Yellow Magic Orchestra outside Madame Wong’s, LA Chinatown, where they played on 6 August 1979 — two days after closing the Greek run
Greek Theatre
- The TubesHeadliner · 3 nights
- Yellow Magic OrchestraSpecial guests
One of the more improbable pairings of the era, and a genuinely historic one. Yellow Magic Orchestra — Haruomi Hosono, Ryuichi Sakamoto and Yukihiro Takahashi, then in the middle of inventing most of electronic pop — opened all three nights. These were YMO’s first performances outside Japan. They flew in as an unknown quantity supporting an American art-rock band and went home on their way to changing the sound of the next decade.
They came as a six-piece — Hosono, Sakamoto and Takahashi with Akiko Yano, Kazumi Watanabe and Hideki Matsutake. Recordings from the run went onto Public Pressure the following February, and the final night was later released in full as YMO Live At The Greek Theatre 08/04/1979, mixed from the original multitracks. The Tubes’ own set from the run came out on home video in 1982.
Two days after the last Greek night they played Madame Wong’s, the restaurant and floorshow in LA Chinatown — a room several orders of magnitude smaller. The photograph above was taken on its doorstep.