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SAGA OF AN ASIAN BADBOY
PAGE 4 of 7
| "You need cash to talk to me," Fowley told Kita at their first meeting. Kita pulled out a hundred and layed it on Fowley's hand. |
Kita isn't anxious to dispel the mystery about the source of his money. Whatever activities his finances may involve, there is no question Kita is very hands-on. Summer answers a call on the tiny Motorola portable she carries and hands it to Kita. With no apparent effort at disguising his conversation, Kita tells the caller that he is expecting some payments. He names several four- and five-figure sums. Loan-sharking occurs to me as another possible source of revenue. Kita's preternaturally gentle, almost androgynous, voice and manners add to his air of danger and mystery. To look at him you could suspect he has ice water running in his veins. He never lets himself get excited enough to raise his voice, never lets himself become surprised enough to raise an eyebrow.
Even so there are times I am tempted to dismiss Kita as just another 25-year-old with a rich uncle and a smooth style. After all, he hasn't even been signed by a major label. His first CD won't even be released until January though Kita tells me "Desire" is getting air play in Europe, New York and Washington state.
The most distinguishing thing about Kita's musical career is that he became something of a rock star in Guam at the age of 14. Admittedly Guam is a tiny place, but Kita says he enjoyed a lot of status and recognition there. At the age of 17, after his family had moved to the States, Kita played with three heavy metal bands in Orange County and L.A. Anticipating a big career ahead and wanting to keep artistic and financial control, he formed Ra Falcon four months earlier. Legendary rock producer/promoter Kim Fowley, associated with the likes of the Beatles, Helen Reddy, Guns-N-Roses and Motley Crue, is cited as a credential by Kita. In fact, Kita's most significant step toward ultimate success may be having Fowley call him "the new pig on the block". That kind of compliment doesn't easily escape the lips of Kim Fowley, known for his offensive directness.
"You need cash to talk to me," Fowley told Kita at their first meeting. Kita pulled out a hundred and layed it on Fowley's hand. "Fowley has been screwed over a lot in the past," explains Kita, "but we understand each other." He has become a big fan of Fowley's blunt ways and has retained him as a consultant, a big wheel in the star-making machinery. Another is the big-name publicist working to get Kita into European and American magazines. It is a measure of Kita's ambition that he wants more than writeups in music magazines; he wants to be trumpeted in mass-market fashion and general-interest magazines.
Tomi Kita has three commodities to offer the media -- looks, talent and most importantly, heavy-duty balls. As befits an aspiring rock star Kita is handsome verging on pretty. Judging by his CD and demo tape his singing voice is reminiscent of David Bowie and, on occasion, Eric Clapton. Kita writes all his own songs. The lyrics could maybe use a bit of discipline but they actually say something, a rare commodity in today's music scene. One song even borrows from William Blake: "Tiger, Tiger burning bright/In the forest of the night." Kita is proudest of his guitar playing. According to the credits he is a one-man production studio who arranged and mixed every cut. The only other credits go to a bass player and a drummer.
Ultimately what may raise Tomi Kita above a big field of hopefuls is his ballsy willingness to lay himself bare. With titles like "Masturbation" and "Loneliness is Fear by a Different Name", his songs aren't limited to pop sentiments. At the same time he doesn't have the immature musician's fear of the sentimental side, the eternal song themes. Some Kita songs are frankly about nostalgia and lost love. Sexuality is the unmistakeable current that drives his music and his ambition to become the male Madonna, but Tomi Kita's ultimate talents are solid enough to withstand artistic scrutiny.
I find Kita appealing as a profile subject because his choice os ambition and lifestyle represents, to maybe too many talented Asian American males, the road not taken. Kita helps gut the stereotype. Where the stereotype has us being nerdy, he is convincingly ultra-hip, where it has us being respectable, he is proudly a freak, where we are supposed to be docile, he is clearly his own man, where we are supposed to be sexless, Kita is frankly oversexed and very much in command. At the moment he has three steady girlfriends, two of them models. His once-in-a-decade true love is a Swedish model. He tells me this in front of Summer, not unkindly, just matter-of-factly. She knows and accepts the fact that Kita doesn't believe in monogamy. Kita tells me that he subscribes to the ancient Asian tradition in which men are allowed to keep as many wives and mistresses as they can afford. PAGE 5
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