I only met Atsushi Miura once, and briefly.
And by all accounts, he’s a legend.
Its tough to know wether to write this in past or present tense as I have no idea where Atsushi is other than some vague rumor of moving back to Japan to take care of some family business. And again, I met him once for all of 5 minutes. But to those that knew him, just the mention of the name Atsushi elicits the same basic reaction every time - usually a sigh exhaling of his name, “Atsushi,” followed by some fond memory of how amazing the Tokyo Rose (his Charlottesville sushi restaurant) was and capped with a recounting of the various shows attended in the restaurant’s basement; Pavement, Smog, Cat Power, The Curious Digit, Parker Paul, Drunk, etc…
My first encounter must have been ‘97 or ‘98 and I was on my first tour, tour managing (read: driving) our debut artist, June Panic, around the eastern half of the country. We had pulled into Charlottesville to meet my future business partner, Darius, who had been booking all the Tokyo Rose shows at the time. After a brief tour of some C’ville highlights:Plan 9, the parking lot, we helped Darius poster the walking mall for the show that night (no one came). Darius had booked the show was with Parker Paul as he knew my brother/other business partner and I had been charmed by his tape for the last few months. Afterwards, Darius took us upstairs to collect our guarantee of free sushi which after weeks of eating only pizza was more valuable than anything. At some point Atsushi stopped by our table and Darius proceeded to embarrass him by bragging about what an amazing songwriter Atsushi is and that he should go down and play a few tunes. It never happened, but Atsushi was gracious enough about it and left us to our edamame and miso for the kitchen.
At some point after the tour, Darius sent along a CD of a (reportedly) rare Atsushi live show and he wasn’t kidding. One of the many brilliant moments is “I Love You” (note his dedication to D at the start). Alternating between heavily accented English and Japanese, his song is so simple and soulful that analogies to his cooking would be in order, but it can more than speak for itself.
