It’s kinda crazy but I knew nothing about Boom Boom Satellites (BBS) before last night. The experience of hearing them play live was similar to having chocolate or Breyers Vanilla ice cream for the first time. In other words, it was a “where have you been all my life” kind of experience. It was that good!

When I first got the BBS email blast from one of my friends, I thought, “Boom Boom Satellites? Wow, that name kicks ass!” A quick Google search later and I learned that they’re a rock/electronica band; an interesting fusion that I can’t remember hearing before. Ok, two for two on the intrigue meter. Then I listened to their Kick It Out song with Flo Rida and Tahj Mowry and I was like “Whoa!! You had me at hello.” Another aside, I woke up this morning with their song playing in my head. So yeah, I can’t hide this secret anymore, I’m a big BBS fan.

Give it a listen and see for yourself:

The song is fricking hot! It’s a good combination of rock, house and hip hop covering all the important bases. Rock-hop, if you will. I love the high energy, big beats and big attitude in the song. It’s my new let’s get pumped song that we play before all the meetings we have here. Seriously though, I feel like a rock star just listening to it. That’s when you know the music is good, when it makes you feel something.

So who are Boom Boom Satellites? They’re a Japanese band with each of the two members looking like text-book rock stars – long hair, black clothing, big attitude. They have one vocalist/guitarist, Michiyuki Kawashima. Masayuki Nakano is on bass. There’s also a supporting female drummer (!!!), Yoko Fukuda, who must be one of the hottest Asian girls in the world because she plays drums in a badass rock band.

Are you sold on them yet?

But wait, I haven’t even gotten to the epic performance that BBS gave last night in New York City. Hmm, epic doesn’t seem quite fitting. Legendary? Once in a lifetime? Ok, that’s probably a bit extreme, but Santos Party house in Chinatown NYC was shaking like crazy last night. I have to say, it’s kinda surreal to see rows of Asians bobbing their heads and jumping up and down at a rock concert. It’s never been my scene in the past. I guess it is now!

For those of you that never been to that club, it’s relatively small with about a 300 or so person capacity. There’s a 4 foot stage on one end of the square room and people could cram up right next to the stage, which of course I did. I was pretty much standing in front of Michiyuki, as seen by this awfully grainy mobile phone shot.

The crowd was a good mix of Asians and non-Asians and the place was pretty packed, though not sardine levels. The first song they did was their newest single with Tahj Mowry and Flo Rida. To everyone’s surprise, Tahj was there last night for that one song and performed with BBS. It seems he’s come a long ways since his days as Teddy on Full House. I haven’t been following BBS long enough to know all their songs, but it seems like they mostly played the songs on their Myspace page.

One really cool thing that deserves its own paragraph from last night was the hologram special lighting effect. In the video, Flo Rida appears as a hologram. I don’t know if this was intentional or not, but the club has these special red, green and blue LED lights pulsating on the band members making it look like they were real life holograms. Not dissimilar from the red and green color stripes that you see on objects in 3D movies with those geeky, throw-away white 3D glasses. Like, I knew they were really in front of me, but it was like I constantly had to tell my mind, “Dude, they’re really in front of you. Stop questioning it.”

I think for most people in the audience, they were like me in never hearing about BBS before. Having talked to a few of attendees, it seems that most people if not everyone walked away last night newly minted fans. BBS actually came out and did an encore after a few of us started putting up lighters. I would’ve too if I smoked. I’m thinking I should just carry one around now for that reason.

I’m staking this claim right now, Boom Boom Satellites are going to be BIG in the US. They have a single, Kick It Out, that’s gonna be a smash hit. They already have a collab with Flo Rida. They have popular DJs and artists calling on them for interviews and future collabs, and of course, I’m going to hang out with them for an interview in a few hours.

I don’t use the label True Artists™ that often, but these guys fit the bill. Download their songs on Amazon. Get the Kick It Out single on iTunes. Tell all your friends about them, and this article on Ningin =)

Thanks to Hayden and Superglorious for setting this up and my new good friend Ossip for the photos!

Speaking of photos, here’s some. The rest can be found here.

And oh yeah, I talked to this girl who’s business card slipped out of my jacket that was filming the concert. Hopefully she reads this and emails me the Youtube link!