I've studied all these years was simply mind blowing.
My tattoo, placed on one of my hands that I create my art with, is a namakubi, or severed head. The final act of a formal seppuku ceremony is when the kaishakunin, the second, cuts off the head of the bushi warrior who has finished slicing open his own belly. The tattoo has multiple meanings, but is meant as a tribute to both my dedication to the studio and to the samurai code of chivalry.
We visited Horiyoshi 3's Tattoo Museum, not far from his Yokohama studio. The museum is a huge collection of tattoo artifacts and memorabilia from around the planet and across the ages, donated by hundreds of artists who have made the pilgrimage to sit at the grand master's feet. Although I was tagging Seppuku stickers everywhere I went, and using them as senjafuda at the shrines, the highlight was when Horiyoshi's wife asked us to add to her sticker collection on the front of the building.
I chose Yellow Blaze as the second place I wanted to be tattooed. I've long admired Shige's meteoric rise to being one of the youngest new stars to be included in the best tattooists in the world. Shige is currently not accepting new clientele, but I felt that his apprentice, Tomo, was easily also one of the most skilled horishi in Nihon. I had planned two days in a row, and wanted a jigoku-dayo, (courtesan of Hell), and scheduled enough time for a sizable piece. Tomo was taken with the idea of taking the idea and turning it into a project, and convinced me to let him take up the entire leg, from hip to ankle. I agreed, as a tattoo artist, I know that giving the art as much room to breath is vital. But also, the courtesan's robes are embroidered with scenes from buddhist hell, demons torturing souls, and the largest the robes, the more art that can be shown. Naturally return trips will be necessary to complete the art.
Not enough can be said about the trip. Even at ten days it was impossibly short. This marks one of many trips I'm planning that involve getting tattooed by masters in their home countries. If you have any questions about my experience, please feel free to ask.
This weekend saw myself and a group of fellow Seppuku
Ronin driving 3 hours down the Parkway to the 3rd annual Wildwood
Beach Bash Tattoo Convention. The plan was to have fun, go to the beach one
last time before fall is officially here, and of course to win trophies for our
artists. The plan was to enter ourselves into as many competitions as we could,
and win as much as we could. We’re proud of our art, and want to show it off
for both our artists and ourselves. They put in the work, and we put in the
time and the endurance. We consider ourselves lucky to have the amazing work we
do, and we jumped at the chance to show it off.
The
drive down was uneventful; we hopped in the car early in the morning, and made
our way to the competition. After checking into our beachside hotel, we headed
over to the convention center. The turnout wasn’t necessarily what we expected;
it was actually a lot quieter and tamer than we thought it would be. There was
still plenty to see however, and plenty of drinks to drink. After gambling away
a large portion of our petty cash at a cheesy casino type game, we decided to
scout out any photographers that might be working the convention. We talked to
a few people, and found out that a “tall, super skinny blonde” was the
photographer for the convention. We found her, and she immediately asked to
take pictures of our work. After some very uncomfortable undressing, on my
part, the first of the competitions were beginning. We had entered Best
Portrait, Best Large Color, Best Extra Large Color, and Most Unusual. The
judging commenced, and while we didn’t win for every category, two of my fellow
Ronin took home plaques for 2nd place in Best Large Color and Best
Extra Large Color. We lost Most Unusual, which I think is bullshit, because how
can you beat a photo realistic vagina? The other entries weren’t even that
unusual, but I guess the judges thought otherwise. Being the huge party animals
we clearly are, we passed out hard at about 10pm. This was probably best, as
going to bars in Wildwood would have been a risk since it was also Bike Week. I
have no issues with bikers, frankly I like them and I love motorcycles, but my
love for them does not extend to being in a crowd of rowdy, drunken ones. This
fear is also aided by the fact that everyone likes to tell me how abductable I
am, and it’s preferable to me to make it home rather than make it onto the back
of some larger biker’s Harley.
Sunday
arrived bright and shining, with our group well rested and ready to take on
another day. Today was the day for the bigger competitions, and we were excited
to try and get some more wins under our belts. We were all pretty convention-ed
out at this point, so we instead decided to walk around all the vendors that
were set up outside for Bike Week. This proved fun; there were many characters
to see and tons of cool things to look at. I tried my hand at wearing chaps,
and looked more ridiculous than tough biker chick in them. Eventually, we made
our way back into the convention, in the hopes that the competitions would
begin on time and we could head home. This was not the case, but we did get to
see some unintentionally good entertainment anyway. The sideshow act had a
malfunction with a metal fan, and the poor guy cut his finger nearly off. I
know this pain, as I have been clumsy with power tools in the past, and felt so
bad for him. Blood splattered all over the linoleum, and they stopped the show.
This was actually in our benefit too, since they had no sideshow, they figured
why not just start the competitions? This round also proved victorious, as we
took home more plaques and a trophy. We won 2nd and 3rd in
Best Back/Chest, 2nd in Best Male Overall, and 1st in
Best Sleeve. Our grand total was 6 plaques and a trophy, which while awesome,
also means more things that I get to dust at the shop.
Just kidding, it was an
awesome weekend full of wins, and we were insanely excited to take home our
wins to our artists. They put in the time and effort to give us kick ass
tattoos, and it feels great to be able to give something back.
Seppuku Tattoo is proud to host the amazing Dee Dee Segura of Requiem
Tattoo of Spring Hill, Florida. Dee Dee is a veteran tattooist &
fine artist with over fifteen years in the scene. She's known for an eye
popping color bomb style ...that
is... artistic & elegant, as well as creating beautiful works of
art in oil, acrylic, & pastels. It's been an honor to work side by
side with her at conventions tattooing & on stage at Chris
Dingwell's Wet Paint Projects. She'll be in studio on July 23-26. Check
out her artwork, & stop by & show her some love!
The studio will be CLOSED from Thursday May 3rd until Tuesday May 8th, as the entire crew will be the guests of Durb Morrison's 10th annual Hell City Tattoo Convention in Columbus, Ohio.
Matt Lukesh, Johnny Thief, & Ali Chin Chin will all be there,... & may still have a few appointments open due to shifting schedules. The studio will be closed for the weekend, if you need to get in touch with anyone, please email them c/o the contacts on the Seppuku web page.
I (this is Johnny writing) was in attendance for the first Hell City Convention in 2002. I was only a year in the business after my apprenticeship, & was there as a mere spectator. I was blown away at the way Mr. Morrison handled his first convention. He assembled hand picked artists, every table just more talented than the next. The show ran seamlessly, Durb handling pitfalls & problems with a grace I hadn't seen in the tattoo community before. It's an honor to be in a position a decade later where I'm an invited guest. Chris Dingwell is reviving the Wet Paint project again, & although we'll be exhibiting artwork, we will not be onstage this year. We opted to tattoo & get tattooed, so of course Chris goes ahead & assembles the most insane roster of the countries most famous artists. My typical luck.
We're sorry for the inconvenience of being closed for the whole weekend. We'll post a full write up of this years events when we're back in town. Namaste! .
Ah, Tattoo TV Shows. I've been scoffing at them since day one, thinking that their time will come & go. Its been a touchy subject of late, what with more & more of my good friends & beloved peers appearing on these shows. And don't our clients know it, not one day goes by without someone asking us if we caught that one show last night,... always followed by laughter, as they damned well know the reaction they're going to get,...
Of course, I don't watch television, except the Daily Show, & Dr. Who. I worked very hard to be an independent artist, as well as someone who has been clean off of drugs for over two decades, & as such, I have a strict moral foundation that is diametrically opposed to everything the companies that own television stand for.
But you probably don't know about that, huh? All that talk of corporate monopolies, that punk rock bands like the Dead Kennedys, Crass, & the Subhumans that bled our ears with mantras of 'corporate rock sucks', died in the 90's when Hot Topics went coastal & Green Day made it Broadway. They screamed about the dangers of too much power being taken out of the hands of the people & hoarded by soulless conglomerates. They couldn't have been more right. One hundred years ago, there were over a hundred news organizations. Now there are six. (GE, Disney, News Corp., TimeWarner, Viacom, & CBS.) There may be 200 channels of shit on the TV, but they are almost all owned by the same people. The same goes for newspaper & magazine publishers. The same goes for record labels, just four (Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment, Warner Music Group and EMI Group ). The same goes for food companies. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_industry). These companies have incredible control over what you see, hear, eat, or don't see, don't hear, or can't eat, or what others can say or supply you with. And more & more, they're interconnected. Monopolies are so out of hell bent out of control today they make J. P. Morgan look like Willy Wonka.
The most infamous example I use is TimeWarner, who are interlaced, (they share CEO's) with Exxon-Mobil, who is the most profitable company in human existence, due in no small part to the two illegal wars the United States has been involved in. TimeWarner owns news organizations, magazines, television, movies, radio, & a huge number of music labels under its giant corporate umbrella. GE owns NBC, & also makes every detonator on every nuclear missile in our silos. Exactly how much of a conflict of interest is it that someone controlling so much of our news information might just have a bias when it comes to how war is reported on? Ask yourself this, after the longest & most unpopular war of American history, why isn't there a single protest song on the airwaves? Or a nightly report on the conflict in Afghanistan? Little strange, dontcha think? The main reason, the 1,318,000,500,050 dollar reason (the cost of war to the dollar as of 4/1/2012) our country is in the shitter, & not one of these so called news stations is talking about it? This was something we railed against back in the 80's. It was insane to think a band who was so entrenched in socio-political concerns that you needed a masters in civics just to understand their liner notes, could be owned by, (& signed to contracts that saw that the band was the last party to be paid, & most of the profits went straight to the label) & making millions of dollars for the same sort of same power mad people they were warning you about.
This is how you get Navy recruitment ads with Godsmack soundtracks on them,... the ad company, the TV networks, & the band are all owned by one company. Who are then owned by people who build weapons & drill oil. Rock & roll used to sing out against war, less than a generation later, it promotes it.
Clear Channel is another blistering example of people who hate the product they're getting rich from. You'll remember this company, the nation’s largest owner of radio stations, they're the ones who censored which songs could be played on the air after 9/11, shot down gay pride billboards, & censored criticism of G.W. Bush on any of its programs. They carry most of the Fox radio shows, like Beck, Limbaugh, Hannity, Savage and Noory. They're one of the reasons why all radio stations sound almost exactly the same. Their CEO has gone on record saying that he hates music. They have tried to work with the federal government to pass laws charging the promoters of music festivals with any crime committed by anyone at the festival. Imagine how many drug possession charges go down at Bonaroo, now imagine you taking the heat for all of them. This was one of the many heavy handed ways they wanted to beat everyone else down & steal as much from music industry as possible. Think about that, people who never wrote a note of music using the power & capital they stole from music to write laws dictating what can be done with music. No wonder that there hasn't been a music movement since 1992. The voice of an entire generation has been bought, sold & kept on a damned short leash by mercenary vultures who choose presidents & congressmen, & make huge profits off of dead American soldiers.
The more you realize how corporate our entire culture is here in America, the more you realize that our lives are nothing more than to keep the coffers of these burgermeisters full. The music you hear in your favorite movie is placed there, because both the band & the movie company are owned by the same people. Who then review the music & the movie in magazines they own. And then advertised in every media vehicle they own as well. Back when there were still record stores, big labels would buy shelf space for albums & wall space for posters, making sure only bands they owned could be sold. Songs on the radio aren't requested, they're paid for. Same with the food companies, all the shelf space at supermarkets is paid for, which is why almost every product on the shelf is owned by some gigantic food corp as opposed to some local indy start up. An entire generation is engrained to buy the name brand food, & is bombarded with product placement for the food, that no one says anything when public school lunches start carrying Pizza Hut food, & have soda machines on campus. And then people wonder why we're the fattest country on the planet, & one in three school kids have diabetes. Or wonder why cars get the same gas mileage we got when Reagan was in office. Or why every concert hall in America is no longer named after people who accomplished great things, but after some damned telecom, like the telecoms guilty of treason against the American people for domestic spying until the Bush Administration pardoned them. Or when corporations became people, & money became speech.
Part of my moral foundation was laid when I got off drugs. "From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked." I was taught by the harsh realities of my past life, that everything we do has ripples, & many of the things we do affect people in ways we cannot possibly know. We are all connected. If you're out to to fuck someone else over, you're just going to fuck yourself. This isn't a radical thought, its well over 2000 years old. I remember one particular long haired hippie carpenter we nailed to a tree for saying that. And that can make doing something like working as an artist problematic. For example, do you fulfill a childhood dream by drawing comic books? Well, is your dream important enough to work for DC, who are owned by TimeWarner? Watch now as your dream is dictated to by censors & lawyers who care more about the interests of their shareholders & advertisers than your artistic expression. And how much of the money that the characters you've created is going into your pocket, & how much into the pockets of weapons manufacturers, who also own the company, & now everything you create for them? Truth, justice, & secret prison camps,...
I did a lot of work creating art & printing for The Man. It was a compromise, but I was madly in love with my then wife & was helping her in her efforts to get through school. I spent fifteen long years working for everyone from Reebok to Saturday Night Live. I made a lot of people who didn't give a flying fuck about art a hell of a lot of money. I was subject to crass censorship, insane standards, stolen royalties, forgotten bonuses, cancelled incentives, & treated like a lead paint eating syphilitic earless freak. When I became a tattoo artist, I left all of that behind. I now own my own business, & answer to no one, but my faithful partner in pain, my loyal ronin clientele, & to my peers, who have hard earned my respect by contributing to this incredible ancient art form. My love & appreciation of the tattoo scene is strong, because I know what its like to be an indentured servant to people who stood against everything I've fought for.
As Mike Malone famously quoted Sailor Jerry, 'What are we? Pen-pals or PIRATES?'
....annnnnddd that brings us around to Tattoo Television.
My first & biggest problem with Tattoo TV is, no tattoo artists OWN the shows. These same corporations that destroyed music own the shows. For example, the most recent show, 'Ink Master', was aired on Spike TV. Spike is owned by MTV, who is owned by Viacom, who is owned by Westinghouse, who is owned by Toshiba. Viacom is one of those corps that likes to do things like sue its fans, like the multi-billion dollar lawsuit it filed against Google & YouTube. Westinghouse is a war profiteer. They handle defense contracts & make nuclear fuel, nuclear reactors, & nuclear engines for subs & aircraft carriers. And Toshiba had sanctions levied against it & saw the arrest of a number of officers in the 80's for selling machines to build quiet nuclear submarine propellers to the Soviet Union, & weakened relations between the US & Japan.
If you're a pirate, a free spirit who lives & works for himself, & makes his living traveling the world & creating art,... these are the people you want to now work for, the same fascists I worked so hard to escape from?! This makes no sense. Most people would murder to escape the cubicle.
Do you think they're helping tattooing? "Sure, think of the exposure!" Riiiiggght. Like anyone needs the kind of exposure of seeing a fine artist stuck in a meat locker with a dead pig. If that doesn't show you how they view tattoo artists as clown shoes, what would? A tattoo artist pie fight? Where were these people when the fight to legalize tattooing was going down? (Keep in mind that we're still illegal today in at least half the cities in New Jersey. Keep in mind that all five boroughs of NYC were illegal until 1997. That Massachusetts, South Carolina, & Oklahoma were illegal into the 21st century.) Let's ask this: who else are they hiring? They pay tattoo people to get in front of the camera. Are there people in their human resources department with sleeves? How about accounting? How about their legal team? How about the CEO's? From what my clients tell me, every time they ask me to make sure that I place their tattoos so they'll be safe for work, I bet not.
The only help that they want to give to tattooing is to help tattooing make them a lot of money they didn't earn. These are the very people we fought when we protested the tattoo prohibitions. I'm not being rhetorical. If you doubt that, pull up the massive numbers they've donated to creepy politicians, & how much they've spent on which lobbyists they blitzkrieg the Congress with. Now, what do you think they're going to do with the money they make off these shows? Spend it on reversing everything they've done to seize control of,... well, everything?
Lemme ask you this: would you sell your shop & go work for a guy who never tattooed? Or never had a single tattoo? Of course not. The same reasons you wouldn't work for a non tattooing owner apply tenfold to Tattoo TV. Trust me, as someone who has heard that "it'll be good exposure" line for years from record labels & magazine publishers, the trade off is insanely stacked in their favor.
That's my biggest concern, & I'm passionate about it because it just doesn't extend to Tattoo TV shows, but to everything that's going on in this country in practically every industry. But that's another blog. If tattoo people owned the shows, controlled the content, had the power of final edit, & were the main beneficiary, that would be a different ballgame. I can't believe that's not a concern.
My second problem has to do with how tattooing is portrayed, starting with how dirty some of these shows are. The first episode of TLC's 'Tattoo School' had twenty nine health department code violations. A lot of these shows show a total break down in cross contamination procedures; setting up bare handed, handling sterile tubes & needles with bare fingers, wiping down fresh tattoos bare handed, handling all kinds of things with bloody gloves. Kat Von D has a live cat running around & jumping on clients, a cat that I bet has never seen the inside of an autoclave. One episode had Steve-O tattooing, a clear violation of California's tattoo artist licensing laws. MTV ran a show about tattoo regret that showed people getting tattooed out of a house, while drinking & doing illegal drugs. Is it too much to ask that Tattoo TV be clean & legal?
Those two points are irrefutable. After that, the arguments begin to descend into the areas of opinion & taste. But, that dove tails into my whole long winded preamble about ethics. When I became a tattooist, I served a formal apprenticeship. I learned where to draw lines. I don't open up on the same block as anyone else. I work clean. I don't tattoo swastikas or racist bullshit. I don't price gouge my clients. I don't tattoo drunks or minors. I don't tattoo other people's tattoos. I don't trash talk other studios. I honor those who came before me, & made a lot of sacrifices to build this industry up to the point where we can doodle for a living instead of driving cabs. I didn't invent tattoo ethics, I learned them. One of the people I learned them from was Horiyoshi 3, who talks in the book 'Bushido' (http://www.amazon.com/Bushido-Legacies-Japanese-Takahiro-Kitamura/dp/0764312014/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1333378982&sr=8-1) about how he hasn't raised his prices in decades despite being one of the most sought after tattooist on the planet. He does this because in addition to his rich & famous clientele, he knows that a common worker will have to save up months for sitting with him, & undergo no small amount of pain to wear his work. He honors the clients' dedication & returns their respect. That's righteous. Its based on that code of honor that we christened our studio with the name "Seppuku". Death Before Dishonor.
Oh wait, you can't,... because they no longer exist, they're now all extinct. I remember being told that would never happen either. That corporate rock wasn't that bad. That bands had a right to make money. That I should just "lighten up" & "stop hating". Sucks to be right, right?
Tattoo TV can be done well. But first & foremost, it should be in the hands of the people its honoring. People like Chris Garver, Shane O'Neil, Jack Rudy, & Joe Capobianco, these are all hardcore artists who paid their dues & earned the respect they command the hard way. They are some of my personal favorites in the scene. They are great people, as well as being tremendous artists. In the case of Jack & Joe, these are cats who served as an example to me of what good ethics should be. I do not judge them, quite the opposite, they're some of my biggest inspirations, my heroes. Jack is a living legend, a bridge between our new school & the old. Why did they agree to be on these shows? I have no idea, & will never ask them. Its not my place or why I'm here. It's not why I'm taking time to go into all of this. What it is for is to show people what the owners of these shows think of you. They're the problem, not the artists. And basically, they think that you're one the suckers who are born every minute, & will use your money to destroy all your own self interests. Man has created art & expressed himself for thousands of years before he developed a system of commerce. Art cannot be put up on the Dow Jones & traded like a commodity.
The Music Industry Graveyard should stand as a monument of the dangers of corporate bedfellows.
Whether you're a 'civilian', or a veteran tattoo artist, I hope that you'll think about these things as you're watching the next Tattoo TV Show that comes along. Because if you really love tattooing enough to enjoy television shows about it, then you love tattooing enough not to aid & assist it's enemies.
Thanks for reading all the way to the end. Really, I could have just said "Green Day on Broadway", & saved myself a few hours!
