Make Believe Bonus: Makuhari Messe

Even The Places You Dread Going Can Leave...Interesting Memories

Photo courtesy the official Makuhari Messe website

I never look forward going to Makuhari Messe, but I trek out there a ton. There’s possibly no venue I’ve been to more for work than this mammoth convention center situated in Chiba Prefecture, not far from the Tokyo border but feeling like an expedition every time I head out to it.

I just spent last weekend navigating those familiar hangar-like halls…split between Zozo Marine Stadium across the street, a ballpark that always feels really rank until I look at all the food options and think “huh, looks incredible”…for Summer Sonic. Annoying for sure, but a familiar phenomenon overtook me after two days in Makuhari Messe — while feeling far-flung for a Tokyo resident, a show here feels special, like truly stepping up a level. That was underlined watching fledgling rapper LANA step up to the [shudders] Spotify RADAR: Early Noise Stage, to perform her verse from this year’s “Makuhari.” Originally written for the rap-centric POP YOURS festival this past May, it’s swaggering declarations of making it big still hit hard a few months later because it was playing out in the exact same place presented as a goal in the song. Makuhari, after all, is a sign of making it.

With the venue still on my mind, I decided to revisit a handful of my favorite musical (and, uh, otherwise) moments witnessed at Makuhari Messe in the decade-plus I’ve been going (with Summer Sonic ignored because…too predictable). It might be a pain in the ass to get to and exit…but I’ll be damned if I don’t have a ton of great memories from the place.

Z-Machines Live

My strongest memory of watching the Zima-supported robot band Z-Machines live was a close friend, near the climax of the show when the main robot urged us to “put our Zima up,” laughing hysterically and screaming “this fucking sucks!”

For whatever reason in 2013, streaming channel Dommune hosted a “Super Dommune” event at Makuhari Messe. The bulk of it was great (see next inclusion), but the set guaranteeing I would go out to the all-night event was Z-Machines. There’s a lot to unpack here if you didn’t live in Japan in the early 2010s. Most importantly, malt beverage Zima still existed in the country. A ‘90s punchline in the United States, the clear drink persevered in Japan until the late 2010s…and suddenly returned to shelves this year, including with a booth at Summer Sonic 2023. A decade ago, though, Zima towered above the bottled-booze market, and had enough clout to create a robot band featuring an assist from Squarepusher.

The cynical part of my brain tells me that if these three devices urged us to raise our four-percent ABV drink into the air in 2023, far more people would be on board. Corporate tie-ups like this still elicited groans in 2013, but I think the music industry has been so battered in the years since this project that I think this would now be viewed as totally normal, if not preferred (like, this is way cooler than AI). Z-Machines would probably have a comp full of electronic artists thrilled to be working with Molson Coors, and hey we all have bills to pay. Back then though, I could pitch this experience to Noisey (main editor’s note after submitting the draft: “pretend you are drunk.” And ya know what, that was dead on advice!) and relay the headrush of seeing this “band” live for the world to enjoy.