Toshi-O: The Man, The Myth, and The Cosmic Collagist
DAYBREAK was always the WORST part of the session. The room was thick with the scent of RED WINE, BEER AND THE ANNOYING CIGARETTE SMOKE THAT ANNOYED CHICA SLIGHTLY, BUT SHE NEVER ADMITTED IT. YES, CHICA SATO, STYLIST EXTRAORDINAIRE. Scissors, ink, the cutting table completely buried under a wreckage of cut-up photocopies, record sleeves, Xerox sheets, Posca pens, and scribbles on paper. Off to the side sat a circuit-bent Speak & Spell glitched out into alien bleeps, alongside an Omnichord chiming through a cheap reverb unit, alongside a Mosrite guitar played through a Peavey practice amp.
Toshi was a seasoned veteran of tours with Devo and Talking Heads. He appears alongside Jean-Michel Basquiat as part of Jean-Michel’s fave band in Downtown 81. He was a boss of underground music in his stride, from rewiring pop with The Plastics to pushing mutant funk with MELON and low-slung atmospheres with Natural Calamity. But when Toshi and Barnzley got together, it was pure, unadulterated art over commerce. They’d mess around with the Omnichord’s synth harps, hack toy electronics, scribble, and collage until the sky outside went from pitch black to pale blue.
To say Toshi’s taste in clothes was eclectic would be the understatement of the century. He effortlessly pulled off looks nobody else on earth could touch. One minute he’d walk in draped in full, dust-blown Santa Fe style; the next, he’d be wearing pristine, fully tidy Seditionaries paired with a matching MELON tee like it was the most natural combination in the world.
The connection went deep, stretching all the way back to around 1987, right before Major Force was even born. Barnzley was already making the MELON MA-1 flight jackets, t-shirts, sweatshirts, and stickers for Yoshi—Toshi's manager at the time. The raw, crossover energy between London and Tokyo was already simmering, though it wasn't always smooth sailing.
Barnzley still laughs thinking back to that brutally cold winter night at the Astoria, rocking up to meet Toshi, Chica, Gota, and Kan while battling a trifecta of total misery: a broken leg, chickenpox, and a nasty case of the flu. When he limped in looking like the walking dead, the crew took one look at him and delivered the unanimous verdict: "Go home." Not the best move, but legendary all the same.
Then came the night Yoshi Terashima—boss of Sony/File Records—pulled up with Japanese pop-rock giants The Checkers, needing to get inside Jazzie B and Norman Jay's packed-to-the-gills Soul II Soul night. Barnzley somehow squeezed the whole entourage past the doors. Shortly after, Yoshi handed Barnzley a proper mission: pack out the Astoria for The Checkers Live in London. Barnzley took it on and did it—filling the place to the rafters.
When Major Force was launched for the very first time, Barnzley was handed boxes of fresh 12-inch vinyl: The Orchids, Tycoon Tosh and the Terminator Troops, and the game-changing Return of the Original Art Form by Hiroshi Fujiwara, Kudo, and DJ Milo. Pitching them to industry A&R guys, Barnzley remembered a subtle, ignorant twinge of racism—that smug, short-sighted write-off that "the Japanese thing won't catch on."
Well... look around. Who’s catching on now? Major Force laid down the entire blueprint for global street culture, streetwear, and underground music crossover.
Because aren't all clothes streetwear? If you go out naked, you get arrested. I think the only person you couldn't say wears streetwear would be Johnny Fingers from the Boomtown Rats, because he wears his pyjamas out on the street.
That shared spirit eventually bled straight into Door Dog—the t-shirt label where Barnzley and Toshi took that same raw, unfiltered late-night energy and put it onto cotton. They scribbled, pasted, and collaged through till daybreak, combining Toshi’s sharp Tokyo street ethos with Barnzley’s deep-rooted UK rebel style.
Above all the art, the music, and the brainstorming, Toshi was a man with a wicked, brilliant sense of humour, and the two of them saw eye to eye for a long, long time.
Losing Toshi-O leaves a void in underground culture that nothing else can touch—it really is like a world without the moon.
Toshi-O: pioneer, partner, friend. We salute you.
